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IT was a wild, wet December night, full of tempest.
Outside the red wooden house in the hollow, where
Moses Grant had lived all his respectable life, the
winds blew with an eerie sound, like a lost spirit's
wail, and the snow fell steadily, folding the earth in
great white shrouds.

Moses Grant and his wife sat before the fire. A
cheerful glow came out from the blazing logs; a mug
of cider was toasting unheeded on the hearth, and a
few apples stood untouched on the stand between
them. Every thing in this peaceful family sitting-room
wore a snug and comfortable look, from the
neat bed standing in a recess in the wall, with homemade
blue woolen spread and snowy linen, to the
brightly-polished powter plates upon the dresser and
the unsoiled sand on the white floor.

Outside, through the snow and the storm, tottered
a single female figure—wearily, painfully, as if every
step must be her last. Forsaken of God and man, the
very elements seemed to do battle with her—the winds
blew her feeble steps backward—the snow piled up
higher and higher drifts before her feet, and yet those
feeble feet tottered on—over the drifts, against the
wind—steadily toward the red house in the hollow.

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There was a strange shadow on the face of that meek
woman, Moses Grant's wife. Her knitting had fallen
from her busy fingers, her foot tapped the floor with a
restless beat, and at last, as if she could endure the
stillness no longer, she arose and began moving hurriedly
about the room, giving a touch here and there
to her domestic arrangements, and now and then going
stealthily to the window to look forth into the night.

“Oh!” she cried, in a low voice, “God have mercy—
this pitiless, pitiless storm!”

“You are thinking of Margaret,” said the slow, firm
tones of Moses Grant.

The woman started, and dropped the candlestick she
held in her confusion. She turned ghastly pale, and
grasped the dresser, near which she stood, for support.
If a grave had opened at her very feet she would have
been no more overwhelmed with wonder. For many
months in that household that name—Margaret—had
been dead and buried—a forbidden sound. Perhaps—
her eyes gleamed with a wild hope, and the color
came back to her cheeks—perhaps her husband had
relented; perhaps he would forgive their child—their
Margaret. She went toward him, that meek woman,
and, kneeling at his feet, lifted up her pleading voice.

“Surely, father, I may speak of her, now you have
called her name. It may be you are willing to forgive
her—to let her come back again. Five-and-twenty
years I have walked patiently by your side; I have
tried to be a help-meet to you. God has given us seven
children, and we have made their graves—all but
one—behind the church on the hill-top. And now
she is gone—the last—my one child—Margaret. Oh,
husband, will you forgive her? Will you let her come

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back? What would even shame be to the loss of her?
And perhaps she has not sinned as we have thought.
She was a good child always, our Margaret. She
loved the church and the Bible, and you used to say
no one else learned their lessons in the catechism so
well as she. We are getting old, father—may I have
my girl back again?”

The old man's face had worked convulsively while
she poured forth her pleading prayer, but it settled
back now into stony, immovable calm. He looked
sternly at the woman crouching at his knees, as if she,
too, had some share in Margaret's sin. He said, in
his cold, resolved tones,

“It is of no use. If we would take the child back
we do not even know where to seek her. She is dead
to us, now and forever. Hear me, Mary: if she lay
at this moment outside that door, with this storm falling
on her bare, unsheltered head, I would not open it
one inch to let her in. She has made her bed; she
shall lie in it. We have lived here many years—I,
and my father, and my father's father—elders, one after
another, in the church—and when did disgrace ever
come to our humble, honest name, till she brought it?
She chose that bad young man and his unholy love,
and father and mother she has none. Hear me, Mary;
we are childless. Let her name never pass your lips
or mine.”

The woman rose and groped blindly to her chair.
She sat there with half-closed eyes, swaying herself to
and fro, muttering now and then, “Oh, this pitiless
storm!”

Outside, the figure tottered on.

Suddenly there was a cry borne upon the blast—a

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wild, wailing human cry, rising high above the wind,
piercing into the red house, piercing Moses Grant's
firm, stony heart, as he sat before the fire. A weight
seemed to fall helplessly against the outside door, and
then there was silence.

The mother sprang up and mechanically threw open
the door, and the snow tumbled in, and the wailing
wind rushed in. What was it lying there, stiff and
helpless, upon the stone step, lifting up, whiter than
the snow, its ghastly human face? The old man
sprang to his wife's side. He had overrated his own
stoicism. He shook her arm, almost harshly.

“What are you thinking of, Mary?” he cried, passionately;
“have you no mother's heart? will you let
her die there before your eyes—our child, Margaret?”

He caught the prostrate figure in his arms—to his
breast; he carried her in, to the warmth, the light, the
father's house whence she had wandered; and then
the cold, iron man wept over her like a helpless child;
while the mother, fully herself now, worked with wild
energy, collecting and applying restoratives, chafing
the thin hands and the numb, half-frozen feet.

Her efforts were successful in so far that the girl, for
she was not more than eighteen, opened her eyes and
came back to life with a gasping shudder. She did
not seem quite restored, however, to the full use of
her faculties. She spoke by snatches, in a strange,
wandering fashion.

“I thought I was dead,” she said, “but I'm not.
This is home, isn't it? and there's father! What do
you cry so for, father? You never used to. I never
saw you do so before. Oh! I know; you are crying
about poor Margaret. You think, now, that she

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wasn't so bad, after all. You are glad she has come
home.”

“Margaret,” broke in her mother's voice, “were
you deceived? Did you think you were married to
that man—that Gilbert Trumbull?”

It was pitiful to see such fierce passion in one so
gentle as Margaret Grant, who, from childhood, had
never known a thought save of loving submission to
her parents' will, until that stronger love came and
compelled her obedience in another direction. The
blood mantled her pale cheek, and burned there in
one round red spot. She rose up in the bed, and
shrieked out, with her eyes gleaming, her frame trembling,

“You shall not, I say you shall not speak his name—
you who hate him so. You shall not drive me into
betraying his secret. Turn me out again into the
storm, if you will. I can die there as well as here;
but you shall not make me answer your questions.”

“Hush, darling, darling, darling,” murmured Mary
Grant; the mother-love, the mother-tenderness, stronger
than life, choking in her voice, thrilling in her touch,
raining in tears from her eyes: “you shall not tell me
if you do not wish to. Be satisfied. You shall never
go out into the cold world again; you shall never suffer
any more.”

And Moses Grant wept on, the while, his proud,
stony heart melted, for the time, quite into childishness;
saying nothing, only looking now and then at
the girl whom his anger had driven forth, and who
had come back to him—alas! he knew it now, to die.

That night a babe was born in the red house in the

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hollow. She came in the storm: was it a token of the
life that awaited her? Outside were the snow, the
darkness, the pitiless, wailing blast; within, only the
girl, so young, so fair even in her ruin, and the two
old people, tearless now and silent, keeping breathless
watch over their one child.

The baby came into the world with a wail. Mary
Grant brought forth from an old bureau, where they
had lain for almost eighteen years, the tiny garments,
soft and delicate in fabric, antique and simple in make,
which her own fingers had fashioned, joyfully, hopefully,
for her youngest-born, Margaret; and in them
she robed Margaret's child.

But death was written on the young mother's brow,
and the parents could not choose but read. She drew
her little one to her arms, and, holding her on her bosom,
she blessed her.

“She shall be called Elinor Trumbull, after the
mother of her father.” When she had said these
words, in a firm, quiet tone of command, she seemed
to sink in unconsciousness. After a time she roused
herself with wild energy.

“Let no one defraud my child of her name,” she
cried out. “It is hers—she has a right to it. Father,
mother, promise me that you will call her by this
name—Elinor Trumbull?”

The two old people, with one consent, faltered the
required promise, and then she said, in a humble tone,

“Before I die, forgive me, my parents. God knows
I have loved you, in spite of all I have done to make
you suffer. Tell me that you forgive me.”

They forgave her without reproach or question.
They blessed her with tender tears, and, sitting at her

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bed's head, they watched her as she sank again into a
sort of drowse, still holding her babe on her breast.
After that she never opened her eyes, but she murmured
dreamily of green fields and fragrant blossoms,
and the babblings of summer brooks, blent now and
then with loving words or tender memories about her
baby's father. Then all was very still, and they
thought her sleeping; but somehow, I know not how,
unseen and silently, from that calm her soul stole forth,
and was translated to the great endless calm lying beyond.
Margaret was dead!

For the next two days the storm raged with unabated
violence. The snow, swept by the fierce wind
from the mountain tops, was piled high in the valleys,
and Moses Grant and his wife were all alone with their
dead child and the living babe she had left them. In
the interim much of his old sternness had come back
to the elder's heart, the self-command and reticence to
his outward life. I think he remembered his promise,
that the little one should be called by the name of her
father's family, with a kind of grim satisfaction in
keeping with the silent pride of his character. The
village where he lived was in the western part of Connecticut,
under the shadows of the mountains, and
Trumbull was an old and proud name in the far eastern
portion. Gilbert Trumbull had won Margaret
Grant's love during a shooting season among the hills,
and, a few months after he left Mayfield, driven forth
by her father's harshness and scorn, she had followed
him. Trumbull was a name any woman might be
proud to wear worthily, and Moses Grant was well resolved
the world should never know, through him, that
it did not legitimately belong to his infant grandchild.

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For two days the elements did battle, but the third
morning of Elinor Trumbull's life rose calm, and
bright, and fair. Early in the day Moses Grant went
forth to seek the pastor of the old Presbyterian church,
in which he had been an elder for so many years, and
arrange for his daughter's burial.

That afternoon, where the snow had been scooped
away behind the church on the hill-top, they laid the
elder's last child, beside her six brothers and sisters,
in her narrow grave; and she, the youngest, the fairest,
slept best, perhaps, of all, for the calm is most precious
that comes after the wildest storms.

Very dear was she to the gray-haired pastor who
had baptized her in infancy, and had always accounted
her the gentlest and sweetest among the lambs of
his flock—very dear to every heart among the many
which beat around her grave that winter day. But
they asked few questions concerning her death or her
life. She had been the elder's favorite child, they all
knew, but no one had ever heard him mention her
name since the summer night when she went away
from Mayfield—no one knew whether alone or in company.
So they respected the old man's sorrow and
silence.

It was not many months before over Margaret's
grave there rose a simple head-stone, but no one's curiosity
was gratified by the inscription. It only said,

Margaret—Aged Eighteen Years.

The child was duly christened. The country folk
understood what an old and respectable name she bore;
and at length the wonder died away, and she was left
to grow up in the quiet stillness of the old red house.

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Indeed, very few were brought into any near connection
with her, for Moses Grant and his wife neither
made nor received any visits now. Her only regular
education was imparted by her grandparents, who
taught her the three needfuls of an old-fashioned New
England woman—to read, and write, and cipher. In
addition, when she grew older, Parson Blake gave her
a few books and a chance lesson now and then; and
she learned early to form shrewd, self-reliant theories
and opinions, which no one mistrusted, however, that
she possessed.

Mary Grant often remarked that the little Elinor
was her mother's own child. She had the same fair
hair; the same clear blue eyes; the same slight figure;
but beyond these was a difference rather to be felt than
explained. About her mouth was a graver, more
saint-like smile. A tenderer light shone in her blue
eyes, and her voice did not ring out with quite such
joyous music as made Margaret's tones in her early
years such a cheery sound to hear. Elinor's were lower,
quieter—she spoke more slowly, as if, even in childhood,
to address others, she had to come out of an inner
world where she oftenest dwelt—the world of
thought and of dreams. Gentle, quiet child as she
was, her name, her stately name, borne once by the
proudest belle in Norwich, seemed not unsuited to the
simple dignity of her nature.

Sunday after Sunday she sat by Moses Grant's side,
in the old-fashioned Presbyterian church, bowing her
graceful head through the long prayers, lifting up her
clear voice to join in the well-known hymns. Sunday
after Sunday—first as child, then as maiden; and the
old pastor watched her lovingly—lovingly for her own

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sake—lovingly for the sake of a grave under the willow
trees; and all the while, Sunday after Sunday, his
own hair grew whiter and his step more feeble.

Parson Blake was dead. His life, his kindly life,
seventy summers and no winter, was ended. In the
little church-yard on the hill-top they laid him gently
and reverently to his long sleep—the little church-yard
where he had faltered the last prayer over so
many of his flock; where, sixteen years before, he had
stood tearfully beside the bier of Margaret Grant.

Wife and children he had none. He had lived alone
all his blameless life, and his people had been to him
instead of kindred. Like his children they all mourned
for him. Not a heart beat in Mayfield to which he
was not dear—not an eye but was dim with tears at
the pastor's burial. He had married the old folk, he
had baptized their children, he had buried their dead,
and now he was gone to receive the reward of his labors.
More than forty years had he been in and out
before them, and broken bread in their midst. Was
it strange that his death left a great void, which never,
thereafter, could be filled?

It was with saddened mien the elders met together
to consult on the choice of his successor. No one
could ever be to them in his stead, and perhaps it
could hardly be expected of human nature that they
should award due credit to the honest endeavors of a
younger man. Thus Walter Fairfield came to them
under a disadvantage. They were kind-hearted

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people naturally, but the new pastor must stand in a place
which none but the dead could fill worthily to their
minds; and, moreover, he was a young man, just fresh
from his studies, not more than twenty-five.

On the first morning after his installation, Elder
Moses Grant called Elinor to his side, and charged her
to be ready in season for church—the young man
wouldn't be Parson Blake, to be sure, but they must
show his preaching due respect.

Elinor had grown, at sixteen, into a tall, graceful
girl, promoted to a seat in the village choir now, and
remarkable to all eyes but the accustomed ones of her
grandparents for her rare beauty.

There had never been much outward demonstration
of tenderness from Moses Grant to this girl, the child
of shame, the seal of disgrace, as he sometimes called
her in his accusing thoughts; and yet, almost unknown
to himself, he did love her tenderly. Much of
the love which had been Margaret's had come out of
her grave and folded itself round her child, though in
all her life the girl could never remember that he had
kissed her or lifted her upon his knee.

One night his wife, alarmed for Elinor's health during
the prevalence of an epidemic in the quiet town,
had called him to look upon her while she slept. It
was wonderful, the resemblance which she bore in her
slumbers to her dead mother. Waking, the play of
her features, the different expression of her eyes, was
all her own; but sleeping, he could almost have
thought Margaret was before him—Margaret, whom
he loved more in death than in life, because he forgave
her in dying.

Oh! how often the wave of death comes like a

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blessed baptismal, washing away all memories of wrong and
strife—a new birth, making those born again into the
world of spirits seem to us fair, and pure, and blameless
as the infant just laid for the first time upon its
mother's loving bosom.

Many times after that night Moses Grant, hard, stern
man as he was, stole into his grandchild's room and
watched her as she slept, thinking tender, softened
thoughts of her dead young mother—always a girl,
young and fair, in the old man's memory—and bitter,
scornful, murderous thoughts, which, in a nature less
restrained by rules of outward holiness, would have
shaped themselves into curses on that Gilbert Trumbull,
hated with an unforgiving, unresting hatred all
these years.

It needs not to be told with what ceaseless, caressing
tenderness Mary Grant loved her grandchild; and yet,
woman-like, Elinor, dear as both were to her, loved
most the old man, whose calm reserve seemed kindred
with her own quiet, deep inherited nature. Going up
the hill to church on this first morning of the new pastor's
ministry, she walked by her grandfather's side,
feeling with most tender sympathy the trial it would
be to him to see a new face in the old pulpit.

When the hymn was sung that morning, Walter
Fairfield, sitting back in his pulpit, screened by the
high desk, leaning his head on his hands, was striving
to compose his thoughts for his first sermon among his
first parishioners.

He heard, as one in a dream, above and apart from
all other tones, one clear, rich soprano voice, flooding
the old-fashioned church with its melody. It strengthened
him; bore up his soul to the very gates of

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heaven; and yet he scarcely knew, scarcely thought, whether
the voice was mortal or angelic. He was contented
to accept unquestioningly the help it brought. Elinor
Trumbull little knew what influence her singing
had on the sermon which followed.

It was such a discourse as had never before electrified
the simple villagers of Mayfield—full of earnest
thought, glowing with imagery, uttered with an eloquence
to which they were strangers. To Elinor
Trumbull it was a revelation. Full of sound religious
truth though it was, its unwonted grace of diction carried
her thoughts out—out from the quiet village
among the mountains into the world where such polish
must have been acquired—the gay, fascinating, far-off
world, beaming upon her fancy in such wondrous
hues. With her clear eyes fixed on the speaker, or
now and then veiled modestly under their fringing
lashes, unquiet, tumultuous thoughts were surging
through her heart—thoughts of the wonders of nature
and the wonders of art—brave men and beautiful
women, and a full, strong existence, tasking all her
capacities, quickening every pulse of her being, on
which she longed to enter; going out from the peace,
the quiet, the shadows of the mountains into the broad
plain, where were bugles and trumpets calling strong
souls onward to victory in the wonderful battle of
life.

The young clergyman, absorbed in his subject, did
not perceive her breathless interest—did not even consciously
see her face, so remarkable among all others
there for its patrician beauty; but yet he carried away
with him that day a conception of loveliness more perfect
than had ever dawned on him before—a sweet

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face which seemed to smile on him from the clouds, to
meet him at every point of vision.

When the services were over, Walter Fairfield walked,
like one overtasked and weary, quietly out of the
church, and took the path leading through the field to
his simple parsonage. A kindly, cordial smile was on
his face, but he spoke to no one. The congregation
allowed him to pass in respectful silence, not ill-pleased
with the opportunity of discussing among themselves
the wonderful sermon to which they had listened.
Elinor Trumbull was faint and weak. The unwonted
excitement had been too much for her delicate organization,
and, telling her grandparents that she was not
well, she stole quietly away and went home.

Moses Grant came from church in the afternoon,
disposed to say but little of the young clergyman. He
had spoken with him after church—he would visit
them that week—it seemed that the Spirit of the Lord
was with him, but they must wait and see.

It was Wednesday afternoon when Elinor Trumbull,
busy among the stand of house-plants which were
her chief winter amusement, saw, from the kitchen window,
a figure coming down the hill. Her quick eye
recognized at once the new minister, and her girlish
heart thrilled with its first flutter of womanly vanity.
Shyly she gathered from her monthly-rose-bush a bud
just bursting into crimson bloom, and placed it in her
bosom. Then, stealing to the little looking-glass, she
smoothed down her already faultlessly smooth hair,
hoping, with pretty womanly self-consciousness, that
the two old people by the hearth would not notice her
unusual anxiety about her appearance. Then she said,
in her quiet, respectful voice,

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“Hadn't I better light the fire in the parlor, grandfather?
I see the new minister is coming down the
hill.”

The room which she entered, in accordance with her
grandfather's “Certainly — make haste, child!” was
simply, even humbly furnished, and yet there had been
imparted to it an air of feminine grace and refinement
during the last two years, since it had been Elinor's
especial charge. Every thing was faultlessly neat.
Snowy muslin curtains draped the windows; the armchairs
were covered with crimson patch, and two corresponding
footstools—Elinor's own workmanship—
stood conveniently before them. A few books were
strewn upon the table—Parson Blake's gift to Elinor—
a Shakespeare, and the works of Pope and Milton, in
handsome bindings. Not a speck of dust was visible,
and yet Elinor, after lighting the fire, fidgeted nervously
with her feather-brush from chair to table, and
then, seized with a sudden impulse, sat down and appeared
diligently engaged in reading.

That was an afternoon of new and exquisite delight
in the girl's quiet life. Walter Fairfield possessed the
rare gift of clothing lofty thoughts in simple words,
and making himself alike agreeable to old and young.
To him also came, that winter day, a new revelation.
He recognized in Elinor's musical voice the clear tones
which had strengthened him for his Sabbath duties—
in her young, innocent face the vision he had carried
away from church on the Sabbath morning as a new
and superior type of loveliness. He had seen beautiful
women before, arrayed in the manifold charms of
style and fashion, but beside the unconscious grace of
Elinor Trumbull they seemed to him like flaunting

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peonies contrasted with the fresh rose-bud she wore in
her bosom.

There was something dearer in Elinor's beauty than
the untroubled azure of her eyes, the golden flow of
her hair, the clear tints of her complexion—a soul
looking forth from the young wistful face, womanly,
pure, strong, and true.

And she, with her imaginative, dreamy nature, her
haunting visions of a perfect life, a refined and extended
culture shut out from her reach by mountains of
circumstances and destiny, listened to the new-comer's
voice, making music through all the avenues of her
being, and was content.

That night, when the supper was over—the supper
prefaced by a blessing, the first one spoken in that
house by Walter Fairfield, and whose prophecy to that
household of good or ill only the after years could
unseal — the simple supper which Elinor had made
beautiful by the exquisite neatness and delicacy of her
arrangement—when it was over, and the new minister
had taken his departure, the elder sat alone in the
best room, absorbed in thought; while his wife and
her granddaughter were busy in the kitchen, clearing
away the fragments and washing up the painted china.

Moses Grant was growing old. His hair was very
white; and trouble, more than years, had dug deep
furrows in his stern face. The habit was growing on
him, as it does on so many old men, of talking to himself.
As he sat there, leaning his head back in his
chair, and looking thoughtfully into the fire, he murmured,

“Well, after all, the young man does seem full of
the Spirit of the Lord. Yes, I really think the Lord

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is with him. But he can never be what Parson Blake
was to Mary and me. He didn't marry us; he didn't
bury our seven children; he didn't know and love
Margaret. We are too old now for him to care for us—
too old to make new ties—and yet, there's Elinor.
The child needs a pastor's care. He will take an interest
in her. I believe he does already: she's a good
child. Through her, he may get attached to us—who
knows? It's a blessed thing when folk can love their
minister, and be loved back again, as in Parson Blake's
time. And then this young man will be getting married
one of these days. He'll be sure to marry a good
woman, and she'll be a nice friend for Elinor when
Mary and I are laid in the church-yard, with our seven
children gone before. Yes, they'll be good friends for
the child, and she'll need them then. Elinor!” he
called, in a louder tone, and the girl came into the old
parlor, and sat down on a stool in the firelight.

“I like this young man, Elinor. He isn't Parson
Blake, to be sure; but I think he has the Spirit of
God in his heart, and there's no reason why you
shouldn't like him as well as another. You have not
the memories of so many years to bind you to the
dead. He told me this afternoon that he should start
a Bible-class, and I want you to join it, and see if you
can't keep up your reputation as Parson Blake's best
scholar.”

“Very well, grandpa;” and then the girl sat there
in the silence, while her fancy made glowing pictures
in the embers, out of which looked the dark, kindly
eyes of the new minister. That she could ever be
any thing to him never entered her dreams; she only
hoped that, ignorant girl as she was, she might find

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such favor in his eyes that he would impart to her
some of his wonderful knowledge; lend her books,
perhaps, and now and then condescend to talk to her.

The next Sunday she joined his Bible-class; and
that day, and for many quiet Sabbath-days thereafter,
the clear tones of her singing renewed his strength,
and carried his soul heavenward; and the approving
light of her expressive eyes, never by any chance turned
away from their steady gaze, filled him with calm,
and yet not always calm, delight.

The slow, reluctant feet of the New England spring
came over the mountains. Her blue eyes shone over
hill and meadow-land through many tears, and in her
footprints sprang up crocuses and violets, to live their
little day, and die their balmy death. The plowman
turned up the rich, loamy soil of the valleys, whistling
at his task. The larch hung forth her fragrant blossoms,
the laburnum dropped her long sprays of gold.
The old lilac-bushes, planted in Moses Grant's front
yard when Margaret was a baby, put on once more
their liveries of green, and coquettishly tossed up their
purple blossoms, that the winds might rifle their perfume.

Walter Fairfield came very often, in these days, to
the elder's house. He had undertaken to teach Elinor
botany, and the study involved long, delightful walks
over the hills. The old folks were well content that
their grandchild should acquire a little of the learning
they held in sincere reverence, but which they would

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never have sent her out into the world to obtain. She
seemed to them so mere a child still, that they never
thought of the danger that she might learn another
lesson — that while she analyzed the blossoms that
skirted hillside and brookside her own heart might
be unfolding itself, petal by petal, even to the golden
centre, whereon was written “love.”

And Elinor was, like them, blissfully unconscious.
She had never read a novel in her life. No one had
ever talked to her of love or marriage. How should
she, at sixteen, be able to translate aright the story
which Walter Fairfield delighted to read in her blushes,
her downcast eyes, to hear in her tremulous tones which
replied to his questionings?

He was an honorable man, and he loved her with
an honorable man's deathless love — a man's love,
full of passion, stronger than life, and yet he shrank
from telling her so—from awaking her heart from its
maidenly repose—changing sweet hope into certainty—
binding her by vows of betrothal.

The time when he could keep silence no longer
came to him, as it does to most men, unexpectedly.
They had been taking a long walk. The sun had
scarcely set, but a young June moon was drifting, like
a tiny, glittering cloud, up the blue sky, and they stood
watching it together. At last Elinor turned her wet
face toward him. He had never seen tears in her eyes
before.

“I have been thinking,” she said, “how lonely my
life used to be before you came. What mysterious
fancies, which I had none to explain, haunted me at
twilight and moonrise, and how your coming changed
all; and you found time to talk with me, and

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

understand all my thoughts; and then, how this, too, must
end some day, and you will be busy with other happiness,
and I shall be all alone.”

Then the words—the wild, loving, yet reverent
words—gushed in a tide from his full heart, and overflowed
his lips. The story was told—the old, evernew
story—old as our first parents, new as a new day.
They loved one another. The veil was lifted from
Elinor's heart, and she knew that, with all the quiet
strength of her quiet nature, she loved Walter Fairfield.
She was silent from very happiness.

As her lover drew her close to his side, and pressed
his first kiss on her pure lips, he said, fervently,

“Elinor, you are all I ever asked—good, gifted,
beautiful. You fulfill my every want. God in heaven
bless you—the crown, the glory of my life, whom
He has given me.”

The next morning Elinor was with her grandparents
in the little summer parlor. When the elder had read
a chapter in the Bible, as was his wont, and finished
his accustomed prayer, she said, timidly,

“Dear grandpa, I would like to speak to you a moment.”

She had settled it with her lover that she should be
the first to communicate to the grave old man the news
of her betrothal. This was her own desire. She had
thought it would be best so. She feared nothing more
than that he might object to her extreme youth, and
she hoped much from the strong esteem in which she
knew he held their young minister.

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

Falteringly she told her story, and the old man listened
in silence.

He did not answer her for some moments, but he
was evidently deeply moved. Elinor was frightened
at the convulsive workings of his face, and the tears
that coursed like rain down her grandmother's withered
cheeks. At length he spoke.

“God forgive me, I have done great wrong. I never
thought of this. You were so young. Elinor, you
can not marry this man. No, not to save your own
life. Do you hear? I forbid it. It shall not be.”

Elinor rose and stood before him. She was not
Margaret's child merely—the old Trumbull blood fired
her glance. Her face was as resolute, her tone as firm
as Moses Grant's own.

“Grandfather,” she said, “I love Walter Fairfield—
he loves me. We are more than life to each other,
and this question shall not be decided so. If you will
separate us, I must know the reason, or, God helping
me, I will go and pray him on my bended knees to
take me away from you and make me his wife.”

There was no pity in the elder's face now for the
young creature who had dared to resist his decree, to
rise up in the might of her love and oppose him. His
face grew livid with rage.

“You must know my secret, then, young madam,”
he said, in the fierce tones of passion. “Well, mark
it: you have no right even to the name you bear.
Your mother, my child though she was, was not your
father's wife. Don't you think Walter Fairfield, a
minister of the Gospel, would be proud to marry you
in disgrace?”

But the last taunting question fell on ears that could

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

not listen. With every faculty intensely aroused, she
had heard the fatal truth, scorching her for the first
time with its blight, and then she heard no more.
Gradually she had sunk lower and lower at the old
man's feet, until now she lay upon the floor, her white,
death-like face cold as her young mother's under the
June roses.

“Go into the kitchen, father,” said Mary Grant,
“for it'll throw her back again into her swoon to see
you when she comes to.”

The elder obeyed, and then his wife quietly busied
herself in bringing back consciousness to Elinor. It
was no very difficult task. The girl was young, and
even so great a shock could not overcome her utterly.
In a few moments she was able to sit down in an easy-chair
by the open window, and the balmy air of the
summer morning stole over her senses like a new lifedraught.

Her face was very white and rigid still, and Mary
Grant put back her soft hair and looked pityingly into
her troubled eyes.

“Oh, my darling!” she murmured, “my poor darling!
to think that your first sorrow should darken
all your life!” But the voice was calm that answered
her.

“It will not darken it, grandmother. I have full
faith in Walter. He loves me, and he will not give
me up, even because of this great shame. I shall tell
him all, and I know he will marry me.”

“God grant it, darling!” and the old woman dropped
on the white, earnest face a very tender kiss.
“You sit quietly here. I want to go and speak to
your grandfather.”

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

Moses Grant was sitting, though it was June, by the
fireside, in the very spot where he had sat before, one
memorable night. Absorbed in surging, bitter, tumultuous
thought, he was indifferent to heat or cold,
or any outward surrounding whatsoever. His wife
went up to him; she knelt down by his side; she
clasped her hands across his knee, and then she plead
with him even as she had plead with him on a wild,
wet night, more than sixteen years before—the night
on which, amid storm and tempest, and the wail of
restless winds, Elinor Trumbull's dawn of life was
ushered in.

“Oh, father,” she said, “she is all we have left.
We are old now, and she is young; do not break her
heart.”

“Woman,” said the elder's stern tones, “tempt me
not. The minister shall not be deceived. I will not
do this great sin against God.”

“But you can let her tell him. She says he loves
her, and she knows he will marry her, in spite of all.
Let her tell him: only leave her this one hope.”

Then the elder's wrath rose to a white heat.

“Yes, I have no doubt you would approve of that.
Her mother did not shame me enough; you would
bring another into this secret. Elinor!” he cried, with
raised tones, and forth from the inner room the young
girl tottered. Moses Grant's face was terrible to look
upon in his rage, but Elinor confronted him calmly,
though she was obliged to cling to the table for support.

“I have told you all; what do you propose to do
now?” he asked, in tones of forced composure.

“There is but one thing, grandfather. I should feel

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

this disgrace more bitterly if Walter's love had not
made me strong to bear any thing. I will tell him
what you have told me. I would not deceive him
any more than you would; but I will tell him all, and
he will but love me the better because I need his pity.
Oh, you don't know Walter. He has such a great
heart. He will not care for the world. He fears
nothing but sin. He will make me his wife.”

The old man was silent for a moment. The girl's
face beamed like one inspired. It awed him, it was
so full of deathless, triumphant love and faith. But
this emotion passed, and his tone, when he answered
her, was firm as ever.

“Elinor, you shall not tell him this secret. I, your
grandfather, forbid it. He himself would be the first
one to say it was your duty to obey me. If you tell
him, I will curse you; do you hear me? curse you
with a curse that shall cling to you all your life. You
shall not tell him. I bear a humble name, but an
honorable one. Only this one shadow of disgrace has
fallen on it. As God hears me, you shall not spread
the shameful secret. Tell your lover that you can
not marry him—that I forbid it. If he wants to know
why, he can come to me.”

Elinor had heard this outburst silently, growing
stronger, as it seemed, under every stern, cruel word
which fell on her ear, slaying her lifetime hope, blotting
all the brightness out of her existence. When
the last word, swift, crushing, remorseless, had died on
his lips, she answered in such tones as he had never
dreamed she could utter, so cold were they, so passionless.

“Give yourself no trouble, grandfather: I shall

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

obey you. I will not incur your curse, still less will
I deceive Walter. Thank God, the time comes when
you and I will go before Him together, and the wrongs
of earth shall be righted by the immaculate justice of
Heaven.”

Mary Grant would fain have soothed her, but she
seemed sufficient unto herself. Calmly she walked
into the parlor and took her seat by the open window,
where she could watch the road leading down the hill.

Soon she saw him coming—the young lover who
could remain away from his betrothed no longer.
Joyously he walked, with quick step and erect head.
Hope was holding a cup to his lips beaded to the brim
with bubbling drops of joy. She must dash it from
them—she who loved him best, whom he best loved.
She clasped her hands over her eyes, and prayed—a
short, silent prayer which Heaven would answer. She
heard his step upon the door-stone. He opened the
little front door without knocking. He came to her
side. He drew her close, close, as one who had a right
to hold her on his heart forever, and she was silent:
she could not break the spell.

At last she started from his arms—she stood before
him with her white face and gleaming eyes.

“Walter!” she cried, eagerly, “you know I love
you. You never can doubt that. I am very young;
I have had no other fancies, no other dreams. You
won all my heart. Hear me, Walter! I am yours—I
will be yours till I die. Never shall any other man
speak words of love to Elinor Trumbull. I give you
all. I am yours—yours—yours—on earth and in
heaven. But I can not be your wife. My grandfather
has forbidden it. You yourself will counsel

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

me to obedience. It is harder for me than for you.
You have the great world to flee to—your high calling
to follow. I must stay here—here, where light,
and hope, and love came to my life—where they will
go out, and leave me alone in the darkness. God forgive
me, Walter, but death were better.”

She had spoken with wild energy. She sank back
exhausted now in her chair. Walter Fairfield stood
struck dumb for the moment with sheer wonder. At
length he faltered,

“You can not mean it; you do not know what you
are saying, Elinor. Your grandfather may object to
our marrying while you are still so young, but he can
not mean that you must never be my wife.”

The door had been open all this time between the
parlor and the kitchen, and now Moses Grant himself
came forward. The anger had passed away from his
face, leaving a look of pity blent with stern resolve.
He said gravely,

“I like you, Mr. Fairfield. I had not thought any
one else could so fill Parson Blake's place in my love
as you have filled it. If I could, Heaven knows I
would gladly give you this girl, but it can not be. In
all truthfulness, you must not marry her—you must
never marry her. I, her grandfather, forbid it before
the God whose servant you are. You will not dare
to disobey me. It will go hard with you both; but
if you knew the reason, you would thank me. It is
my fault. I should not have put you in each other's
way; but I thought she was only a child.”

“Elder Grant,” the young man said, respectfully,
“will you come out of doors with me? I would like
to speak to you for a few moments quite alone.”

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

The particulars of that interview were never known,
but the result was decisive. In a little while the
young man came alone into the room where Elinor
still sat by the open window. He closed the door.
He went up to her and took her, for the last time, in
his arms.

“The hand of God is in it, Elinor, as it is in every
earthly thing, though we can not see it now. We
must submit. Thank God, my beloved, that after life
comes death, and after death heaven. And yet, how
can I give you up, my poor, innocent darling—my one
love?” And his voice broke down into low, agonized
sobs—a strong man's sobs, very pitiful to hear.

That last half hour of love, and torture, and despair—
that parting which they both felt was eternal—I
may not dwell on it. When Walter Fairfield passed
out of the wicket gate and walked up the hill along
the winding road, Elinor Trumbull watched him with
eyes in which there were no tears, with a pale face on
which shone a hope purer than earthly love, holier
than earthly happiness—a hope born in tears, in anguish,
in desolation—of a meeting where all that remains
of sorrow is the wings by which it has borne
the soul upward—in the city without foundation, eternal
in the heavens.

They parted on Saturday, and the next day more
than one strong heart in Mayfield was moved to tears
as the young minister read his mysterious, unexplained
resignation of the pastoral charge. He had become
strangely dear to them, this young man, whose coming
had seemed such a doubtful experiment. He was not
their father in the Lord as Parson Blake had been,
but they cherished him equally in another way. He

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

was their very own. He had come to them first.
They were to him almost like a first love, the parish
in whose service he had been first installed into the
ministry. They had hoped he would live and die
among them, and now they must give him up. There
was scarcely a dry eye among the many which rested
upon his face this last Sunday. Moses Grant sat, with
sorrowful yet composed mien, in his accustomed seat,
with his quiet old wife by his side, but Elinor's voice
did not flood the church with its melody; Walter
Fairfield preached his last sermon in Mayfield without
the silent encouragement of her eyes.

The next morning, when he rode by the red house
in the hollow on his way to take the stage at Cornwall,
he gazed in vain at the windows. No small
hand fluttered among the roses, no gentle face looked
out from between the muslin curtains. It cost him
much then not to spring from the wagon and seek one
last farewell, one more blessing; but, for her sake he
rode on and made no sign.

And where was Elinor? Looking forth, herself
unseen, from her chamber window, straining her eyes
to catch one last glimpse of his too dear face, praying
for him in her self-abnegation, praying that his life
might be very full of joy, though over her own, with
all the promised hopes of its future, rose, like the lettering
on a monument, the one sorrowful inscription—
“Never more.”

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

There came a new minister to Mayfield, a worthy
man, who dwelt quietly in the parsonage with his wife
and his six children. He had not old Parson Blake's
place in their hearts, consecrated by the memories of
a lifetime, nor had they pride in his eloquence and
tenderness for his youth and enthusiasm, as during
Walter Fairfield's brief sojourn among them; still
there was mutual good feeling between pastor and
people, and, save in one quiet household, all things
went on as before.

This autumn and the winter which followed were a
very trying time to Elinor Trumbull. She had a
strong consciousness of duty. Earnestly she strove to
be in all things the same to her grandparents as before
her brief, bright dream of love; but something was
wanting. The fullness of the old content would never
come back again. For the second time in the red
house in the hollow was a buried name. Walter Fairfield
was never mentioned there. Mary Grant had
once commenced to say a few words of comfort to her
granddaughter, but the expression on Elinor's face
stopped her — it was so full of hopeless suffering.
After that she only silently pitied the sorrow she had
no power to soothe.

Elinor never uttered a single complaint. She performed
all the little housewifely duties which had formerly
fallen to her share: she went regularly to the
church on the hill-top—listened quietly to the new
pastor's preaching. But Mary Grant's tears fell as she

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

saw her silently taking in the few dresses which composed
her simple wardrobe, that they might better fit
the figure growing so very fragile and thin now. Her
step lost its accustomed lightness; her voice never
rang through the house with its old, gay melody.
When her seventeenth birth-day was ushered in on
the wings of storm and tempest, it found her no longer
a girl, but a woman, prematurely grave, and thoughtful,
and silent. The delicate summer bloom was gone
from the blossom, the subtle fragrance vanished, and
there was but a poor consolation in thinking life's autumn
might ripen it into fruit.

One day Mary Grant called her husband's attention,
when they were alone, to Elinor's languid step and
wasting cheek. An expression of sudden pain crossed
the elder's face for the moment—a look as if conscience
were forcing upon him an unwelcome truth, and then
he answered, with easy self-delusion,

“It's not strange. It's a hard winter. The girl
will be herself again when the spring opens.”

And so the months passed on, and once more the
slow, reluctant feet of the New England spring stole
over the mountains, and the crocus and the violet
started up in her footprints. Once more the brooks,
set free from their winter chains, began to babble—the
plow-boy whistled at his task—the birch hung out her
tassels, and the lilacs in Elder Grant's yard burst into
purple bloom; but this time there were no long, pleasant
walks over the hills. She had no strength for
them—that pale, silent girl, whom the spring had surprised
as she sat nursing her sorrow.

As the days grew longer and brighter, the blue sky
overhead more intensely clear and blue, Mary Grant,

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

watching her grandchild, could see her fade. Each
day she seemed to move more feebly about the house,
until at last she seldom moved any more, but lay all
day on a lounge, which, perhaps, with a secret care for
her comfort, the elder had bought at an auction sale.
She did not seem unhappy, for the one hope, mightier
than earthly love, stronger than earthly grief, was
gently guiding her tired feet—so early tired with the
crooked paths of life—toward the “distant hills” of
heaven. And Moses Grant saw it at last; the great
fear struck to his heart that his pride would have a second
victim—that another young, fair face would lie
beneath the drifting leaves of this year's autumn. Did
not conscience speak to him then?

He came home one day with a strange look on his
face. He held in his hand a large, business-like epistle.
He beckoned his wife into the kitchen. She left
Elinor lying upon the lounge in the best room, and
closed the door after her.

“What is it, father?” she said, in pitying tones, going
to her husband's side. “Has some great trouble
come over us?”

“The hand of the Lord is laid upon me, Mary. I
am punished for my sin. I killed Margaret, I have
wellnigh killed her child, and yet, listen, wife, Margaret
was true—Margaret was pure.”

“Oh, thank God! thank God!” burst involuntarily
from the mother's lips as she sank upon her knees.
The vail of her life's greatest sorrow was rent away,
and she seemed to see her child, her last child, her
pure, innocent, blessed child, as she named her in her
heart, waiting for her in heaven. But her cry of
thanksgiving fell on unheeding ears.

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

Moses Grant spoke earnestly:

“Yes, Mary, God has suffered this knowledge to
come to me in the eleventh hour, just to show me that
I, who dared to call myself His servant, have been but
a hard, unmerciful tyrant, after all; fearing earthly
disgrace more than I feared him. Oh, Mary, is it too
late to save our child?”

“God grant it may be in time,” Mary Grant faltered;
“but tell me how the knowledge came to you.
Are you sure of its truth?”

“Look there! see with your own eyes Margaret's
marriage certificate; and listen! I will read you this
letter which I have received from Gilbert Trumbull.
It seems his lawyer wrote it for him when he was dying.
It says:

“`Mr. Grant,—I have not been a good man. I
feel this now, lying here on my death-bed, and I confess
it to you the more readily because I do not believe
that at heart you are a one whit better one. I must
speak plainly and bluntly, for I have no time for circumlocution.
I have hardly strength enough left to
dictate this to Richard Huntley, my attorney. I have
made a brave effort to forgive every body; but it has
been the hardest of all to forgive you; for your harshness,
your sinful pride, killed my beautiful Margaret.
You never loved as I loved her—I, her lover, her husband.
There! you will start at that word, I foresee;
you will start again at the marriage certificate enfolded
in this letter. We were married secretly, as you will
perceive, while I was in your very neighborhood. I
bound Margaret, when I left her, by a solemn oath,
not to make it known until she had my permission.

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

She was a gentle crature, as no one knows better than
you, and never thought of disputing the will of any
one she loved. My father was dead. I was dependent
for all my hopes of future fortune and support on
my mother, a very proud, resolute woman. She had
a grand match in contemplation for me at that time.
I knew it would be no easy matter to reconcile her to
its failure, and if she should know just then that I had
married as she would have thought so far below me,
much as she loved me she would have cast me off forever.
This, to a true man, would have been no great
matter compared with causing Margaret one hour of
trouble, one agony of humiliation. But I was not a
true man. I was helpless and imbecile, for I had never
been brought up to depend on myself. But I must
hasten, for my strength is failing me.

“`I kept Margaret advised, through a friend, of all
my movements, and when you crushed her with the
weight of your scorn and contumely, she fled to me.
I welcomed her. God knows I did, for I loved her!
I took care of her in secret, and I should have made
her happy had not your displeasure haunted her. Toward
the last I was obliged to leave her for a few
weeks. In that time she fled—fled because she was
dying of a wild longing to throw herself at your feet
and beg your forgiveness. She told me this in a note
she left for me. It was full of love, stained with her
tears, blotted with her kisses. In it she said she would
not, in any extremity, betray our marriage until she
had my permission. She must have walked nearly all
the way to you, since, thinking all her needs were provided
for, I had left her but a few dollars.

“`You know the rest. I have a friend in your

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

neighborhood who has kept me informed of all that
concerned Margaret and her child. God in heaven
knows how sincerely I mourned her. Had she lived,
I should have acknowledged her as my wife. The
child would have been brought up as Elinor Trumbull's
namesake should have been; but, since Margaret
was dead, I preferred to leave her baby to you. I
had never seen the little one. It was not natural I
should have any very strong love for her, and to give
her up saved me a great deal of embarrassment. My
mother died without knowing that I had ever been
married, and I inherited her fortune. It will all be
the child's. I leave her that and my name as the best
amends I can make for the neglect of my lifetime.

“`Believe that I loved Margaret by this token: I
have been faithful to her memory—I have lived alone
all my days since I lost her.

“`After I am dead, Richard Huntley will send you
this letter, along with a copy of my will, and a miniature
I had painted of Margaret and myself by stealth,
while she was with me. The child may like it. I
suppose I am not good enough for my blessing to avail
her much; but she has it, that young girl whom I have
never seen—Margaret's child and mine. I die in peace
with all men, even you.

“There are a few lines more in the lawyer's hand,
to say that he died twenty-four hours after that letter
was dictated; and the will is inclosed, by which Elinor
falls heir to fifty thousand dollars.”

“But how he insulted you. I can not bear that!”
exclaimed the wife, her first wifely thought a jealous
one of her husband's honor.

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

“Nay, Mary, he but spoke the truth. I have been
a self-deceiver. The judgment of the Lord is visiting
me now, and I see my sin. I killed her—he said truly—
oh, Margaret—my child Margaret!”

“I want to see it, husband—the picture.”

“Well, here, only don't show it to me. I don't want
to see her eyes—poor Margaret.”

The mother took it from his hand and looked at it
in silence. It was Margaret, in her youth, her love,
her beauty, only there was an unwonted shade of sadness
in the clear eyes and about the flexible mouth.
Beside her face Gilbert Trumbull's was painted—handsome,
fascinating, brilliant—the face in which Margaret's
eyes had seen heaven. Mary Grant looked at
the two steadily for a few moments through her tears,
and then, without saying a word, holding the picture
still in her hand, she went in to Elinor.

“My child,” she said, in faltering tones, “would you
like to see your mother's picture?”

A hot flush rose to the girl's cheek, but she stretched
out her hand for the miniature.

“That is your father, too, darling. Nay, Elinor,
you needn't blush so to look on them; for, see this,
child—here is something worth more to you than all
the gold that comes with it, your mother's marriage
certificate.”

Elinor Trumbull clasped the paper with convulsive
energy. She looked at it with eager gaze, reading it
over and over again. Then it dropped from her nerveless
fingers, her eyes shut together, and her stricken
heart, for the first time, uttered the wail of its anguish.

“Oh, Walter, Walter!” was the low cry which rung
helplessly through the room. Mary Grant knelt

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

beside her, and folded her motherly arms around her.
She was not repulsed. She drew that young head to
her old, loving bosom, and Elinor wept there, at last,
like a grieved child.

“Oh!” she murmured, after a time, “I might have
married him—I should not have disgraced him, after
all. What was it you said about gold, grandmother?”

“You have inherited fifty thousand dollars, dear
child. Your father's will came with his letter and
these things I have shown you.”

“His letter! my father's letter! Why don't you
give it to me?”

Mary Grant put the girl from her, and laid her tenderly
back on the lounge. Then she went out, closing
the door behind her.

“Father,” she said, “Elinor wants to see that letter.
I think she has a right to.”

“Yes, Mary, take it. Her seeing it can not make
my shame any greater. Leave me alone for a while;
I am trying to see my way clear.”

And so Mary Grant carried Gilbert Trumbull's letter
in to his child. The girl read it, pausing tenderly
over the passages where her father wrote of his love
for her young mother, pressing the sheet to her lips
where he invoked his blessing—a dying man's blessing—
upon her. Then, folding it up, she put it in her
bosom, and sank back again upon her pillow.

“You are very tired, darling,” said her grandmother's
gentle voice.

“Yes, very—but oh! so thankful. It is such a blessing
that this knowledge came to me before I died, that
I might reverence my dead mother's memory as much
as I had always loved it.”

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

“Before you die! Oh, Elinor, you must not say
that; you will break my heart.”

This was the first time any allusion had been made
between them to the slow decay of Elinor's powers.
Mary Grant had trembled long before the phantom of
this very fear, but every nerve quivered when it took
to itself a voice and stood unmasked before her. Elinor
saw it, and soothingly laid her hand—alas! so very
thin and white now—on the withered one of the old
woman.

“Yes, dear grandmother, we may as well meet it
bravely. I have known it a long time; but, thank
God, I shall die happy now. You will explain all this
mystery to Walter, and he will know I am worthy of
his loving. He will be mine in heaven.”

There were a few moments of solemn silence, and
then Mary Grant murmured, falteringly,

“Elinor, will you, can you forgive your grandfather?”

“As I hope God will forgive me. His punishment
will be heavy enough at the best. His sinful pride
will soon lay a second victim beside my poor mother,
and, seeing this, he will repent in dust and ashes. God
forbid that a word or look of mine should add one pang
to his self-reproach.”

While these words were trembling on her lips, the
door opened, and the old man came in, with his humbled,
heart-stricken face, and his bowed head. He
came up to her, and, for the first time in all his life, Moses
Grant knelt by a woman's side.

“Elinor, child,” he cried out, beseechingly, lifting up
his withered, trembling hands, “God has shown me
my crime as it is; can you, whom I have wronged,
forgive me?”

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

“Fully, freely, and love you also, as your last child
should.”

He drew her close to him. He held her in his arms,
as he had never done before, even in the days of her
innocent babyhood. He murmured blessings over her—
tender, caressing words, such as no one could have
thought his stern lips would ever utter—and when
he lifted up his head, Elinor's cheek was wet with tears
which were not her own.

“I will go now and write to Walter,” he said, in
more hopeful tones.

The young girl turned her face toward the wall, to
hide the anguish which convulsed her slight frame
when the beloved name was uttered.

“It is of no use, now,” she said, sadly; “we do not
know where he is, and if we did, it is all too late.”

“Oh, Elinor, you must not say that. God will not
chasten me so heavily. It is not too late. It shall not
be too late. You shall see him.”

The letter which the elder wrote that afternoon told
Walter Fairfield the whole story—the fearful wrong—
the penitence which would fain make feeble restitution
by confession. He laid bare in it his stricken,
humbled heart.

No one at Mayfield knew Walter Fairfield's present
location. There was but one hope of the letter's reaching
him. The elder directed it, on the outside, to the
care of the Principal of the Theological Seminary
where the young man had been fitted for the ministry.

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Then he sent it forth with wild, anguished prayers that
God would speed it—that it might find him—might be
in time to save the young life trembling in the balance.

That night, when Mary Grant told her granddaughter
that the letter had been sent, and in what wise it
had been directed, a longing hope took possession of
Elinor that it would reach him, would bring him there
before she died—that she might look once more into
his loving eyes—that his voice, none but his, might
murmur the last prayer over her grave. During the
weeks that followed, this hope never left her, and,
though unconsciously to herself, it seemed to be leading
her feet backward a little from the brink of the
dark river over whose waters she had thought so soon
to journey to the country of everlasting life lying beyond.

Her step grew a little less weary and feeble. She
lay less frequently, as days passed on, upon the lounge,
and sat oftener in the arm-chair by the window, where
she could watch the road winding down the hill. It
had been four weeks since the receipt of her father's
letter, and now it was midsummer. The little village
among the mountains was gay with blossoms and verdure—
vocal with bird-songs—sweet with the incense
of summer flowers. How pleasantly the world looked
to Elinor, sitting by the window; the world, which
she thought so soon to leave, brightened now with
the radiance of sunset. The landscape seemed, as she
sat there, so calm and peaceful, with not a living thing
to mar the perfectness of its repose.

But the quiet is broken now. A rider comes dashing
down the hill, fast, fast, fast. It seemed dangerous.
Elinor is very weak; she dares not look at him. She

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

closes her eyes, and lays her head back against the
chair, but she listens—she can not help that. The
rider rides swiftly on. He has stopped now in front
of the house. He opens the little wicket gate. He
comes up the walk—into the door. Courage! trembling
heart. Open your eyes, Elinor Trumbull. He
springs to her side—he folds her close in his arms, calling
her his poor little sorrow-stricken darling, his pride,
his wife, his best-loved Elinor; thanking God that he
can hold her now as he had never hoped to hold her
again on earth.

Weak as Elinor was, she did not faint. There was
power in that voice to rouse, instead, every faculty
into its fullest life. Strength seemed to flow out from
him into her own exhausted being. She clung to him
in silent rapture.

When the passionate joy of meeting had grown
calmer, Walter Fairfield told his story. The summons,
he said, came to him in the far West. After
leaving Mayfield he had gone there, and striven to
absorb himself in the arduous duties of a missionary
preacher. He had worked night and day: it was his
only consolation. On his return from a three days'
tramp in the woods he had found the elder's letter.
At its first reading his heart had swelled with wrath.
A Cain among all other men he had felt Moses Grant
would be to him henceforth. His soul rebelled against
the sinful, worldly pride which had sacrificed the
whole life of two who loved one another to a selfish,
cowardly fear of disgrace. Then he read it again, and
the heartbroken tone of sincere penitence, of despairing,
self-despising humility which pervaded it, moved
him to pity; and then all thought of Moses Grant was

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

lost in one agonizing fear lest he should not be in time
to see his Elinor alive. He had traveled night and
day. He was with her now, and she lived still—she
would live. God would grant her life to his prayers.
His love should call her back—she should be his own
yet—his wife.

He was no professed worker of miracles, and yet, as
she listened to his words, the crimson tint stole back
into the fair cheek of his betrothed, and she seemed to
feel a sense of returning strength, a faith in the reality
of his prediction.

Moses Grant met the young minister with outward
calmness. In his letter he had poured forth his remorse,
his sorrow, his penitence. Neither of them
ever alluded to it afterward. Only in the hand-clasp
between them—full on the one side of timid self-abasement,
on the other of pity, forgiveness, encouragement—
there was a silent reconciliation. Mary
Grant sobbed out her welcome with murmured blessings,
and choking pauses, and many tears, and that
night the four knelt together in peace before the throne
of Him who looks on human weakness with the eyes
of heavenly pity.

Elinor's health improved rapidly. Before the summer
roses under the parlor window had faded, she
twined from them a wreath for her bridal, and another
garland, which she hung in the pleasant August morning—
a daughter's reverent farewell—over the low
head-stone which marked her mother's grave. She
went there leaning upon her husband's arm, and, lifting
to him her relying eyes, she murmured,

“I wonder if she knows, up in heaven, how happy
her daughter is this hour?”

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

The farewell between the old people and their children
was full of tender peace and love, and the elder
and his wife stood together at the wicket gate, watching
them with moist eyes as they rode up the hill.
Moses Grant was not too proud to weep now.

The next Sunday, after the sermon was over, the
congregation was requested to wait, and there, before
them all, an old man, bowing his gray head in shame
and sorrow, laid down his eldership in the Mayfield
church, and bewailed the sin which made him unworthy,
in his own eyes, to wear it longer. A very
old book saith, “Whoso humbleth himself shall be
exalted,” and perchance that seemed to angel eyes the
hour most worthy of pride of all Moses Grant's earthly
life.

Walter Fairfield spent that winter at the South with
his young wife; but cheerful letters came now and
then, telling the old people of Elinor's renewed health
and strength, and promising to bring her back blooming
and happy.

In the early spring Parson Stevens received an unexpected
call to a larger salary and wider sphere of
usefulness, procured, some said, through Mr. Fairfield's
influence. Accepting it, he went away with his wife
and his six children. Walter Fairfield came back in
good time to take his place. Elinor's fortune would
more than satisfy all their wants, and they chose to
settle down with the people of his first love—to live
and die among them.

To Elinor no other spot could be half so dear as the
quiet village among the mountains, where, for her, the
star had risen which rises but once—the star of love,
whose light was to bless all her happy life on earth,

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

and sparkle still in the golden crown the angels were
keeping for her in the Beyond.

And so, after all its pride, and pain, and passion, rest
came at last to Moses Grant's life. The old man and
his old wife live quietly still in the shadow of the
mountains, in whose shadow they were born; and by-and-by,
when their willing feet have drawn nigh to
the fathomless river, kind hands will lay them gently
down to their last sleep, beside Margaret's grave, in
the little church-yard on the hill-top.

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How One Woman came to Marry.

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p653-060

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THE early summer morning is rising clear and
bright, but chill, and yet, before these pages meet
the reader's eye, over all will lie the midsummer pomp,
and flush, and pride. I can think of no fitter emblem
for one I knew in other days than this reluctant summer,
cold, and still, and coy at first, only to burst forth,
by-and-by, into more wonderful and tropical luxuriance
of bloom.

In Hortense Greenwich there was, from her very
childhood, though few knew it then, very much of
pride, but never any littleness of vanity. She had
been born to an assured position in society, for she
was the only child of wealthy parents, moving in the
upper circles of New York. Her mother, still young
and very beautiful at the birth of this one child, was a
woman of fashion. Dinner parties, balls, and morning
visits filled up her life, so that she had no time to become
acquainted with her daughter. She gave the
little one a French governess, and left her to grow up
as best she could. Even the governess had a lover in
America, besides an extensive correspondence with
certain old friends in la belle France, and, in her turn,
neglected her duties.

Perhaps, however, this very neglect developed the
child's soul more healthfully than a greater amount of

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

attention from those two sources would have done.
She learned readily all that was taught her, and much
that was not. Acquisition of ideas was a passion with
her, and her father's library, fashionably well filled and
fashionably little used, was a perpetual delight to her
dawning intellect. She might, perhaps, have been a
beautiful child had due pains been taken in the cultivation
of her natural graces. As it was, she was in
no way remarkable. She was allowed to braid her
hair closely back from her large, thoughtful brow; to
sit carelessly, and to wear, ordinarily, what suited her
best—a quiet robe of dark, shadowy, unbecoming gray.
On state occasions, when her presence was required in
the parlor, and she was bedizened in brighter hues and
fashionable finery, she was too much embarrassed by
the unusual costume to have it contribute at all to her
beauty.

Circumstances early schooled her to content herself
with no great amount of affection. Her father would
have loved her, but what with early and late devotion
to the business that maintained his splendid house and
faultless equipage—to say nothing of bills at Stewart's
and Madame D'Arblay's—he had very little time for
the cultivation of home ties. Her mother—she must
have had a mother's heart somewhere in her bosom,
though its beatings were effectually smothered by silk
and velvet—was too much absorbed in her beautiful
self to remember the child, except with an occasional
fear lest her growing up should be an unwelcome reminder
of her own age. The governess understood
this sentiment, and needed not to be told to keep the
girl back as much as possible. As for Mademoiselle,
she wrote her letters and chatted with her lover,

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

consoling herself with the reflection that in neglecting her
charge she was but following the example of the higher
powers. And so Hortense Greenwich brought herself
up.

At twenty she was little changed from what she had
been at ten. It is true, some years before, Mademoiselle
had married her American lover, and Miss Greenwich,
deprived of her supervision, had been sent to a
boarding-school, where she had learned a little French,
a little Italian, and a good deal of music. At twenty
she was introduced into society. She was not at all
showy; indeed, her mother pronounced her, “after all
that had been done for her, decidedly wanting in style,”
and, I think, was secretly rejoiced that her daughter
was so little likely to dispute with her the palm of
fashionable admiration.

At twenty Hortense Greenwich might easily have
passed for fifteen. So little of passion or emotion had
swept over the calm surface of her life, that her face
was still placid and reticent as in childhood. It had
no story to tell. Her only accomplishment was her
music, and this with her was rather a passion than an
art. She practiced it solely for her own gratification.
Hour after hour, at her harp or her piano, she breathed
out her very soul—all the mystery of her inner life—
in thrilling, passionate improvisations. It was to
her instead of father and mother love—instead of
brothers and sisters—instead of friends.

She had been in society two years when she first
met Rowland Chivers. Though only four years older
than herself, he was already blasé. He had traveled
in the Old World. He was well read in the book of
beauty. He could tell a woman's fine points at a

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

glance. His flirtations had been numerous abroad,
but he had come home unfettered, and “Japonicadom”
welcomed him eagerly. For a wonder, his fortune,
really large, was his smallest claim to distinction.
He would have been a man of mark any where. His
manners were emphatically, as Mrs. Greenwich expressed
herself, distingué. He was handsome, and he
had a mind well and richly stored, despite his flirtations
and fooleries.

I said he could tell all a woman's charms at a glance.
After a little, he made Mrs. Greenwich his mortal enemy
by perceiving that her daughter was younger, and
possessed finer points of beauty than herself. At her
exhibitions of disdain, however, he only smiled. He
was contented to let her love or hate him as she liked,
and, with serene self-satisfaction, set himself at work
to bring out Hortense Greenwich.

A little encouragement, a little graceful flattery, was
all she needed. Soon the world began to perceive
what a faultless figure she had, now that she had acquired
a motive for dressing it becomingly. Then her
fine eyes were noticed; the superb scorn of her daintily-cut
mouth; her hair, so long, so luxuriant, now
that a quick eye had perceived its capabilities, and a
few artistic yet careless hints had guided her in its arrangement.

Miss Greenwich, accustomed to go into society as a
sort of necessary sacrifice at the shrine of Mammon,
without the least hope or expectation of finding pleasure
therein, was at first surprised, then gratified, when
Rowland Chivers, just then quite a centre of attraction,
persistently sought her side. With his matchless
tact, it was not difficult to make her feel, without once

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

saying any thing to startle her susceptible pride, that
he alone understood her—that he recognized her capacity
to be more than she was—loftier than any of
the social magnets glittering about her. To a nature
like hers, this feeling, that she was appreciated—that
she received her full deserts, was the most acceptable
of incense. She inhaled it eagerly. Under its influence
she not only learned how to make the most of all
the graces which were already hers, but new charms
came to her; a deeper color glowed in her cheek, a
warmer light shone from her large, dark eye.

At first she thought only of friendship. Rowland
Chivers never talked to her of love. He was lonely,
he told her. Very few of those he met in the gay
circle where his lot was cast had power to interest him
for an hour. It had been like a new revelation to
know her. She could feel with him—could share his
thoughts. As much as ever sister could be to brother
she should be to him. And this contented her. It
was her first friendship; it seemed so pure, so sweet,
so tender. It was something to be proud of, to have
this man, sought of all, always at her side. His homage
elevated her in the eyes of those who had been
accustomed to consider her as a good, quiet girl, of no
great importance in any way. She was grateful to
him for gaining for her the position to which, in the
sensitive pride of her proud nature, she felt entitled.
For his sake she adorned herself. Her naturally fine
taste was aroused. She must do justice to his choice
of a friend.

From all this, in a character like hers, the step was
not long to love. Soon she knew that, in spite of herself,
he had become dearer to her than all the dreams

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

of her girlhood. And now came a season of self-humiliation;
a fear which stung her like a scorpion,
lest she had given her love unsought; a longing, anxious
questioning of his heart; a striving to read every
expression of his haughty, handsome face.

And then, as if in answer to her doubts, his manner
became tenderer than ever. More constantly he
sought her side—more gentle was his voice—more
full of love the songs he brought her, and sang with
her by the hour together. One day he said to her,

“Hortense, I thought I knew women, but even I
was deceived in my estimate of you. You have matured,
this past year, into such a woman as my fancy
never foreshadowed. It has been like the sudden
bursting into bloom of the still century-plant, or the
breathing radiant, glowing life into a perfect statue.
What has changed you so?”

Rowland Chivers would have made a capital surgeon.
He would have looked unmoved on the death-throes
of a thousand victims. As it was, he delighted
in nothing so much as in dissecting hearts. With
keen relish he watched the color come and go in her
cheeks, the lids droop downward to veil the shy responses
of her radiant eyes. Her voice was very low
as she answered,

“You have changed me by being my friend. No
one had interest enough in me before to make it worth
my while to be my best self.”

But farther than this he never carried the conversation.
He would break it off at this stage to read her
some old legend of long-enduring love, or to make her
sing for him his favorite songs. His actions told her,
every day of his life, more eloquently than any words,

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

that she was beloved, but his lips had never yet
spoken it.

At length a new star rose in the firmament of New
York society—a young widow, gay, beautiful, piquante.
She possessed less dignity, less hauteur, less style, even,
than Hortense Greenwich; but her versatility, her
grace, her good-humor were infinite. She was a little
fairy—a perfect flower of the tropics, with a passionate,
fervid nature speaking in every look of her sparkling
eyes, every flexible movement of her graceful
figure. Rowland Chivers was charmed. Here was a
new book—a fresh page. How would this bewitching
little divinity look if she were in love? His attentions
were divided now, and perhaps Mrs. Bellair
received the largest share.

I do not think Hortense Greenwich ever could have
been jealous. It was not in her nature. She could
love and trust blindly up to a certain point; but when
her trust was slain her love must die with it. So she
looked on in evident unconcern while the widow
danced, and sang, and flirted, and Rowland Chivers
was ever at her side. I think he was disappointed.
He was not noble enough to understand a nature above
jealousy. He had expected Miss Greenwich would
flatter his vanity by growing pale, sad, abstracted;
that she would slight him a little at first, and by-and-by
there would be a scene, and he—I believe he had
not decided, even in his own mind, whether he meant
to marry her. Her calmness disappointed him. It
was not feigned. She never thought of doubting his
love. She believed—when he had finished his game,
his pretty little amusement of a flirtation—he would
be as much her own as ever. She had no fears for

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

the widow's heart, and she was too much accustomed
to see such kind of trifling to realize how much it
dimmed the bright perfectness she had loved to ascribe
to her idol. So, when he did come to her side, she
received him as cheerfully as ever. Her cheek lost
nothing of its brilliant glow—her eye of its sparkling
light. He began to fear that she did not love him,
and this reawakened all his interest in her. To test
the matter thoroughly, he flirted with the widow more
desperately than ever.

One night, when Miss Greenwich was in full beauty,
she was for a time the centre of attraction in Mrs. Livingstone's
crowded salon. Gentlemen thronged round
her, and ladies stood by in envy. Despite his doubts
of her love, Rowland Chivers gloried in her. She was
so queenly, so fair; to all but him, so unapproachable.
He lingered near her, saying just enough to draw out
her best powers.

At length a diversion was created by the widow's
late entrance. This night Rowland Chivers was resolved
to probe to the utmost the heart he had begun
to doubt. He was among the first to seek Mrs. Bellair.
He danced with her; he bent over her as she sat
at the piano; he devoted himself to her with all the
enthusiasm of a courtier. At length his keen eye detected
Miss Greenwich for the moment alone. She
had withdrawn herself a little from the gay company,
and sat in a kind of recess watching the flash of the
lights, the sparkle of the diamonds, the sheen of the
floating silken robes, and now and then catching some
chance word borne by her on the waves of sound.
He sought her side, and was welcomed with her usual
frankness. For a while they chatted indifferently, and

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

then, as if moved to confidence by a sudden impulse,
Rowland Chivers said,

“I do believe, Hortense, that you have a real friendly
interest—a sister's interest—in my welfare; and
something I can not explain impels me to ask your
advice. You women judge each other more justly
than a man can. Tell me, then, what you think of
Mrs. Bellair. Would my life's happiness be safe if I
should ask her, and she should consent, to be my wife?”

He had meant this should be the crowning test of
her love. If she manifested one emotion of grief or
anger, he would believe she loved him; perhaps—but
the future must settle that—perhaps he would ask her
to be Mrs. Chivers. He watched her keenly. Not a
muscle of her face quivered; not a shade deeper was
the rose-tint on her fair cheek; she did not even turn
her calm eyes away. There was no tremor in her silvery
voice. As if half musingly, she said,

“I do not quite know her well enough to answer;
but I should think, nay, I am very sure, that your natures
are much alike—that she would suit you admirably.”

Her auditor had an uncomfortable impression that
a hidden satire lurked in her remark. It galled him,
and he winced under it; but she had given no sign of
love for him. He had mistaken her all this while, and,
roused to regret by this knowledge, he began to think
that he loved her, and could not live without her.

Just then they were interrupted. Mr. Richmond
Spendwell came to claim her hand for the next dance;
and for the rest of that night Hortense Greenwich was
more beautiful than ever, and, unlike her usual self,
was the gayest of the gay.

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

When it was all over the reaction came. Leaning
back in the carriage by her mother's side, she sat for
a time in profound silence. But Mrs. Greenwich was
sociably inclined; her eyes were sparkling; her cheeks
glowing; her spirits were at high tide. They must
find an outlet somehow. There was not often much
conversation between these two women, they had so
few thoughts in common; but Mrs. Greenwich must
talk now.

“It has been a brilliant evening; but then Mrs.
Livingstone's evenings always are. I haven't enjoyed
myself more this winter. Why don't you speak, Hortense;
didn't you like it?”

“I am very tired.”

“Tired! Well, you look so; I can see by the street
lamp how white your face is. Why, I should outlast
three like you, mamma though I am. You will never
do for a belle. But don't that little widow make herself
ridiculous enough? One would suppose she
thought there had never been another handsome woman
in the world. There's Rowland Chivers, how she
does draw him after her! Why, I really used to think
he was attentive to you.”

“Mother, don't! I can't talk; I am so tired—so
sick.”

There was a strange pathos in her voice. It would
have reminded you of the moan of some stricken animal
hunted to death. Mrs. Greenwich did not understand
it: she was not a sympathetic or a quick-feeling
woman at any time, but this cry of an unspoken sorrow
hushed even her into silence.

After that, however, Miss Greenwich regained her
self-command. Her good-night, as she went up stairs,

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was spoken in her usual cheerful tones; her step was
firm, yet elastic, and her mother looking after her,
thought what a strange, unsociable girl she was, and
how little she cared for society any way.

In her own room her sleepy maid sat before the fire
waiting for her. She was perfectly calm now—she
did not even seem fatigued. The business of disrobing
was quickly performed; the ornaments she had
worn were restored to their proper places; the girl
was dismissed, and Hortense Greenwich was alone,
with no farther need for self-command. She sat down
before the fire, and looked steadily into it. Was this
the same world it had seemed when she sat there, five
hours before, dreaming blissful dreams, in which one
face ever shone, once voice made an eternal music?
Gone forever was the sunlight which had gilded that
fair world. No longer were the skies blue, and the
very clouds rosy; no longer the future stretched out
before her a green, sunny path, bordered with roses
and bright with verdure. She had crowned herself,
indeed, with those fair roses of Hope, but they had
turned to thorns upon her forehead; and from those
gaping wounds would not the life-blood ooze forever?

Then, in the stillness, Pride rose up like an avenger,
and buffeted her sorely. She had loved unsought, it
told her; given her heart to one who did not even
think the gift worth the acceptance; trusted all things
to one who had promised nothing. But Memory defended
her warmly. Memory asserted that he had
sought her love; Memory brought forth from her
treasure-house looks and words of unmistakable tenderness;
she recalled daily and long-continued care;
manifold tokens of interest; constant attentions; all

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

that could, more eloquently than any words, tell the
story of absorbing love. And then Justice acquitted
the proud heart accused.

Oh, Rowland Chivers, you would have known one
woman better than you were ever likely to learn her,
with all your study, if you could have sat by Hortense
Greenwich's fire that night! I spare my reader the
torture, the agony, the despair. Women like her love
once, and, if deceived, never again thereafter. She
had lost that night something dearer than life, something
loftier than love—her faith in humanity. She
had never had but one friend. Rowland Chivers was
the first one who had ever read the pages of her woman's
heart. She had gained a higher, truer estimate
of her own powers, seeing them through his eyes. To
this first tenderness she had given all. The full tide
of her passionate yet reserved nature had set toward
him, and now the deep waters must flow back again,
flooding the waste country of her affections, uprooting
every flower, destroying every fruit. Henceforth she
must go on alone. Life stretched out before her bleak
and barren of hope. Alas! there was no one to whisper
of a narrower path, where the seed sown in tears
might spring up in joy; where the blessings of those
ready to perish would cheer the fainting traveler,
whose goal was the Celestial City. Fashionable life—
she knew no other—was the arena where she must
struggle for the victor's palm. At least—her lip curled
at the thought—Rowland Chivers had taught her
something of her own value; she could touch him
through his vanity; she could shine. Through all
that night not one tear came to her proud eyes. The
blight which had fallen upon her life was too deadly

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

for any gentle dew of sorrow. She would not suffer
the love which lay in its death-throes upon her heart's
threshold to make a single moan, even in dying.
Sternly she watched its agony until it was dead, then
she took up the fair corse and buried it. It might
haunt her sometimes; sometimes she might wake at
midnight from feverish slumbers, and see at her bed's
foot a still, white face, and the gleam of golden hair,
but she would know it was but the illusion of fancy.
The dead love should not arise—she rolled a stone to
the mouth of the sepulchre.

It was thus that Hortense Greenwich became a belle
in society. After that night she went forth into the
world a changed woman. That world had never
found her so charming before. She was prouder than
ever; but society likes pride. Her words were keen
with the two-edged sword of wit. Now and then a
victim winced under them, but the by-standers applauded,
and the sufferers from such wounds are the
first to smile. Rowland Chivers wondered at her.
He had never suspected, with all his appreciation of
her character, such power as this. He left Mrs. Bellair
to bite her pretty lips and break her Spanish fan
in vexation, and actually haunted Miss Greenwich
wherever she went. Her reception of him was precisely
the same as she accorded to others; marked
with a courtesy which no presumption could construe
into more than courtesy.

She was become like the rest of the world now.
She formed friendships in the fashionable sense of the
word. Rowland Chivers called on her, and found
other young ladies, graceful butterflies of fashion, whiling
away the morning with her; or, at other times,

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

some gentleman would be serenely making himself
agreeable, where once he only had been the privileged
guest. At other times still, he would call and be told
that Miss Greenwich was out, and this piqued his vanity
still more, for he shrewdly suspected that she was
only “out” to him. He had roused his somewhat
apathetic sensibilities by this time into what he believed
an absorbing passion for her. He was quite
convinced that all his happiness for the future depended
upon persuading her to return his adoration.

At length he called on her one morning at an unfashionably
early hour. She was in, and alone. He
found her in the same room where they had passed so
many hours together. He trusted to the old memories
to assist him. Once more he asked for a favorite song.
With thorough self-command she complied with his
request. She manifested no emotion—there was no
droop of the eyelids, no softening of the voice. The
metaphysical dissector, the hero of a thousand flirtations,
was at a loss. Perhaps he had never felt so
deeply before. At all events, it had never before been
so hard a task to make a declaration of love. But he
managed it at length. For once in the world he might
have gained credit for modesty. No one could have
doubted but that he was sincere. With a humility as
strange as it was new, he told her the high sense he
entertained of her perfections, and besought her favorable
hearing for his confession of love. His utmost
experience with women could never have prepared
him for her reply.

“I will not deceive you,” she said, in her proud, yet
quiet voice. “My own pride shall not tempt me to
say that I never loved you. Little as I believe you

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

deserve it, I did love you once with all the strength
of my nature; or, rather, I loved something I believed
was you. My life had been lonely before you came.
I was indebted to you, I acknowledge that now, for
a juster knowledge of myself. I believed that you
loved me—your constant attentions gave me a right
to believe it.”

“I did—oh, God knows I did,” faltered Rowland
Chivers's voice. She went on without heeding the interruption.

“I trusted in your love so fully that, when Mrs.
Bellair came, your flirtation with her gave me no concern.
Only your own words could have undeceived
me. They were not long wanting. You remember
that night when you asked my advice about marrying
her. Then I saw you as you were. Either you had
never cared for me, and had but amused yourself with
deceiving me; or having, after your own fashion, liked
me, you were now experimenting upon my love, wantonly
giving me pain. In either case I had been loving
an ideal. The man I had supposed you to be
could never have condescended to such trifling. You
acted out your own nature. I do not complain. I
rather thank you for letting me see you as you are.
But, if it will solace your vanity, if it will give you
any triumph to know that I suffered, I do not grudge
you the satisfaction of that knowledge. I suffered in
that one night such tortures as all the pulses of your
lifetime could not measure out. But even then, if you
could have knelt at my feet and poured out your soul
in a prayer of forgiveness, it would not have comforted
me—in my heart would have been no response to
your voice. I had loved an ideal, which was not you.

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

You will understand now that our paths must lie very
far apart. You have taken from me all that my life
had of glory—my faith, my hope, my trust in human
love. I shall marry some man for the position, the
independence he will give me, but I can not marry
you.”

Rowland Chivers showed how far he was from comprehending
her by persevering in his prayer. He
knelt at her feet. He uttered a passionate cry for forgiveness—
for love. He drew a picture of his desolate
life without her. He told her that he had never loved
before—that his only hold on a true, right life, was
through her.

There was goodness enough in her nature to pity
him, even then. Her great dark eyes rested upon him
mournfully. Her voice was not proud now, but sorrowful.

“I can not, Rowland Chivers. Plead with me no
longer. My heart is dumb. It makes no answer.”

And he felt that it was indeed true. He bade her
farewell with faltering tones, he pressed kiss after kiss
upon her hand, and then he went out into the world,
and Hortense Greenwich sent after him no regret—no
sigh.

That very morning, scarcely an hour later, Mr. Richmond
Spendwell sat beside her, in the seat which Rowland
Chivers had filled. There could scarcely have
been a greater contrast than between these two men.
It was something more than the ordinary difference
between twenty-six and forty. Mr. Spendwell was
pompous, self-satisfied, almost arrogant. He had a far
more definite idea of turtle-soup than of turtle-doves.
Billing and cooing would not, at any time of life, have

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

been in his line. He was better posted in stocks than
in literature. As for sentiment, it was to him terra incognita;
and he had no knowledge of hearts beyond a
dim schoolboy recollection that they had something to
do with the circulation of the blood.

Therefore he was saved from all embarrassment in
the doing of his errand. In a manner most business-like
and creditable he made Miss Greenwich an offer
of his hand. Like her former suitor, he was quite unprepared
for her reply:

“Mr. Spendwell, I would not marry you under false
pretenses. I would not deceive you for the world. If
I marry you, I shall be your faithful wife, for I know
my duty; but I can not marry you because of love.
That is forever past for me. I did love one man; or,
rather, I loved the ideal which I called by his name.
I found out the weak points of his character, and my
love died a natural death. He left me this morning,
a rejected suitor. Would you be satisfied with a wife
who had no love to give you?”

Mr. Spendwell listened politely, but with a look
which said, more expressively than words, that this
was all Greek to him. He took advantage of the first
pause to interrupt her.

“My dear young lady, I am too old, perhaps, and
too prosaic to fully understand you. As nearly as I
can make out, you once fancied yourself in love, but,
finding your mistake, you rejected your suitor. Now
I am not very exacting in these matters. You are
graceful and beautiful beyond any woman of my acquaintance.
I have confidence in your good sense
and good principle. If you will be my wife, I think I
may say I shall make a kind and indulgent husband.”

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

“I am sensible of the honor you do me, sir, and I
accept your proposal.”

“Very right. Just the reply I expected from your
good sense. I will see your father this afternoon.”

This was Hortense Greenwich's plighting. Hortense
Greenwich! dreamer, enthusiast, genius! Was
it strange, as she sat alone after her very respectable
affianced left her, that for one undisciplined moment
the dead love seemed to stir in its unquiet grave, and
her thoughts roamed backward once more into the enchanted
country over which Hope's sun had set, and
stood for that one moment pleading vainly at the closed
gates of her Eden? That was all. After that she
walked forward with firm footsteps in the path she
had chosen; she said to her woman's heart, “I have
no need of thee;” she received the congratulations of
her friends, and went on superintending the preparations
for her bridal.

The news of her betrothal came to Rowland Chivers
with a keen pang. To such natures as his blessings
brighten as they take their flight. By refusing to be
his wife she had made herself his goddess. He sailed
for Europe in the next steamer, and news comes of
him now and then engaged in his old career of flirtation
and foolery.

Alas! he had left behind him the greatest ruin he
had ever wrought. In Hortense Greenwich he had
found, perhaps for the first time in his life, a true, highsouled,
self-contained, yet loving woman. There was
more power in her nature, for good or for evil, than in
twenty like Ernestine Bellair. He found her young,
generous, susceptible, ready to give up all things for
truth and right. He left her with her heart

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

prematurely old, cold, glittering, scornful, suspicious. It was
the wreck of a most noble nature. She was married;
that is, Mr. Richmond Spendwell was legally pronounced
her husband; but her unwed heart was left
alone, alone—like an unquiet spirit making its moan
in the darkness.

She was a splendid bride. Some envied her, some
condemned her, some approved of her worldly prudence;
and one quiet old book-keeper, looking out
from the window of his chateau en Espagne, murmured,
with sad sagacity,

“Once more Venus has married Vulcan.”

[figure description] Blank Page.[end figure description]

The Tenant of the Old Brown House.

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

p653-082

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

“Oh! do whate'er thou wilt, I will be silent.”

THE old brown house on the hill was at last to have
a tenant. A woman was coming to dwell in it.
No one in Ryefield had ever seen her. By letter she
had made the bargain, and she gave no clew to her
fortune or circumstances, save, at the foot of the page,
the strong, bold signature, “Hester Wilde.” The
property, which belonged to a distant owner, had been,
ever since I could remember, in my grandfather's care.
It had not been inhabited for years. There were
strange stories about a murder which had once been
committed there, though I believe there was no positive
proof. Shrieks and groans, it was confidently reported,
came forth from its windows at midnight; and
strange forms, clad in the costume of long ago years,
passed before them in ghostly conference. However
this may have been, certain it is that the proprietor,
Wilton Eldredge, had not visited it since he came of
age; and the last family who inhabited it moved out
at midnight, and came, as I have heard my mother
say, to our house white with terror.

My grandfather, as in duty bound, had inserted an
advertisement in the county paper at the beginning of
every quarter, and, naturally anxious for the interests
of his client, he was heartily glad to receive an application
at length, and acceded to the proffers of

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

Mistress Hester Wilde without troubling himself to make
many inquiries concerning her character or circumstances.

She had written like a lady well bred and well educated,
and yet the tone of her communications was
hard and stern, and invited little freedom of reply.
She had said she should bring no furniture, and requested
that the house should be made habitable before
the fifteenth of May.

“Put on your bonnet,” said my grandfather, when
he had finished the perusal of this letter, “put on your
bonnet, Louise, and we will walk up the hill to the old
house.”

I obeyed him gladly. It was a delicious May-time
afternoon, bright with opening leaves and blossoms,
sunshine, and a cloudless expanse of blue sky. Only
about the brown house seemed to lie a heavy shadow.
It might have been the effect merely of the dark row
of tall old poplars leading solemnly up to the door, but
I fancied there was something in that unbroken silence,
that still darkness, almost supernatural. With a half
shudder I involuntarily murmured, “And what if
there should be another removal—if the ghosts should
drive out the strange lady?”

My grandfather was a God-fearing man of the straitest
sect of Puritans, and had no terror of any thing
out of heaven. In his strong, unimaginative mind
there was no foothold for superstition, and he answered
me almost sternly, “Mistress Hester Wilde, if I
have read her letters rightly, is not a person to be
driven out of house and home by imaginary fears, and
I had hoped you, too, had more sense than to talk of
ghosts.”

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

I was quieted, but not subdued. To me there seemed,
in spite of myself, a strange mystery in the shadows
that lay so thick about the old mansion, and I
looked up at its windows—I could not help it—with
a thrill of something very much like fear.

It had gone a long way toward ruin during those
uninhabited years. Here and there panes of glass
were broken in; bats whizzed in and out at the windows,
and swallows built their nests in the chimneys.
The furniture belonging to the old proprietors was
stored away under lock and key in an upper chamber,
and we found it, though faded and rusty, in very tolerable
repair. It had lain useless ever since the fair
Margery Eldredge went to her rest, and now it was to
be furbished up and arranged once more in the deserted
rooms. In this task of arrangement I was to superintend
the labors of my grandfather's trusty servant.

At length the repairs were completed. Bridget had
put down the carpets the day before, and early in the
morning we set out to prepare the house for the reception
of its mistress. It was a large house, but Mistress
Wilde had said she wanted little room, and so we only
fitted up the most convenient apartments. There was
a parlor—a stately parlor looking out upon the poplar
walk. A rich but sombre carpet was upon the floor,
and we arranged around the walls, at regular distances,
the high-backed, embroidered chairs which graced the
best room during the Eldredge dynasty, and which
Margery Eldredge had herself worked in her days of
youth and love. A few paintings, portraits of the
dead, hung upon the wall—cold and lifeless they were,
and suited well the grim aspect of the room: we left
them there. The kitchen would be dining-room and

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

sitting-room, if Mistress Wilde followed the country
custom, and we took more pains to make that cheerful.
The white floor was nicely sanded, and over the
mantle I hung the only pleasant picture the house had
to boast. This was the likeness of Margery Eldredge
in the early days of her wifehood. She was the mother
of Wilton Eldredge, the present proprietor, and the
summer of her life never dawned—she died while it
was yet spring. In the portrait she was fair, with a
bright, bewitching, girlish beauty, very sweet and tender.
When this picture was hung it seemed to brighten
up the whole room. We put Margery's low sewing-chair
and soft footstool of Berlin wool beside the
little work-table; and when all else was set in order, I
gathered a few early wild-flowers, and bestowed them
in a dainty gilt-edged saucer on the white-covered toilet-table
of the new mistress's bedroom.

She was expected that day; and in the afternoon
my grandfather came over to remain with me and receive
her. As the day drew toward its close and she
did not come, I began to tremble at the quick approach
of twilight, shutting in that long silent house. But I
sat there, too proud to confess my undefined fears to
the strong-minded man at my side. At length, and
this time startling even him—we had not heard the
stage stop at the distant gate—footsteps sounded on
the graveled walk without, and a tall figure darkened
the door-way.

“Mr. Cleveland, I suppose,” she said, coldly and
stiffly. My grandfather bowed. “I am Hester Wilde,”
she continued, bestowing a scrutinizing glance upon
the premises.

She was a woman to whom I could not venture a

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

single word of the earnest, friendly welcome I had been
planning in my own mind, so I sat still, and silently
looked at her. She was very tall, with a certain angularity
and stiffness pervading not only her figure,
but all her motions. She was not in the least pretty,
and she never could have been. Her hair was straight,
black, and coarse, giving evidence of extraordinary
powers of endurance. Her eyes were black and very
stern; rigid lines lay about her mouth—lines which
suffering must have furrowed; and her features were
not only masculine, but irregular. She sat down, not
in the easy sewing-chair I had left vacant for her, but
at the other side of the table, in an arm-chair as hard
and stiff as herself, exactly facing the picture of Margery
Eldredge.

“Is that a portrait?” she asked, after a time, in her
cold, quiet voice.

“It is—of the mother of Wilton Eldredge, the owner
of your new home, which I trust may prove a happy
one,” replied my grandfather, with the courtly politeness
of a gentleman of the old school.

She uttered a cold “Thank you,” and once more
relapsed into silence.

Her age might have varied any where from thirty
to forty. I could not tell. There was something in
her expression which moved me to a silent sympathy,
notwithstanding it was so forbidding. It never softened,
except once or twice, when she glanced involuntarily
at the portrait over the mantle, and then for
a moment her face fairly gleamed with something
which, in her, I was forced to pronounce untranslatable,
which yet resembled the look other faces wear
when any trifling thing recalls the aspect of one

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

tenderly, mournfully beloved. She did not seem at all
disposed to make conversation, and after a few moments
my grandfather rose to wish her good-evening.

“Will she not be afraid?” I whispered aside. He
looked at me with a sternness which was meant to be
final; but I could not heed him, I was so timid in
those days. She was a woman, and I thought it terrible
to leave her there alone.

“Miss Wilde,” I said. She started. A flush even
rose to her sallow face as if she had not always been
accustomed to hearing herself addressed by that name.
“You have no servant engaged. Shall we not send
Bridget over to sleep in the house with you to-night?”

“By no means,” she replied. “It was one thing I
wished to say to you, Mr. Cleveland. I would like
you to find me a trusty boy, who will come here at
night and morning, and do little jobs and any errands
I may wish about the village. It is all the help I shall
need.” My grandfather bowed, and promised to execute
her commission on the morrow; but I could not
leave her so.

“Miss Wilde,” I said, “I can't help telling you.
They do say this house is haunted! What if you
should see a ghost? I wish Bridget might come over.”

She smiled, not unkindly, and answered with a tone
just a little thawed, “I am not afraid. There are no
dead people who want any thing of me—and no living
ones either,” she added, after a moment, with a touch
of something like sadness in her voice. She bade us
good-evening—not rudely; though in her careless invitation
to come again there was an evident intention
to put its acceptance out of our power by her frigidity.

We went out. I turned round at the gate, and

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

looked through the long row of poplars with an actual
shudder. I met my grandfather's eyes fixed upon me
with a curious twinkle. “Well, child,” he said, “you
have had your say; but you did not frighten Mistress
Wilde. May you have as much sense some day.
Ghosts indeed!”

“But, grandfather, wasn't there once a real murder
committed in the house?”

“I do not know of any. Old George Eldredge died
there very suddenly. The doctors called it apoplexy;
only ignorant people said poison.”

We walked the rest of the way in silence, but my
thoughts were roaming up and down the poplar walk,
or sitting in the silent house with Mistress Hester
Wilde.

The next morning my grandfather found a boy suited
to her needs, and I begged the privilege of taking
him to his new mistress. She did not look as if she
had closed her eyes.

“You did not sleep?” I queried, timidly.

“No;” then seeing my “I told-you-so” look, she
added, with a queer kind of half smile, which I afterward
found was peculiar to her, “but it was not ghosts—
at least not such ghosts as you mean. If you live,
child, you will find there are no spirits so potent as
memories.”

A verse came to my mind of a little fragment, written
I never knew by whom. I murmured it aloud:

She looked at me curiously. “Poetical, I see!”

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

she muttered. I thought there was a sneer in her
tone.

The more I saw of her, the more she interested me.
As the weeks passed on, finding that no coldness would
discourage me from visiting her, she began to receive
me more cordially. But she saw very little of society.
The boy, Thomas Wilson by name, was her chief organ
of communication with the villagers. Many of
the neighboring families had called upon her, but when
they found she did not return their visits, or manifest
any desire for their acquaintance, they abandoned her
again to her solitude. My own perseverance formed
the only exception.

None of our conversations, however, though at length
they became quite numerous, ever gave me any light
upon her past history, until one warm August afternoon,
when I strolled over to the brown house, and
found her busy in the arrangement of her drawers.
She had folded up a packet of letters, and tied them
with a black ribbon. She held them in her hand
when I entered. She was so absorbed that she did
not notice my approach. I could see that her face was
very white and rigid, but her hands trembled, and her
nerves were so overwrought that, on my coming to
her side, a heavy miniature escaped from her hold, and
fell, with its crimson-velvet case wide open. I looked
upon the face only for an instant, but that was long
enough to have it fully impressed upon my memory.
It was that of a very handsome man. His bold, black
eyes; his short, crisp, black curls; his mouth, passionate
yet stern, were unlike any one I had ever seen;
and yet, in the whole, there was a certain intangible
something which associated itself in my mind with the

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

fair, sweet lineaments of the peerless Margery Eldredge.
I stooped to raise it, but she bent over me
almost fiercely:

“You shall not!” she cried, sternly; “you shall not
look upon my husband!”

I surrendered it, half in terror, and for the moment
she seemed unconscious that she had betrayed her
cherished secret; for this was the first intimation I had
had that she was other than she seemed—a quiet, single
woman, living alone. For an instant she looked
upon the pictured face with an expression I could not
quite translate. There was pride in it, passion, tenderness
which softened even her hard features, and yet
with all these was blended a look of intense pain.

“I did not mean to see that face now,” she murmured
rather to herself than me. There seemed a fascination
in the proud lineaments on which she gazed,
from which she could not bear to turn away; but at
length she resolutely shut the case, and pushed it from
her into the farther corner of the drawer. Then she
looked at me, and said, in tones as sharp and imperative
as ever,

“You have surprised me out of my secret. Now I
hope you'll have honor enough to keep it. I would
not have even your grandfather know that Hester
Wilde is other than she appears.”

I gave the promise which her words seemed to require,
and then I lingered in the expectation that she
would reveal more of her history. But I was disappointed.
She was silent and thoughtful. She evidently
wished to be left alone, and I very soon went
away. As I went out of the door a strong perfume
greeted me from a scarlet geranium standing there in

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

the sun; and from that day to this the scent of scarlet
geranium, no matter where I meet it, always brings
before my eyes a picture—a glowing, glorious August
afternoon; the brown house behind the poplars; the
lone woman standing there in her proud silence; and,
above all, that pictured face, seen but for a moment,
yet never afterward to be forgotten.

Days braided themselves into weeks, and though I
visited Mistress Hester Wilde very often, she never
alluded to the scenes of that August afternoon. But
I fancied, somehow, that we drew constantly nearer to
each other. More recently I had made another discovery,
quite as startling as the first: Hester was a
student and a genius. I had found Greek and Latin
authors in her closet; and gradually I had so far won
her confidence, that she uttered in my hearing some
of the thoughts which the woods, and the winds, and
the everlasting sky were forever speaking to her solemn,
solitary life; and I grew to hold her in strange
reverence.

One wild November afternoon Tommy Wilson came
for me. It was drawing toward night, and in the west
a storm seemed rising. The wind blew outside a slow,
monotonous dirge, and I sat by my window watching
the red leaves it whirled along from the maple-trees.
The boy made his awkward, shuffling bow at the door,
and then, coming in, put a note into my hand. It was
written in the stiff, regular chirography of Hester
Wilde, and it said,

“Louise, will you come to me? I have not felt
well for some time, and at last I am forced to yield to
the illness so long resisted. I think a storm is coming
up. If you do not fear to encounter it here, and if

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

you can so far forget your old terror of the ghosts,
will you stay all night with me?”

I smiled at her allusion to the ghosts. This one
brave, solitary woman had lived so long unharmed in
their immediate vicinity, that they had well-nigh lost
their terror for me, and I tied on my bonnet and hurried
up the hill, well pleased with the invitation. It
seemed to me, as I approached, that every thing wore
a look even more deserted than usual. The sentinel
poplars along the walk lifted up their great naked
boughs, and over the carpet of dry, faded leaves, on
which my footfall made a crackling sound, the winds
rustled slumbrously. I opened the door without
knocking, and entered. Hester was not in her accustomed
place in her neat kitchen, but her cold voice
proceeded from the bedroom beyond, and summoned
me. I went in, and she half sat, half reclined upon
her bed, bolstered up with pillows. Her face seemed
actually wan in the dim light, and I noticed that her
hands clutched the bed-clothes tightly, as one in pain.

“I am glad you have come,” she said, as I entered.
“For the first time I was unwilling to be left here
alone. Besides, I think I have not long to live, and I
have resolved to tell you to-night the story of my life.
You might hear false accounts of me when I am gone,
and I would like to have you know the truth.”

“But what is the matter?” I cried, in alarm. “What
caused this sudden illness? What makes you look so
wan and white?”

“The illness is not sudden. My heart has been terribly
diseased for some time. When I came here I
knew the blow had been struck, and that I had not
long to live. So far, I have struggled against it, but

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

now it has become too strong for me. But you must
be quiet. I have a very painful task before me, and
if I am to tell you my story I can not be interrupted.
It is almost dark. You may light that wax candle
yonder. It will require no care, and last the whole
night.”

I obeyed her; and then, drawing up an easy-chair,
I settled myself in a comfortable position by the bedside,
and she began:

“I was born in Georgia, though you would never
think me a daughter of the soft, sunny South. My
father, however, was a New Englander, and perhaps
it was from this union of the North and South that I
derived the very opposite qualities in my nature. I
look like my father. He had the same coarse hair,
the same stiff angularity of figure, and the same hardness,
so to speak, of voice. From him also I inherited
an energy very unusual in that enervating climate.
From him I derived an intense, passionate love of
study, particularly of languages and mathematics. But
from my mother came an undercurrent of fire—smouldering,
volcano-like, beneath the overlying hardness
of my nature. From her came the quick perceptions,
the passionate worship of the beautiful, the hidden sensitiveness,
to which you, my friend, have given the
name of genius.

“I was not more than twelve years old when, within
two days of each other, an epidemic carried off both
my parents. Different as they were, they had loved
each other tenderly, and I, their only child, sympathized
enough even then in the wonderful mystery of
that love whose outward symbol is marriage, to rejoice
that since one must be taken, the other was not

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

left behind to mourn. I bore this great sorrow, outwardly,
with a calm patience, far too old for my childish
years; but inwardly, fierce flames of passionate
grief swept over the child's heart, and left it arid and
desolate.

“In the whole world there was no one to love
me. I was not at all a prepossessing child—a shy,
dark, silent girl, caring little for society, liking best
to take some cherished book, and flee away into solitude
and stillness. But my mother had understood
me. In my nature were all those strong qualities so
unlike herself, which, by some strange spell, had made
my father the object of her worship, united to an underlying
current of emotions so like her own that I
scarcely needed to give my thoughts utterance in order
to be comprehended. Her death had left me alone.
There was no human being on all God's fair earth, it
seemed to me, so utterly loveless and sorrow-stricken
as myself. I was not a buoyant child. I had no far-reaching
hopes, to sit all day, like golden-winged birds,
and sing me siren strains of future love and joy. I
expected to pass through life misunderstood and unloved,
and I accepted my destiny with a kind of savage
content.

“The guardian to whom my father had left me was
a Mr. Randall, an old friend of his own, living in a
handsome country house on the margin of the Hudson.
He had a graceful, sweet-tempered wife, and three
daughters, beautiful girls, the youngest a year younger
than myself, and the eldest three years older. They
received me very kindly, and, indeed, during my whole
life with them, I had never any thing unkind to complain
of. But they were not of my kind. Among

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

those blue-eyed fair-haired girls I looked, with my
straight black hair and dark skin, like some Indian
waiting-maid; nor would my stiff, ungraceful motions
have denoted any higher position or more careful training.
I think this soured me in a degree. No outside
observer could have perceived the contrast half
so actuely as I, with my sensitive pride, my passionate
love for the beautiful.

“I loved the beauty of the Misses Randall, but I do
not think I always felt toward them as kindly as, considering
they were my only friends in the world, would
have seemed natural. In particular, I used to have
a kind of instinctive dread of the elder, Miss Jessie
Randall. She was called a very amiable, pleasant girl,
and there was really about her an extreme softness,
a certain pliancy of muscle, manner, and voice. To
me, however, it always seemed a dangerous and deadly
softness. The large bright blue eyes never fearlessly
met your own. It is true, there was a semblance of
great modesty in the way the golden lashes drooped
over them, but the frank, uplifting eyes of her younger
sister Anne pleased me a great deal better. By some
strange association of ideas Jessie always seemed to
me like a cat—an animal I held in the extremest abhorrence,
from the gliding, stealthy motion, to the
treacherous claws cased in velvet. A curious prophetic
instinct made me look upon her as an enemy,
and yet she was uniformly polite to me. She smilingly
tolerated all my rudeness, apologized for my
brusquerie, and appeared so amiable that every day she
grew more and more out of my favor.

“We were educated at home by teachers. Miss
Jessie's education was completed at eighteen, and an

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

elegant wardrobe was provided, in which, under the
care of an aunt residing in New York, she was to make
her début. Nothing could have been more beautiful
than Jessie Randall at that age. Her sisters were more
than pretty, but she was, par excellence, the beauty, and
on her, above all, was the ambition of her father and
mother centred.

“She had been trained carefully in every accomplishment.
Her snowy fingers discoursed ravishing music
on the harp and piano; her voice was sweet and clear;
her dancing had been pronounced, by our gallant
French teacher, `the very poetry of motion;' and her
manners were considered faultless. We who were left
behind heard of her triumphs—how joyously her days
were floating on; of her appearance at party, theatre,
and opera; and I, imbittered perchance by a consciousness
of my own entire incapacity to attract, would inwardly
cry out,

“`Oh, shame upon her for a woman! Does she
think this dancing, and dressing, and reigning is all
that there is of life? that for no better ends than these
God has made her so beautiful?'

“For the next three years Miss Jessie was seldom
at home; and when she did come, she would bring
with her a train of her city friends, brightening up the
house with their gay dresses and brilliant jewels, as if
a flock of tropical birds had alighted there, pausing in
their flight.

“In the mean time I grew up, as was the promise
of my childhood, plain and shy. I bestowed all my
suppressed enthusiasm on study; all my friendship
on my black horse, Hercules. When I was eighteen
our teachers were dismissed, and I came into

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

possession of the liberal allowance which my father had assigned
me from eighteen until I should be twenty-one,
when my fortune, large at first, and greatly increased
by accumulation during the comparatively inexpensive
years of my minority, was to come into my possession
unencumbered, and unfettered by a single restraint.

“About the period of my eighteenth birthday Jessie
Randall came home for a much longer stay than
usual. It was a beautiful autumn. I remember how
glorious every thing looked to me. I was young, in
high health, and had begun to be hopeful. I was not
long in discovering that among the gay friends whom,
as usual, Jessie had brought with her, was one, a Mr.
Eldredge, the cynosure of all, the chief object of interest.
He was the life and soul of their parties of pleasure.
He rode, he danced, he jested—in short, he
seemed crowned of all manly graces, natural and acquired.
I had never before seen any one who so nearly
approached my ideal of masculine perfection. I did
not speak of him, even to Anne, who during this influx
of visitors was my room-mate, but mentally I compared
him to Apollo and Ulysses, my favorite heroes
of the classic world, in which so much of my life had
been spent.

“I was considered old enough now to go into society,
and I was doomed to weary evenings of unoccupied,
listless looking on, while the gay party sung, and
danced, and acted charades. But the weariness was
short-lived. I soon became intensely absorbed in the
contemplation of this same Wilton Eldredge.”

“What!” I exclaimed, interrupting her, “was it the
owner of this house?” She went on without heeding
me:

[figure description] Page 093.[end figure description]

“Every development of his character, every expression
of his face, was a welcome study to me. I soon
perceived that in what I had at first thought perfection,
there were many deficiencies. Physically, nothing
was wanting. I have seen years of life since then, and
yet I have never looked upon one more perfect in
manly beauty. Intellectually, I discovered he possessed
more brilliancy than depth. That is to say, intellectually
he was indolent, and to a certain extent superficial.
Morally, his want of energy was still more
culpable. He would assent to a wrong opinion, countenance
a wrong action, rather than arouse himself to
the exertion of resistance. These spots upon my sun
had troubled me greatly at first, for I had a nature inflexible
in its stern love of right and justice; but I was
rapidly losing the consciousness of them in my admiration
for his beauty, for the strong sense, the glow, so
to speak, of physical life that animated his face, and
radiated over his whole being. I thought, too, and this
conviction has never left me, that there were depths
in his nature which needed only the angel's `troubling
wing' to bring the bright waters of healing to the brink.

“He had been there two weeks without addressing
a single observation to me after our first introduction.
It was a bright October morning; the leaves were just
turning, and a thousand gorgeous tints, sparkling with
dew-drops, flashed back the sunlight. A horseback
ride had been arranged to some place of interest in the
neighborhood, and my horse had been brought out
among the rest. Going through the hall, I had caught
the reflection of my face and figure in a full-length
mirror hanging there, and, for the moment, I was impious.
My wild thoughts arraigned God, who had

[figure description] Page 094.[end figure description]

made me so unlovely that to no human being could
my face give pleasure. I went out into the sunshine,
among that group of glad young creatures, every one
of whom had her own distinctive charm, and I stood
there, as I felt, like a black, ugly shadow—the only
blot upon the landscape. Jessie, in particular, had
never seemed so beautiful. Her slight, undulating figure
showed to advantage in her close-fitting ridinghabit
of Marie Louise blue; her golden curls fell in a
shower from beneath her beaver hat; and her face,
oh! I thought at that moment she was radiant as Helen
when she tempted Paris to his doom. They mounted
their steeds among jests and silvery laughter, with
courtly aid from their attendant cavaliers. As ever,
Wilton Eldredge was close at Jessie's side; for, though
there was no positive engagement, rumor said our fair
`eldest' would not long remain unwedded.

“Without assistance I vaulted upon the back of my
own horse, and dashed off in an opposite direction from
that which the party were to take. The fresh autumn
wind blowing in my face restored my reason, and I repented
of my momentary insanity, and began to bless
God for life, when in the very sense of existence—of
being—was so much joy. I remembered how much
on earth was worth living for besides idle dreams of
love—pleasure-palaces—gilded by youth and beauty.

“I had ridden perhaps a mile, when I heard the
quick tramp of a horse behind me. I did not turn my
head, and in a moment more Wilton Eldredge rode to
my side.

“`Well,' he said, in his gay, ringing voice, `well,
runaway, I am commissioned to bring you back to the
rest of our party.'

[figure description] Page 095.[end figure description]

“`Thank you. I had rather not go.'

“`But why? Let me tell you, Miss Hester Wilde,
it looks very ungirllike and unsociable to be riding off
by yourself in this way. Will you tell me your reason?
'

“I was one of those who never take a medium course—
I must obey or disobey. Perfect truth was an element
of my nature: I must answer honestly or not at
all. I chose the former.

“`Because,' I said, `I am very plain. I look out
of character among those beauties. I don't want to
go with them. It makes me feel wicked.'

“`A little envious, hey? You are honest in your
confession, Miss Wilde.'

“`No, sir, not envious; but it makes me feel wicked—
as if, somehow, God hadn't used me well in making
me so plain nobody could ever love me.'

“I should have liked him less if he had insulted my
common sense by contradicting or complimenting me.
He did neither. He made no answer to my speech,
and for a moment there was silence. Then he said,

“`You have been studying me closely for two weeks
back, Miss Wilde. What have you made out?'

“A crimson glow suffused my face as he bent his
laughing eyes upon me; but I answered, honestly still,

“`Well, sir, I have discovered that you love beauty
almost as intensely as I do; that you love ease and
pleasure better yet—mental ease I mean, for physically
you are not lazy; that you would be thorough if being
brilliant had not already satisfied your ambition,
and good if it were not too much trouble.'

“`Well, Miss Wilde,' with a slightly disturbed face
and a bow of mock courtesy, `you are at least candid.

[figure description] Page 096.[end figure description]

You have read me like a witch, as I suspect you are;
and now, let me tell you, I too have studied you, though
I'll wager you have never seen me look at you. I have
found out several things. To begin with, you think
me very handsome, and for that compliment your humble
servant is much obliged.'

“I blushed more painfully than ever; but he went
on:

“`You think your cousin Jessie little better than a
beautiful butterfly. You come as near to envying her
loveliness as your pride will allow you; and then you
flatter yourself that you pity her for making what you
call an unworthy use of it. Now I don't sympathize
with you there. I neither envy nor pity the fair Jessie.
I am contented to look at her. What has a star
to do but to shine? You know more about books
than people; you are honest, but too proud to be half
as happy as you ought; and, finally, you and I are so
very unlike that I think we shall be excellent friends.'

“Oh! how I hoped so in my heart, as I looked up
at him, much as the Lady of Shalott might have looked
at Sir Launcelot riding by with his `Tirra—lirra.'
We had both of us forgotten that he was to take me
back to the gay company he had left, and we rode on
in the bright autumn sunlight, while I drank in, at
every pore of my being, such happiness as comes but
seldom in a lifetime.

“After that our acquaintance progressed rapidly.
Scarcely a day passed that he did not join me in my
morning rides and rambles, and I think these meetings
were as pleasant to him as to me. He said I was
so different from the women he had known before, so
unconventional and so honest; and I became conscious

[figure description] Page 097.[end figure description]

of a power to call into action all that was noblest in
his nature and loftiest in his thoughts. It is one of
the surest ways to awaken the highest elements of
character to let their possessor feel that he is expected
to be a giant and not a pigmy. It was many days before
I realized how dangerous was this new acquaintance
to my peace. Before I was aware, the whole tide
of my being had set in one channel. I, who had never
before felt other than the general and diffusive sympathies
of humanity for any human being, loved now, unsought,
unwooed, with all the silent, resistless might of
my passionate but reserved nature. This knowledge
came to me with a bitter pang.

“For the most part, all his attentions to me had
been bestowed during our solitary rides and rambles,
and in the evening he was Jessie's constant cavalier as
before. At first, I had accepted the common rumor
which coupled their future together without regret or
questioning. Of late, when my glimpses into his inner
nature had been more frequent, I had begun to
doubt her ability to enchain his preference; and, finally,
I had resolutely cast the Future from my mind altogether,
and quaffed eagerly the wine of joy held to
my lips by the rosy fingers of the Present.

“But one night he, my hero, was more attentive to
her than usual—he seemed to hang upon her every
look and word; and, finally, some plan for the coming
winter was discussed, in which she seemed to turn to
him for his approbation, and I heard his reply:

“`It matters little where you are, since, wherever
you are, we shall be together.'

“For a moment my eyes were blinded, my limbs
were paralyzed. Then, with an instinctive feeling that

[figure description] Page 098.[end figure description]

his gaze was upon me, I arose and went out. That
night I never closed my eyes. No moan or cry escaped
me. I suffered dumbly such pangs as her shallow
nature never could have comprehended. But I
could not submit. Once more I arraigned my Maker.
I asked him why on my poor life had been poured
out so much bitterness—why He had given me such
power to love, when no kiss of husband or of children
could ever bring the warmth to my cold lips? Why
I must so worship beauty, when I possessed not one
element to gratify this yearning? Thinking of it afterward,
I wondered He whom I blasphemed in my
madness had not struck me dumb; but He spared me.
The face of the night was calm, the stars shone above
my speechless agony, and the silent moon looked down
lovingly upon even me.

“In the morning I rose. I bathed my tearless eyes,
smoothed my disordered hair, and went out. Never
was there a brighter day. Dew-drops glistened like
diamonds on every spray, and below me the blue river
wound along, flashing gayly in the sunshine, and singing
as it journeyed to the sea. Up to the loving, leaning
sky I lifted my ghastly, defiant face, and then a
voice fell on my ear, gay, mocking, yet tender:

“`Does the sky pity you, Hester?'

“Wilton Eldredge had followed me. He came to
my side.

“`No, I don't think the sky does pity you. You
don't look comforted. Perhaps I can do you more
good. I see you have not been crying, hard girl that
you are; but you haven't slept any all night. Now I
shouldn't tell you how bad I have been if I didn't
know, beforehand, you would forgive me. I made

[figure description] Page 099.[end figure description]

that remark to Miss Jessie last night on purpose for
you to hear. I wanted to find out whether you loved
me. You had been too proud to show it—I meant to
make you. I saw it struck home when I said it. I
don't think I meant to make you suffer quite so much,
and yet it is flattering, Hester.'

“He looked into my face with a roguish smile. Ah!
if his fault had been ten times as great, I could not
have chosen but to forgive him. Can you fancy what
it would be if you had been immured in a dark dungeon
for life; if the days and the nights had come and
gone above your misery till your soul sickened, and,
just as your despair was growing absolute, one should
throw open the iron door, and heaven's own bright
sunshine should once more trance your life with its
half-forgotten glory? But that would be nothing to
the flood of light which broke upon my whole being.

“`Your face is transfigured, Hester,' said Wilton
Eldredge, looking at me. Then he went on gayly:
`You ought to have known I loved you all the time,
else why did I seek you? Jessie I do not love—that
is, I do love her as I love all beautiful women, but not,
oh, not as I love you! I want to marry you, Hester.
Will you have me?”

“He drew nearer to me, and waited for my reply.
I could not utter a word. The depths of my being
were stirred, and the waves gushed to my lips in too
full a tide. I put my hand in his, and—it was almost
the first time in my life—the tears fell from my eyes,
and glittered on the grass at my feet. For once all his
lightness and gayety were gone. He said, solemnly,

“`I love you, Hester. Plain, and shy, and dark as
you are, you are more to me than all other women.

[figure description] Page 100.[end figure description]

You have appealed to all that is lofty in my nature.
You have ennobled me, and I give you my life. If I
am not faithful, Hester, may the Lord judge between
us!”

“I believed him then; I knew that I was beloved;
and, looking back now over all the years, I believe still
that in that hour, heart and soul, he was mine. Our
hearts were too full for farther speech. We walked
back to the house in silence—my hand upon his arm,
as became his betrothed. Jessie Randall smiled as she
saw us coming up the steps—a kind of speculative,
derisive smile; but that morning our engagement was
announced, and she was first in her congratulations.
Her vanity must have been piqued, and perhaps—I
do not know—her heart was wounded; but she had
far too much tact to show it. She danced, and sang,
and flirted as gayly as ever.

“Soon after this, one little circumstance occurred
which I must not forget to mention, as after years
brought it back to my thoughts. My father's will
provided that, if I married before I was twenty-one, I
should come into the full possession of my property,
though it was to be secured to myself. I mentioned
this one day to my lover, saying playfully, in the fullness
of my joy,

“`You didn't know what a golden treasure you had
won. Confess, now, did you ever hear I was rich?'

“`Oh yes,' he said, with careless sincerity; `I knew
that always. I used to be very proud, Hester. You
would call it a weakness, but I don't think, if you had
been poor, we should ever have become acquainted.'

“I remember the remark thrilled me at the time
with a sudden pang; but I reflected how natural was

[figure description] Page 101.[end figure description]

this feeling to one educated as he had been, and soon
it passed from my mind.

“I do not think there had been any vanity in my
desire for beauty; for, from the moment I knew that
he was mine—he, my king, my eidolon of love—I
ceased to repine that fate had not been more bountiful.
He loved me—I was precious in his sight—that
was enough. My very face became dear to me because
of the radiance his glances reflected upon it. I
would not have had a single feature changed. For
the rest of the world I cared not. He was my universe.

“Some women might have thought his continued
attentions to the fair Jessie—which she received with
a kind of repellent raillery, irresistibly piquant and
charming—were cause enough for jealousy. But that
was not in my nature. I was too proud of my lover
ever to doubt him, and I do not think he gave me any
cause. Beyond a man's natural admiration for pretty
women, I do think that he was true to me—that all his
tenderest thoughts centred in the bride he had chosen.

“Our engagement was a short one. We were married
in December, and we went immediately to reside
on my paternal estate of Heath Cliffe, in Georgia.
This was my wish, and Wilton seemed to unite in it.
In truth, his wife was not charming enough to tempt
him into society, that the world might appreciate the
treasure he had won. I think now that he must have
had an ever-present consciousness, which no love had
power to soften, of my irredeemable want of beauty.
Despite that, however, we were happy.

“Our Southern home was dowered with the rich
gifts of nature, and we did all that art and wealth could

[figure description] Page 102.[end figure description]

do to enhance its natural loveliness. My life, for a
time, seemed to overbrim with gladness. I had enough
and to spare, and I scattered loving words and deeds
on all around as carelessly as a rose sheds dew-drops.

“Three years passed, and a new joy grew into both
our hearts. We were expecting God's sweetest gift—
a little child—to nestle on our bosoms, and look up at
us with its shy, sweet eyes. Around this vision we
wove bright and beautiful fancies. In its presence our
thoughts grew sweet, yet solemn as prayers.

“The day of trial came. There were a few hours
of terrible suffering, and then they laid my baby girl
upon my bosom, cold and dead. The eyes I had
dreamed would meet my own opened only in heaven—
the baby voice I had thought would coo out such
murmurous music responded only to the symphonies
of the angels. The Great Father had need of her.
The mysterious instinct of motherhood had been
aroused within me, stirring all my nature, and now
the new chord was broken.

“For a little while I held her there—my dead child,
my wonderful, beautiful mystery—and then they took
her from my arms and buried her. They made her
grave—I would have it so—in a bower of magnolias,
where Wilton and I loved best to sit together, so that
in our hours of tenderest intercourse her memory
might blend, and all that earth held of her be near us.
Had she lived, she must have been very lovely; for
she was her father's own child, and her baby features
seemed a reflection of his.

“God never gave me another child; but, hard as it
was, at first, to resign myself to His will, I was very
happy. And yet my husband would not have made

[figure description] Page 103.[end figure description]

some women so, even had their love for him been as
true and fervent as my own. He was arbitrary in his
disposition, absolute in his control over the minutest
actions of my life. But, proud as I was to others,
while I believed in his love I had no pride for him.
Even this control was grateful to me. Love made the
yoke easy to be borne. I had no troubles. Only once
or twice, when he had been absent upon business a
little longer than I thought necessary, I had been conscious
of a passing twinge of fear lest my society was
not so much life, air, sunshine to him as his was to me—
lest I did not make his home so attractive as a more
beautiful woman would have done. But when he
came back, once more his kisses upon my lips would
charm away my fears, and my life would be all brightness.

“We had been married ten years without so much
as meeting any of my guardian's family. At last, one
evening in early spring, my husband, opening the letter-bag,
tossed into my lap a dainty, delicate-looking
epistle, on the outside of which I at once recognized
the smooth, flowing, characteristic chirography of Miss
Jessie Randall—still Miss Jessie Randall after all these
years. I broke the seal, and the letter informed me
that she was blasé, as she said, ennuied of fashion, and
folly, and New York. She smelled from afar the fragrance
of my Southern roses. Might she come and
gather a bouquet of them? I should find she had
grown very good, she added. She was quite a different
woman at thirty-one from what she had been at
twenty, and she really thought we should get on nicely
together, particularly if I would keep my satirical,
too perfect husband out of the way. Indeed, she made

[figure description] Page 104.[end figure description]

so sure of a welcome that she should be with me almost
as soon as her letter.

“I had always ridiculed presentiments, and yet, as
I read that letter, I was seized with a mortal dread.
A sudden spasm of blinding pain came and went, leaving
my cheek blanched, my lips rigid. In the distance
I seemed to hear the future wail out a warning of the
events she was bringing me. I reasoned with myself
a moment. What trouble could there be in store?
My confidence in my husband was perfect. I should
be selfish not to rejoice that some one else was coming
to enliven the solitary life so much of which he passed
alone with me. Besides, my guardian's daughter had
a right to as warm a welcome as her father had given
me when I went to his home a helpless orphan. So
reasoning, I regained my self-command, overcame my
undefined dread, and, handing the letter across to Wilton,
said cheerfully,

“`Read that, dear. Jessie Randall is coming to us.
It seems we may expect her any day now.'

“He took the letter and glanced over it.

“`What a graceful hand!' he said.

“Alas! those words cost me another pang. You
know what my writing is. There never was any grace
in that, or any other of my outward manifestations.

“`A pretty, piquant style,' he said, as he handed
the letter back. `This visit will be a fine thing to set
you up, Hester. You are growing thin, and it's confoundedly
dull here. Jessie must be a splendid woman
by this time!' Then, seeing a look of pain upon my
face, he added, `My gifted wife, though, is worth a
dozen such.' Then he kissed me gayly, and went out.

“That was our last evening alone together. He

[figure description] Page 105.[end figure description]

had never been more tender, more thoughtful. The
next day Jessie came. Wilton was out of the house
when she arrived. I expressed my regret that he was
not there to welcome her.

“`Nonsense!' she cried, with a kiss I shrank from,
and did not return. `I had quite as lief he would not
see me in this chrysalis state,' pointing to her gray traveling-wrap,
somewhat covered with dust, and the `ugly'
drawn over her straw bonnet.

“I conducted her to her room, and then, sending my
own maid to unpack her trunks and assist her, I went
down to give directions for my early tea. When the
bell sounded she came, looking quite refreshed and radiant.
Time had dealt lightly with her. She was
even more beautiful than in her girlhood. Her proportions
were more mature, her grace more queenly,
her self-possession more perfect. Her taste, too, always
exquisite, perfected by years of patient study, was now
faultless. Wilton met her at the dining-room door.
I saw him start back as if bewildered by this unexpected
vision. He welcomed her cordially, and she
came in and took her seat at the board. Sitting beside
her, I forgot that I was a loved and loving wife, and
once more, in my heart-sickness, I seemed to myself the
black, ugly shadow, necessary and welcome to no one,
which I had been in the days when I first knew her.

“Weeks passed on, however, without bringing me
any thing of which to complain. It is true, I seldom
saw my husband alone. Most of his time was occupied
with our guest; walking with her, riding with
her, or listening, in the pleasant evenings of early summer,
to melody so entrancing that even I was charmed
out of myself.”

[figure description] Page 106.[end figure description]

At this stage of her narrative I glanced at Hester's
face. It was fearfully pale. Her nerves trembled,
and her whole appearance gave signs of extreme exhaustion.
I had been too much absorbed in her story
to notice this before; now it frightened me.

“You are overtasking yourself,” I said, earnestly.
“Don't! You mustn't go on. It will kill you. You
can not bear it.”

“Yes, I must do what I do very quickly,” she answered,
solemnly. “Just hand me that glass of wine.
It will strengthen me a little. There!

“I said at first I had nothing to complain of, and
yet all this time a weary, desolate weight was settling
down upon my heart. I went often alone to the little
grave where they had buried my baby, and there only
I could weep. Oh, what a blessed relief those tears
were!

“One night they had gone out to take a walk, and
I turned my footsteps toward the accustomed spot.
As I drew near I heard voices. I stole noiselessly toward
the bower, and, standing on one side, looked in
through the leaves. There, above my child's grave,
his child and mine, knelt my husband; on the seat
beside him sat Jessie, her beautiful eyes beaming on
him through a mist of tears, her hand clasped passionately
in his. I thought not of propriety, or so-called
honor, when my all was at stake. I listened—listened
with strained ears, desperately, eagerly, as for my life.

“`She was rich, you know, and I was poor,' I heard
him say, as I drew near, and then came shudderingly
back to me the memory of how he himself had said,
in the days of our engagement, that, had he not known
I was rich, he should never have sought me. I bit my

[figure description] Page 107.[end figure description]

lip and held my breath. Her soft, purring, catlike
tones came next:

“`Then you did love me?'

“`Love you! For what else did I go there but for
love of you? There was not an hour before my marriage
when you might not have drawn me to your
feet, had you willed it. But what matters that? I
did not love you then as I love you now — Jessie,
Jessie!'

“He said her name over and over again, as if its
syllables embodied all tenderness—and I, I listened. I
can not tell you what else they said; light words of me—
cold, sneering words; pledges of eternal love; and
yet, notwithstanding she exchanged these vows, her
firm refusal of even a single kiss—I understood it all.
She wished him to contrive some pretext for divorcing
me, and then she would be his wife—be revenged for
the innocent wound I had once given to her vanity,
nay, perhaps to her heart; for I think she must have
loved him as well as such a nature could.

“I wonder I did not go mad. I wonder, roused to
phrensy, I had not stood before them and denounced
them — cursed them by my love and my wrongs.
But I did not. I still retained the deep, undemonstrative
nature of my childhood. I listened until I
could listen no longer, and then, my hands tightly
clasped, my lips resolutely sealed, I walked noiselessly
toward the house. I gave myself no time for repining.
I would not let my sick heart utter a single cry;
I sat down and looked my grief steadily in the face.
One thing I saw clearly—I was no longer loved. I
stood in the way of his happiness whom I would have
died to bless. I had promised to cleave to him for

[figure description] Page 108.[end figure description]

better, for worse, until death parted us; but now his
own words had raised up between us a barrier more
effectual than death ever could. I would depart and
leave him free. I had one wild, irrepressible dread,
and that was of meeting him again. How could I hear
his voice, how look upon his face, I whom he loved no
longer? Let me go any where, any where, was the
wail of my heart—only let me get out of his way. A
beautiful woman would not so have given him up, but
I had no confidence in my own powers. Besides, from
childhood I had learned to yield; and more than all,
during the ten years of my married life, had I been
daily and hourly learning the lesson that my happiness
was nothing to his, and I never thought of putting
them into competition. I made up a bundle of a
few necessary things. In it I put a tress of his hair,
a miniature which he had given me during our brief
engagement, and the letters I had received from him
in his short absences. Then I wrote him a few lines.
I told him that I had listened to the scene in the arbor
over my dead child's grave; that I knew all—and
then I said,

“`Because I do know this I am going out of your
sight. I have staid with you while I thought I was
necessary to your happiness, but now that I am in
your way, I love you too truly not to go. But oh, my
husband! my heart's own husband! I leave you my
blessing. Its fullness shall abide with you, even
though her head should lie, where mine so often has
rested, upon your bosom.'

“Then I ordered a trusty servant, who had been
my mother's, and who loved nothing on earth so well
as his mistress, to bring horses for himself and me.

[figure description] Page 109.[end figure description]

In ten minutes we were on our way. I do not know
whether any attempts were made to pursue us. At
any rate, in three days we reached Savannah, and I
went to my lawyer. One haunting fear had seized
me, that my husband might seek a reconciliation with
me for the sake of my fortune. There never could be
a moment of my future life when I would not receive
him with open arms; but if he came, it must be from
love, and not from policy. With the assistance of
Mr. Brief, I executed an instrument conveying to him,
without incumbrance or restriction, all my property,
reserving for myself but a mere pittance. Leaving a
copy with the lawyer, I intrusted this instrument to
Pompey's care, and dispatched him on his return to
Heath Cliffe. The same night I started for the North.
Fate or chance led my steps to a town about twenty
miles from here, and I was soon established in a quiet
boarding-place. What I suffered God only knows. I
have made no moan; I will not.

“From that day to this—it is three years now—I
have never heard from Wilton. My heart has been
troubling me more and more, and I have felt that the
struggle with death would be but brief. Last spring I
read, by chance, your grandfather's advertisement. I
recognized the house as being my husband's early
home, and I at once applied for it. I loved him as
fondly as ever. I yearned with irrepressible yearning
for the tones of his voice, the touch of his hand, or the
sound of his foot upon the stair. I longed to come
here—to dwell in solitude and silence where he had
played, a young, innocent boy, pillowing his head upon
his mother's breast. I thought these fancies would be
company for me. Besides, there was another reason,

[figure description] Page 110.[end figure description]

which I scarcely owned to myself. I thought perhaps
this might lead to my seeing him once more. I could
not put aside the belief that he had loved me once. I
knew he had had no means of learning the place of
my abode since we parted; that he could not have
found me had he sought me even with tears. Now I
thought he would learn from your grandfather that
one Hester Wilde, a lone woman, was his tenant, and
perchance he would come to me.

“I have waited, vainly; but, ten days ago, the cloud
began to lift, and I could see the faint dawn of day.
I read the announcement of Jessie Randall's marriage
to a rich old man in New York. I knew then that
my husband was not with her. At the same moment
I felt that the hand of death was on me; that I had
but a few days more to live. In the might of my dying
life and my undying love I sent my soul forth to
summon him. I prayed, I wrestled with God that I
might look upon his face once more this side of heaven,
and since then I have been waiting.”

She sank back as she said this in utter prostration,
and lay there, her face growing fearfully deathlike in
the steady light of the wax-candle. I drew my watch
from my belt; it was almost midnight. Suddenly she
started up.

“Listen!” she cried, with wild energy, “listen!”

My first thought was of the ghosts. I listened
breathlessly, but I heard nothing save the storm—
which, having come on at nightfall, had risen now to
a gale, and was bursting wildly against the windows,
and rocking the old brown house to its foundations.

“Don't you hear it?” she cried, eagerly—“a horse,
coming here?”

[figure description] Page 111.[end figure description]

I could hear it now, plainly enough—the tramp of
a horse ridden furiously. It came in at the gate, up
the long poplar walk. It stopped, and the rider dismounted
before our very door. Hester had risen up
in bed now. Her head was bent forward, and every
wan feature was aglow with longing anticipation. The
door opened, he sprang in, and in a moment the original
of Mistress Hester Wilde's miniature stood before
me; but sadly worn and wasted, as if by long sorrow,
was the proud, noble face now. He did not seem even
to see me. He sank on his knees by Hester's bedside,
and, gathering her up, folded her to his bosom. Her
arms were closely clasped about his neck, her head
sank on his shoulder, and a low murmur of ineffable
peace floated from her lips.

“Wife—saint—idol—blessed one!” he cried, holding
her there, “you shall not kiss me, you shall not
even utter that forgiveness for want of which, for three
long years, I have been slowly dying, until you hear
my story. I did love you, Hester, God knows. I did
love you, and no other. I went into the house that
fatal night. I sought you in our own room. I found
your note, and read it. Oh, Hester! its uncomplaining,
patient tenderness thrilled me as no reproaches
could have done. I felt then that your heart was broken.
How I longed to cast myself at your feet, to
pray for your forgiveness! I loved you so unutterably.
You had never been so dear; and I loathed with
deadliest loathing the beautiful Evil who had tempted
me from you. Before light the next morning I had
left Heath Cliffe and started in pursuit of you. I left
behind me a few lines for Miss Randall, in which I inclosed
a copy of your note. I told her I had awaked

[figure description] Page 112.[end figure description]

from my mad dream, and how inexpressibly dear beyond
all earthly objects was the wife I had lost. I
reached Savannah the day after you had left. Your
deed of all your property to me was another stab, piercing
my very heart. I had no clew by which to trace
you, and so I staid there until I heard that Miss Blair
had left Heath Cliffe, and was en route for the North.
Then I went home and waited. Oh, Hester! I sometimes
thought you would come back, but as time passed
on this hope faded. It was only three months since
that I learned you were living here; and then you
seemed so pure, so perfect, so far removed from me,
that I dared not come to you. But ten days ago, at
noonday, I heard, or fancied that I heard, a voice. The
tones were like yours, but it seemed to come from very
far off. It uttered a wail, a pleading cry that I should
come to you before you died. I have traveled, since
then, night and day. Here I am; Hester, mine only
one, will you forgive me?”

Her voice was broken now and faltering, very thick
with tears.

“You, too, have much to forgive,” she murmured.
“I did wrong. I was your wife. I should have kept
my place and striven to win you back; but yet, God
knoweth, I did what I thought would make you happiest.”

His arms clasped her tighter. Feebly she raised
her head. Their lips clung together in one long, passionate
kiss, and in that, I know not how, her spirit
was exhaled. The kiss of forgiveness was the kiss of
death.

The storm lulled, and the wind only wailed now like
the tender, sorrowful notes of a solemn psalm. We

[figure description] Page 113.[end figure description]

lifted her up and laid her head back upon the pillow.
A smile was upon her dead face.

Three days later we buried her in the family burying-ground,
behind the stately poplars, and it was not
many weeks before Wilton Eldredge lay down beside
her, to sleep in the same grave his long, dreamless slumber.
The Eldredge family were left without an heir.
No one cared to live in the old brown house. It is
going to decay.

But the dead rest well. At “moonless midnight or
matin prime” they lift not up their covering of verdure.
Suns rise and moons set for them in vain; but I know
there is another country where the long-enduring love
will receive its reward—where the roses are eternal,
and the tenants of the everlasting mansions shall never
die.

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Uncle Roger's Story and Mine.

[figure description] Page 115.[end figure description]

[figure description] Page 116.[end figure description]

p653-122

[figure description] Page 117.[end figure description]

WE were sitting on the upper piazza—my Uncle
Roger Apthorpe and I. It was at his house in
Hingham—a country house, yet looking out upon the
distant ocean, with its countless white wings of sails,
“its million lips of shells,” the cliffs upon its margin,
the islands on its bosom. I had been talking to Uncle
Roger. He was my mother's brother; the house
in which he lived was his inheritance from my grandfather,
and here I spent with him the summer months,
to me the happiest portion of the year.

My mother had died when I was very young. My
father was immersed in the cares of business, and between
my stepmother and myself was always a thin
ice of reserve—perhaps a courteous and unexpressed
hostility. Therefore Uncle Roger was my only confidant.

I had been telling him of a visit I had received that
morning. Young Harry Holt had ridden out from
town, and, in a few manly words, had offered me his
heart and his name. Uncle Roger had listened to my
story with even more than his usual interest. Harry
was one of his prime favorites.

“And you accepted him, Ethel?” he said, inquiringly,
as I paused.

“No, Uncle Roger; why should I? It was my
first offer. I might see fifty men I like better, yet—”

[figure description] Page 118.[end figure description]

Here my conscience gave me a twinge, and I added,
“Or, if I shouldn't, he knows women too well to take
my first `no' for final; he will ask me again.”

Uncle Roger made no reply. I lifted the glass
which lay in my lap, and looked listlessly, yet wistfully,
over the sea at the great ships going out and
coming in. Whence were they? Where did they
go, carrying all their freight of unquiet human souls—
weary souls that could not stay at home, and so traversed
the wide earth over, seeking rest and finding
none? It seemed to me that travel was the forlorn
hope of desperation. Those who were denied happiness
were roaming after excitement. I felt a sadness
I could not explain or define. In its shadow every
thing wore an expression of hopelessness. And yet
that June afternoon was gilding land and sea. A
golden haze, mellow as autumn, warm as summer, lay
in the air. A tender dreaminess brooded over the
whole face of nature. I could hear no sounds, save
the swell of the sea breaking upon the distant beach.
The tide was coming in. Every now and then a tenth
wave broke loftily over the others, scattering its spray
of green, and gold, and violet; its diamonds, amethysts,
and emeralds, perishing, yet how glittering. The sun
was not painfully bright; its garish beams were tempered
by the haze in the atmosphere, the fine, imperceptible
mist rising from the water, and it seemed to
hang in mid air as if conscious that it was the longest
day in the year, and there was no need of hurry in its
journey to the west. The hour and the scene were
both bright. Why was it that my heart could see in
them only images of sadness and unrest!

At length I became conscious that Uncle Roger was

[figure description] Page 119.[end figure description]

watching me. I looked at him. There was a strange
gleam, a flash of youthful fire in the tempered and
quiet sadness of his gray eyes. A flush had risen to
his withered cheeks, and the fingers he had unconsciously
knitted together were tremulous. At any
other time I should have inquired the cause of his
emotion; but my thoughts were preoccupied, and he
was the first to speak.

“And so you have refused Harry Holt, as I take
it, from a mere wanton caprice—a feminine desire to
say `no.' Well, I believe happiness is offered to every
one of us, at least once in life, but not one in a
hundred is wise enough to take it. I thought you
would have been. You are a good girl in the main,
Ethel; a kind heart, not much vanity, but you are a
woman. Human nature will be human nature.”

He drew a long sigh. I looked at him in silent expectation.
I had always felt that his life had a mystery;
that he, with his shrewd mind, his loving heart,
his keen intellect, had not lived alone without a more
than ordinary reason, and I believed the time had
come when he would return my confidence with his
own. I was not disappointed. He was silent for a
while, and his face wore the look of one absorbed in
self-communion, painful but intense. At length he
spoke:

“They say every life has its own romance, Ethel;
I have often meant to tell you mine. At my age the
world would say the dreams of youth should have
long since been forgotten, and yet they are not. Old,
and gray, and sober as I am, there is one name I can
not utter, even to myself, without quickened pulses.

“Caroline Windham was no angel. I think, if she

[figure description] Page 120.[end figure description]

had been, my imperfect human nature, standing afar
off, would have seen in her no charm. She was not
even one of those saint-like beings whom some men
worship—marble without a flaw, faultless perfection.
She was a woman—a girl rather, full of passion, of
pride, of quick, ungoverned impulses. There was a
dainty grace in her movements, a pretty petulance in
her manner. She was one to be loved with fervid,
jealous exactingness, once and forever. She was one
to love, but I did not know that then.

“Her very beauty was peculiar and all her own.
She had a face like a gipsy, with strong lights and
shades, framed in heavy bands of jet-black hair, with
large black eyes flashing out upon you one moment
their subtle electricity, the next veiled by the inky lashes
which swept their penciled shadows over her crimson
cheeks. Her mouth was small, though full—at once
proud and fond. Her figure was rounded and symmetrical.
A physiognomist would, perhaps, have pronounced
her wanting in ideality in the spiritual element,
but he would have told you that her undisciplined
heart was warm; her untried soul, as yet a
stranger to itself, was true.

“I remember to this day every circumstance of our
first meeting. She was the one intimate friend whom
your mother, like all other young ladies, had made at
school; and I came home, from a couple of years of
foreign travel, to find her domesticated for a long visit
in this very house. I had seen many charming women
at home and abroad; many, perhaps, far more
strictly and regularly beautiful than she; but never,
before or since, have I seen one at all like her. I
used to think her piquant, irresistibly fascinating face

[figure description] Page 121.[end figure description]

should have belonged to some Moorish Circe, some
gipsy queen, rather than to Miss Caroline Windham,
daughter of Jonathan Windham, Esq., merchant, of
New York.

“I can see her now just as she looked when I was
introduced to her first—the dark, bright face; the
small head, bound round with a wreath of blood-red
garden roses; the negligent folds of her white muslin
dress, flowing loosely about her figure, and gathered
in at the waist with a crimson girdle. I do not know
but her manner—half careless, half disdainful—would
have repelled me in another. It did not in her; it
seemed perfectly appropriate.

“From that hour I worshiped her, and yet I think
the closest observer would have failed to detect my
adoration. My nature was both proud and reserved,
and my quiet manners seldom gave outward indications
of my feelings. Possibly this very reticence
and apparent stoicism attracted her. At all events,
our acquaintance soon ripened into an intimacy which
might have been friendship, but for the concealed passion
which I had determined not at that time to express,
and which effectually prevented a response on
my part to the friendly and assured familiarity of her
demeanor toward me.

“She seemed to me as winning and as artless as a
child. She uttered all her thoughts frankly, and joined
in every country pleasure with a zest, the natural
result of her city life and education, but which
seemed singular enough to one accustomed to country
life as I had always been.

“That was a happy summer. We sailed, we drove
upon the beach, we fished, we rode, and the long

[figure description] Page 122.[end figure description]

summer day seemed not long enough for our merriment.
Two or three times we went, at nightfall, to watch
the sunset at Nantucket Beach. Once, I remember,
the tide was just coming in. The sun had set gloriously,
kindling the western sky with coruscations of
rainbow-colored flame. The moon was rising, and
threw a long line of silver over the waters. We had
sat down together, Caroline Windham and I, on the
wreck of an old ship that had been cast on the shore
by some of the wild storms so frequent on the rocky
New England coast. Your mother was at a little distance,
looking with dreamy eyes at the sunset clouds.
Poor Ellen, she had her own Spanish castles then—
hers was a loving heart, and it was that summer that
she first met your father. I had never seen Caroline
so quiet, almost sad. She sat there leaning her head
on her hand, watching the billows chasing each other
restlessly toward the shore.

“At last she lifted her face toward me. `There is
no pause for them,' she said; `they go on, one after
another, forever and forever. Are they never tired?'

“I answered her question by another. `Are you
ever tired, Caroline? You are always gay. You go
from one pleasure to another, a sort of human humming-bird.
Do you ever weary of flowers?'

“Tears, which yet did not fall, gathered heavily on
her lashes. She looked at me wishfully, and then
turned her eyes away.

“`Yes, ah! yes,' she said, with a low sigh; `I am
tired often; but what can I do? People look for nothing
in me but gayety. Who loves me? Who cares
to find out the secrets of my heart? Nay, who dreams
that I have a heart? And yet I have one, and it is
flame.'

[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]

“Then was my hour. Fate and fortune favored
me. Happiness held her cup to my lips. I spilled
her proffered wine on the sand. I hardly know why
I did not, then and there, show her my heart—offer
her my life and my love. I thought I had reason for
my self-control. I did not believe that she loved me.
I had hope that her love might be mine in the future,
but I feared to startle her by asking it too soon. She
was too young, I thought, to know herself; besides, I
had a sort of quixotic hesitation about endeavoring to
draw her into an engagement while she was my sister's
guest; ignorant, as I was, whether it would at
all meet her father's approval. I silenced the words
which were rising to my lips. I answered her quietly,
almost coldly,

“`I do not think you do your friends justice. Ellen,
I am sure, loves you, and—'

“I do not know what other commonplace I was
about to add, for she sprang up from my side, her
quick, petulant manner all restored, the sad tenderness
gone from her expression, the pathos from her
voice.

“`Yes,' she said, lightly, `Ellen loves me. She is
a good girl, but she loves John Hammond a good deal
better, and I—what could I do with love, after all? I
could not wear it, or spend it; it is not even tangible
to touch or sight.'

“The next moment she was shattering the fair, frail
turrets of Ellen's castle in the air, pulling at her curls,
and declaring that it was time to go—that she hated
the sea; it made her feel blue and stupid—she liked
driving, and she should drive those two horses standing
there, so impatiently, all the way home.

[figure description] Page 124.[end figure description]

“She did drive us home. She insisted on sitting
alone on the front seat, while I occupied the back one
with Ellen, and, as we dashed over the sands at a rattling
pace, she would now and then look round at us,
and laugh and shake her head, threatening us with all
manner of calamities. Every trace of that sad sensibility,
which had puzzled and enchanted me an hour
before, was gone from her manner, and I began to wonder
whether her character was not more of an enigma
than I had supposed.

“Soon after this she left us. Her father came for
her one evening, and took her away with him in the
morning. I did not like him. He was a stiff, stately,
somewhat pompous man. I could not understand how
his daughter had grown up to be the free, natural, impulsive
girl she was, under his shadow.

“We were separated without my having said one
word to her of more than ordinary friendship. Her
father was standing by her side when she bade me
good-by. I thought her hand trembled as I held it,
and her eyes were humid, but then she had just parted
from Ellen.

“It was six months before I saw, or sought to see
her again. I know, in this, my conduct will seem entirely
at variance with what I have told you of my
love; and yet, was it any stranger than that of many
a girl who turns, in apparent coldness, from the very
man whose voice quickens every throb of her pulses?

“I believe I placed too much faith in her youth.
I thought her so young no one would be likely to
seek her. She seemed to me a mere school-girl, an
impulsive child. I thought I might wait with safety.

“It was early spring when I, at length, went to New

[figure description] Page 125.[end figure description]

York. As I rang the bell at her father's door, a shiver
of emotion passed over me—an emotion born of love,
of hope, of a vague doubt, in itself almost as delicious
as love. I sent up my name, and was shown into a
little morning-room, leading from the parlors, through
which I followed the polite footman.

“Caroline rose to meet me as I entered the door,
her face flushed with welcome, her lips parted, her
eyes sparkling. I believe I did not speak. She was
self-possessed; women always are. She made some
inquiries after Ellen, welcomed me gracefully to town,
and then silence fell between us. I had leisure to note
now what, in the eagerness of her welcome, I had not
observed. A winter of fashionable life had wrought
its effects upon her. She was thinner. The crimson
of her cheeks and lips was less brilliant; her dark
complexion was less clear. There was a sad droop to
her eyelids, an intangible element of melancholy in
her very smile. It made my heart ache to see her.
`Decidedly,' I thought, `this kind of life is not good
for her. There is too much of the wandering Ishmaelite
in her nature to bear this conventional confinement.
I wish I had her in the country, now, for a
good race over the hills. It would bring back color
and flavor to her life.'

“I commenced by telling her this. I ended by telling
her, I know not in what phrase, that I loved her—
that I had loved her from the first moment I had
ever seen her—that my one hope in the future was to
win her for my wife.

“I was not prepared for her answer. I had expected,
perhaps, a little embarrassment, a tender confession,
or an uncertainty almost equally encouraging;

[figure description] Page 126.[end figure description]

possibly, though I had not looked at the case much in
this aspect, a proud refusal. I got neither.

“She looked at me long and earnestly, as if reading
my soul. She must have seen my truth in my eyes.
The passionate tears gushed in torrents from hers.
Then her words came, low, but distinct and firm.

“`You have done me great wrong, Roger Apthorpe,
me and yourself too. Had you told me this last summer
I would have given you my love and my life.
Nay, I did love you. Did you not know it? did you
not see it, when we sat together on the wreck, and you
turned from me so coldly? But now it is too late. I
must not talk with you about it. I shall be married
in six weeks to a good man—a man who loves me.'

“`And whom you do not love,' I said. `Oh, Caroline,
can you do this great wickedness? You will
blight your own life and his, and mine too, if that
were any thing to you.'

“I had roused her temper, which was never gentle.
Perhaps her anger flamed against me all the more
fiercely for her very love.

“`For shame!' she cried; `for shame, Roger Apthorpe!
It is like you to tempt me now to break my
word. If you loved me, why did you not tell me?
No, I will not marry you. I will marry a man who
does love me—who was not too proud to say so—who
did not think me too young or too foolish to be his
wife. Do not say any more; you can not move me.
I shall not make my husband's life miserable. I tell
you he loves me, and I will be a good wife to him.'

“I tried entreaty and persuasion, but she would not
be moved. Underneath her gay, careless exterior was
the firmest will I have ever met. She had given her

[figure description] Page 127.[end figure description]

promise, and she was as tenacious as a Bedouin of her
plighted word.”

“But, Uncle Roger,” I interposed here—it was the
first time I had spoken since he commenced his recital—
“how could you continue to love her if she
was so proud and so passionate; if she would commit
such a sin as to marry another when her heart and
soul were full of you?”

Uncle Roger shook his gray head and smiled sadly.

“I am fifty-four years old, Ethel. Twenty-two
years of life have passed over me since that morning;
and, with my faculties sharpened by suffering, I have
read many hearts. We talk and write of virtues with
high-sounding names, but when we love they make
very little difference. The woman at whose shrine
we worship may or may not have them. No matter!
What enchains us is not tangible, can not be defined;
it is a certain something which links soul to soul; a
subtle electricity to which all submit while they deride
it. I knew well enough that Caroline Windham
was haughty, self-willed, and passionate; that a character
would have been, theoretically, more noble than
hers, by force of which its possessor, finding or fancying
that she was not beloved by the man to whom
her heart was given, would have resolved to remain
single for life. Such was not Caroline; and yet, just
as she was, I would not have bartered one of her faults
for any other woman's virtues. To have conquered
that proud will, to have subdued that haughty heart,
would have been a sweeter triumph than a thousand
easier conquests.

“I did not quite abandon all hope, though I left
New York the next day without having made an

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attempt to see her again. For six weeks after I haunted
the post-office. I had faith that her love would
yet overmaster her pride. Sleeping or waking, I
seemed to see the very shape and handwriting of the
little note which I daily expected would come to me,
with a sentence of invitation and encouragement.

“At last came—not that, but a letter from a friend
who knew of my sister's intimacy with Miss Windham,
but had no idea of my own attachment. In it
he inclosed for Ellen a notice of her friend's marriage
to Mr. Robert Eastman; and he added the information
that they were to spend the summer in traveling
for the benefit of the bride's health, which was delicate.

“It would be idle to dwell upon the bitterness of
my despair. Such epochs are indescribable—fraught
with a suffering beyond words. I sought no sympathy;
I desired none. Even your mother never dreamed
that my love for her cherished friend had transcended
and outgrown her own. She wondered a little
that Caroline had not written to her about her wedding,
but she was too much absorbed in her own happiness
to pay much heed to the circumstance. Her
marriage was arranged for that fall; and, dear as she
was to me, I could not bear to look upon her face
with the transfiguring light of happy love flooding
her quiet eyes, glorifying her whole expression. I
have sometimes thought the very effort it cost me to
conceal my misery was good for my soul's health. If
we sit down weakly under a blow, and call upon others
and ourselves for pity, we lose the recuperative
power which self-control, taken as a tonic, never fails
to give us. I always admired the Spartan boy who

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let the fierce wild fox gnaw at his vitals, and made no
cry or moan.

“Early in the autumn I received a letter superscribed
in a bold, manly hand with which I was not
familiar. I broke the seal, and glanced first at the
signature — Robert Eastman — the name of Caroline
Windham's husband. It was, indeed, from him. He
told me, in a few words, that Caroline's health had
been failing ever since their marriage; that he was
convinced she had but a few days to live, and he begged
me to lose no time in coming to her. She had
told him, he said, of our friendship, and expressed a
strong desire to see me.

“There was not one word by aid of which I could
determine whether he knew of the past relations which
had existed between her and me. One thing I noticed,
that he spoke of her as Caroline, not once as his
wife. I did not waste time in conjecture. Caroline,
my love, lay dying. Oh, to be in time to see her once
more, to hear her voice, to hold her hand! The railroad
from Boston to Providence had been built the
year before. It was the quickest route to New York
then open. I was in time for the steam-boat train. I
reached New York the next morning, and hurried at
once to the address given me in Mr. Eastman's letter.
I asked for him, and presently he came to me in the
parlor, whither I had been shown. He was a noblelooking
man. Every lineament of his fine face expressed
benevolence, gentleness, kindness. He looked
pale and worn with watching and anxiety. He took
my hand in an earnest clasp.

“`Thank God you have come,' he said, in a voice
tremulous with emotion. `Poor Caroline! she has

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told me all. She is more truly your wife than mine.
It was a terrible mistake. I would give the universe
if I had never married her. She might have lived
then, and been happy, but—I loved her. Come, we
are losing precious time. She is worse this morning,
but she is buoyed up now by excitement. I told her
you were here.'

“I begged him to be present at our interview; I
felt I had no right to see her alone. Caroline, he told
me, had made the same request, but he thought it better
to leave us to ourselves. We, who had been parted
in life, might surely snatch a few moments from
death and the grave.

“He led me to the door. He opened it, and closed
it again behind me. I was alone with her. She raised
herself from her pillow. Her wan face was illumined
with a glow and a glory as of a dying day. She
stretched out her arms. I sprang to her bedside, and
those thin, wasted arms fell about my neck. Her lips
met mine for the first time, and there I held her, with
death watching and waiting beside us. I know not
how long it was before either of us spoke. At length
Caroline raised her head and looked at me. Her eyes
were the same, large, bright, and full of tenderness,
though in all else she was terribly changed.

“`This is not wrong, Roger,' she said; `it can not
be wrong to love you now. Before the sun sets I
shall be where they neither marry nor are given in
marriage. I have told Robert all, and he forgives me
freely. He will not even let me blame myself. I am
so glad, so thankful that I am going to die. If I had
lived, to know, as he must have known, that I did not
love him, would have blighted all his life. Now he

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will be happy again; I know his nature. He will
mourn for me a while, and then some one else will
console him. I thank God for this. It is a terrible
thing to wrong a man as I wronged him. The only
atonement I can make is in dying. We always pity
the dead and forgive them, no matter what their faults
are. I do not ask you to forgive me, Roger.'

“I can not tell you in what words I answered her;
how I poured into her dying ears the fullness of a love
no human utterance could measure. She understood
me. I did not say it, but she looked into my heart,
and knew, even as I did in that hour, that for me only
heaven could bring consolation — that my first love
would be my last.

“I think we must have been together two hours.
Much of this time had been passed in solemn silence,
much in grave and earnest talk concerning the stern
realities to which she was hastening; and blended
with all this was the strong cry, from the living to the
dying, of a love which death itself could not subdue.

“At length a swift and ghastly change passed over
her face. In a faint voice she bade me call her husband.
He hurried in, followed by the nurse and the
physician. She lifted her eyes to his with a sweet
and tender smile. In a tone so low that only he and
I could hear it, she said,

“`I have loved you dearly, Robert—dearly, though
not best. You have been very good to me. No one
could have been kinder or more tender. It will comfort
you to remember this when I am gone. Some
time, I am glad to think, you will love again, and be
loved in return as this wayward heart could never
have loved you.'

[figure description] Page 132.[end figure description]

“He sat down on the bed beside her, and lifted her
head on his bosom. She was dear to him, I could see
that, as his own life. She rested there, tranquilly
lapsing away into death, `going out with the tide.' I
knelt by the bedside, and her hand was clasped in
mine. For a time she looked at me steadily, with
eyes full of clinging tenderness; then the lids closed
over them, but she did not sleep. From time to time
we could catch scarcely audible snatches of prayer;
and once she murmured, `He shall wipe away all
tears from their eyes.'

“At length she quite ceased to speak. We watched
her still, as her breathing grew slower and slower;
at last I bent my face to hers; I felt a chill, faint
breath cross my cheek. Was it the token of her passing
soul?—that moment the doctor said, `She is dead.'
Her husband laid her tenderly and reverently from
his arms, and I can remember nothing more. For
months I had borne up against my grief; I had set
the seal of silence upon my lips; I had striven with
calm front to fight the battle of life. At last my overtasked
energies had sunk under this continual pressure.
Merciful unconsciousness seized upon my faculties.

“When I awoke from this stupor it was late in the
night. I was lying in a comfortable chamber, and
Caroline's husband was watching over me. He said
gently,

“`You have been unconscious a long time. The
doctor says it was only over-excitement. You will
do very well now, but at first we thought you would
follow her.'

“`Would that I had! would to God that I had!' I
cried, in mad insubordination.

[figure description] Page 133.[end figure description]

“He gave me a strange, dreary look, as if he scarcely
understood why I should sorrow. `She loved you,'
he faltered, with a quiet pathos, which softened my
stricken heart to sympathy with a woe yet more hopeless
than my own.

“He was the noblest man I ever knew, this Robert
Eastman. In his place, how many would have pursued
me, all my life through, with vengeful hate; but
to him the very love which Caroline had borne me
rendered me sacred. Caroline had understood him
well. He had loved her deeply; he mourned for her
truly. Had he been, as I was, the beloved of her
soul, he would have consecrated all his life to her
memory. But he knew that she had never loved
him; that, in the most sacred sense, she had never
been his wife; and, after a few years, he married
again, this time a pale, blonde beauty; a gentle, quiet
woman, very unlike Caroline. They are happy.
They have passed fifteen years of their life together.
It has been like a perfect day, growing brighter toward
its afternoon. I think it is one of those heavenmade
marriages which death only makes eternal.

“For myself, after the first shock was over, I think
Caroline's death was almost a comfort to me. She
had never seemed so truly mine as when I stood beside
her grave. I am technically no spiritualist. I
do not believe in physical demonstrations; I have had
none of her presence; and yet I know that many a
midnight she has watched over my slumbers, that her
free soul walks through life at my side. I believe, as
truly as I believe in heaven, that she will be mine
hereafter; that, when the messenger comes for me
who comes for all, she will guide me across the

[figure description] Page 134.[end figure description]

tideless, fathomless waters, and be mine on the other
side; mine in all the changeless radiance of her beauty,
the glory of her immortal love, and her immortal
youth. I shall be young again there.”

I looked at him as he ceased speaking. A great
light, as of a mighty hope, sat on his face. In its
transfiguring glow he looked no longer old and withered.
I could see a foretaste of the youth which death
was to bring to him. He sat for a long time silently
gazing on the distant sea. I thought the fire which
shone in his eyes must be such as had kindled them
when he looked on her.

At length he rose, and, drawing a miniature-case
from his breast, put it into my hand.

“Look at that, Ethel, and judge if I have exaggerated
her charms. It was taken when she was your
age—just seventeen.”

He left me, and when he was gone into the house I
opened the case. The face was that of a most beautiful
woman. There was a flush, a glow of buoyant,
physical life upon it, which made its loveliness seem
beyond the reach of time or death. It was not a face
to grow old, and yet, if she had lived, she must have
been past middle age now. Perhaps death was better
than life, and its stern discipline of trials and changes.

I did not see Uncle Roger again that night. The
next morning I gave the miniature back to him. As
I did so I made my own confession of wrong.

“Uncle Roger,” I said, “you were right. I love
Harry Holt almost as you loved her. I refused him
from foolish vanity. I was vexed with his hasty
wooing. I wished to make him more submissive,

[figure description] Page 135.[end figure description]

more humble; and now, perhaps, I have lost him.
Is he too proud ever to come back?”

Uncle Roger soothed me with sympathy gentle as
a woman's. It was strange how well we two understood
each other. Most men in his place would have
proposed to recall the banished lover; but he knew
the pride of my nature too well. Indeed, his pride
for me was as lofty as my own, and I would have
died sooner than make one effort to bring the banished
suitor back.

Weeks passed on, and I neither saw nor heard of
him. For a long time I comforted myself with delusive
hopes. Morning after morning I more than
half expected to see his horse at the gate. But it
never came. Perhaps, wayward girl that I was, I
should have liked him less if he had forgotten his own
dignity and humbled himself to seek me again.

Never once since I gave him the miniature had
either his heart's loss or mine been mentioned between
Uncle Roger and myself. But all this time I could
feel that he gave me his tenderest sympathy. Trouble
had never hardened his heart, only made it more
earnest and more loving. He strove to gratify all my
wishes. His care over me was inexpressibly soothing
and watchful. I strove bravely against any weak indulgence
in regret or repining. I tried to make my
outer life cheerful and useful, and I think, in some
good degree, I succeeded, but in my heart was a great
void.

At length, one afternoon, I asked Uncle Roger to
drive me down to the beach. I wanted to see the
tide come in. It was a glorious August day. The
sea was still, and the ripples only broke lazily on the

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shore and retreated. I was disappointed at the calmness.
The dash and roar of the wildest breakers
would have suited me better. I longed for excitement.
Soon it came, in a manner widely different
from my wishes.

I had been watching for some time the different
vessels, when my attention was attracted by a little
skiff, quite far out at sea, and rowed by two persons.

“What a perilous thing it looks,” I remarked to
Uncle Roger, “to put forth on the ocean. It reminds
me of the three wise men of the nursery rhyme, who
went to sea in a bowl.”

It quite interested me, it was so frail, and yet so
well managed. It skipped over the waves like a seabird.
It was coming toward the shore, and soon I
could distinguish the forms and faces of its occupants.
One was Harry Holt. My heart beat wildly when I
saw him. It was the first time since the morning on
which he had told me that he loved me. Would they
come on shore near us? Would he see me? Would
he speak to me? Would he ever, ever seek again
the love I had refused him once?

I was asking myself these questions, when I saw
Harry make some sudden, incautious movement. The
boat careened. He threw his arms up, seeking to
preserve his balance, but in vain. They were both in
the deep water. A thought flashed into my mind, instantaneous,
terrible—Harry could not swim. He had
told me so. He sank. I saw his companion strike
out to aid him. He rose. Will his friend reach him?
No; he has sunk again. A second time to the surface.
His comrade seizes him now, and pushes gallantly
for the shore. Will he ever gain it? The

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water is deep and the burden heavy, but—on they come.
Nearer and nearer. Uncle Roger and I wade out into
the waves to meet them. We are strong now, in our
excitement. We stretch out our hands and seize
them. I do not know how, or by whom, but they are
drawn upon the beach. I see Harry lying there, pale,
ghastly, the water dripping from his hair, but—safe!
I bend over him, helpless, exhausted, and my excited
feelings find vent in a passionate flood of tears. His
arms closed round me. We cared not for the friendly
eyes which were watching us. I heard nothing but
his fond, fervent whisper,

“Ethel, Ethel, my own at last. Did you love me
all this time?”

I could say nothing but, “Oh, Harry, what if you
had died?”

There is no need of farther words. My story ends
here. Harry Holt has been for just six months my
husband. I have told you how the waves brought
him back again to my feet.

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The Mist over the Valley.

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p653-146

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MY wife was dead. I had never loved her—I may
as well speak frankly—never loved her; and yet,
for her sake, I cast away the one priceless pearl of my
life. I think every human existence has its moment
of fate—its moment when the golden apple of the Hesperides
hangs ready upon the bough—how is it that
so few of us are wise enough to pluck it? The decision
of a single hour may open for us the gate of the
enchanted gardens, where are flowers, and sunshine,
and air purer than any breezes of earth; or it may
condemn us, Tantalus-like, to reach evermore after
some far-off, unattainable good—make us slaves of the
lamp forever and forever. And yet we seek no counsel.
We stretch forth our hands and grasp blindly at
the future, forgetting that we have only ourselves to
blame when we draw them back pierced sorely with
thorns.

My life, like all others, had its hour of destiny; and
it is of that hour, its perils, its temptations, its sin, that
I am about to tell you.

I had known Bertha Payson from my infancy. She
was only a year younger than I. I can remember her
face, far away back among the misty visions of my
boyhood. It looked then, as it does now, pure and
pale, yet proud. Her eyes were calm as a full lake
underneath the summer moon, deep as the sea—a

[figure description] Page 142.[end figure description]

clear, untroubled gray. Her hair was soft, and smooth,
and dark. She wore it plainly banded away from her
large, thoughtful forehead. The pure yet healthful
white of her complexion contrasted only with her eyes,
her hair, her clearly-defined, arching brows, and one
line of red marking the thin, flexible lips. It was relieved
by no other trace of color, even in the cheeks.

I have not painted for you a beauty, and yet I think
now that Bertha Payson had the noblest female face
my eyes ever rested on.

Her figure was tall, and lithe, and slender; her voice
clear, low, and musical. From my earliest boyhood
she had seemed to me like some guardian saint, pure
enough for worship, but, for a long time I had thought,
not warm enough for love.

She was twenty before I began to understand her
better. I had just graduated at Harvard, and I came
home—perhaps a little less dogmatic and conceited
than the majority of newly-fledged A.B.'s—full of lofty
aspirations, generous purposes, and romantic dreams.
I was prepared to fall in love, but I never thought of
loving quiet Bertha Payson, my next neighbor's daughter.
The ideal lady of my fancy was far prettier—a
dainty creature, with the golden hair and starry eyes
of Tennyson's dream—an

And yet, in the mean time, I looked forward with
pleasure to Bertha's companionship. To talk with
her always brought out “the most of heaven I had in
me.” There was nothing in art or nature so glorious
that it did not take new glory when the glances of her
eyes kindled over it. My mind never scaled any

[figure description] Page 143.[end figure description]

height of lofty purpose or heroic thought which her
far-reaching soul had not conquered before me, and so
the best purposes of my life grew better and stronger
in the serene atmosphere of her approval.

Thus it came about that we were daily together.
Long before I thought of looking at that pale, proud
face with a lover's passion, I think I had given her
reason to believe that I loved her. What other interpretation
could a woman like her, so pure, so singlehearted,
so true, have put upon the eagerness with
which I continually sought her society? I passed the
largest portion of every day in her presence. She was
an early riser, and often, even before the summer sunrise,
I went through the narrow path and little gate
which divided our garden from hers, to persuade her
to join me in a ramble in the delicious morning twilight.

There was one scene of which we never tired. I
have never seen it any where but in Ryefield. In the
valley of the Quinebaug the mist rises so blue and
dense that, from the hills overtopping it at a mile's
distance, it looks like some strange inland sea, whereon,
perchance, Curtis's Flying Dutchman might take
his long and wonderful cruise, or a phantom Maid of
the Mist, sailing at dawn out of some silent cove, might
cut the phantom sea with her phantom keel, and go
back with the sunrise into silence and shadows. On
one of those o'ertopping hills Bertha and I watched
the slow coming of many a summer morning. It was
in one of these enchanted hours that I first learned
that a woman's heart, strong and passionate as it was
pure, slumbered beneath the calm reticence of her external
life.

[figure description] Page 144.[end figure description]

We had been watching, as usual, the sea of mist,
and speculating idly about the phantom bark and its
strange crew. Then we stood silent for a moment,
Bertha looking out over the mist, and I looking at her
dilating eyes, growing so large, so solemn, so full of
thought. At last she turned with a sudden motion—

“Who would think, Frank, to see this prospect now,
that underneath this seeming sea lay smiling the greenest
and loveliest valley in Connecticut? I was thinking
how like it was to some human existences—men
and women whose outward life is a veil denser and
more impenetrable than the mist over the valley,
screening the throbbing, passionate, yet silent heart
from human vision. And yet there comes a time
when the veiled heart will assert itself. See, the sun
is rising now; the mist looks like a soundless sea no
longer; it is beginning to curl away in golden wreaths;
soon we shall see the fair valley, with its three white
houses, its waving trees, and its little becks of bright
waters. Some time, even thus, from all proud hearts
the mist will roll goldenly away, and we shall see as
we are seen, and know as we are known—if not here,
there.”

She paused, and I looked at her inspired face. I
did not wish to break the silence which followed her
words. I started and led the way down the steep hill.
After a little I looked round to see if the morning sunrise
still lingered in her eyes. I caught my foot, in
some incautious step, against the roots of a tree from
which the spring rains had washed away the earth. I
was thrown headlong and violently to the ground. I
was stunned for a moment. My first sensation of

[figure description] Page 145.[end figure description]

returning consciousness was a pleasant one. I felt Bertha's
cool hand upon my forehead. She had run
swiftly to a neighboring spring, and, with quick presence
of mind, had saturated her handkerchief and
mine, and now she was bathing my brow with the
water. I did not open my eyes at first, it was so
pleasant to lie there and receive her gentle ministrations.
At length I felt her place her ear close to my
lips. By a resolute effort I held my breath. I wished
to try her. She thought I was dead. She did not
shriek or moan; only, as if against her will, a single
cry, low and sorrowful, escaped her—

“Oh, Frank, darling! darling!”

I slowly opened my eyes and met hers. There was
a look in them I have never seen in any other woman's.
Then I knew that Bertha Payson could love;
that she did love me with a love that not one woman
in a thousand could even understand. I saw that underneath
the marble her heart, her passionate woman's
heart, was flame; but it was flame as pure as the heaven-kindled
fires on the altar of the God of the Hebrews.
I knew that she loved me, and, in the same
moment, I knew that with all the might of my heart
I loved her—that she alone was the one woman to
whom mind and soul could do homage and say, “I
have found my queen.” But I did not speak of love
then. I know she must have read my glance as I had
read hers; but she only said, very quietly,

“Thank God that you are alive. I must leave you
now to see about getting some one to take you home.”

“No, I can walk, if you will help me.”

I made the effort, but I could not rise. The least
attempt to move caused me such exquisite pain that I

[figure description] Page 146.[end figure description]

began to think my injuries must be severe. I said, reluctantly,

“I am very sorry, Bertha. I shall have to let you
go. I see it is impossible for me to walk.”

She drew a shawl from her shoulders and arranged
it so as to make the position in which my head was
lying a little easier. Then she tripped away, and, lying
there, I watched, half dreamily, her light figure go
out of sight down the hill-side. The time of her absence
seemed to me very short. Except when I attempted
to move I felt little pain, and never had my
soul been so flooded with happiness. I was too weak
to speculate about the future. I only rejoiced in the
present.

Soon Bertha returned with the village doctor and
two or three sturdy assistants. Arranging a hastilyconstructed
litter, they started to bear me down the
hill. At the first jolt the motion caused me intense
pain. With a longing for sympathy, I stretched out my
hand. Bertha understood me, and laid her own in it;
and so, with her walking beside me, I was borne home.

No bones had been broken by my fall. My injuries
were all internal, though not dangerous; but my convalescence
was long and tedious. In all this time Bertha
was like an angel of light. She shared with my
mother the labor of nursing me. She read to me, sang
to me; or, when I liked it better, sat by me in silence.
It was six weeks before I was again able to walk out;
but in all this time we had never spoken of love. My
passion was too reverent for light or hasty utterance.
I resolved to wait until I could stand with her again
upon the hill-top where I had read my heart's answer
in her eyes.

[figure description] Page 147.[end figure description]

When at length I could go out, my first visit was
made to Dr. Greene. He had been so kind and attentive,
he seemed to take so much pride in his success,
that I could not refuse his invitation to take my first
walk to his house, and drink a cup of tea with his wife
and a friend she had staying with her. It is with this
friend only that my story has to do.

God knows I did not willingly put myself in the
way of temptation. How could I tell that, sitting that
summer afternoon in Dr. Greene's quiet parlor, I should
find a Circe?

“Miss Ireton,” said the doctor's deep, sonorous voice
as I entered the room, and before me rose a young,
slight figure, robed in white, with roses on her bosom,
roses on her cheek, roses in the golden hair that lay
in long ringlets upon her dainty shoulders, and clustered
around her head. Her eyes were bright and full
of smiles; dimples played at hide-and-seek among her
cheeks' roses; her lips were full and red, and her complexion
clear, with a quick, changing color, infinitely
charming. Sometimes—even now, out of the darkness
of death and the grave—that face rises up to me, and
I see her stand before me once more, in all her witching
loveliness, as she stood that summer afternoon. If
you had seen her then you would have thought that
she was immortal—that death and change could never
come to that form of grace, those eyes of light.

Miss Nellie Ireton was a practiced flirt. It was not
in the nature of things that any man could love her
as reverently as I loved Bertha. She could not have
comprehended Bertha's self-denial, her heroism, her entire
freedom from all vanity, all desire for triumph.
And yet her dominion over the senses was absolute. I

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was a born worshiper of beauty. I could not help admiring
the airy grace of her movements, the sparkling
changes of her face, the smiles which hovered so archly
about her lips. Days passed, and no fly was ever more
hopelessly entangled in a spider's net than I in the
meshes of her golden hair. At first I could see that
Bertha was simply incredulous and astonished. Then
a wild trouble began to darken the clear gray of her
eyes. All this time I loved her. A single tone of
her voice had more power over my highest nature
than all the enchantments of the other, and yet I could
not break away from the fatal spell which bound me.
My senses were intoxicated—steeped in delirium by
the Circe. Can you comprehend the enigma? Its
solution involves the history of many a man's marriage
besides my own.

Just at the right time Miss Ireton brought a new
competitor into the field. In a young law-student then
visiting in the place I found a rival. Nellie was a
good tactician. She played us off against each other
most adroitly, until we were both inspired with all a
gamester's eagerness to win. Bertha had now withdrawn
herself from my society almost wholly. Indeed,
I seldom visited her; but when I did I only saw
her in the presence of her mother. Every evening I
passed at Dr. Greene's. At last, in one fatal hour, I
found Miss Ireton alone. I proposed and was accepted.
So far had my madness lasted; but when I heard her
faltering “Yes,” when her head sank with fully as
much triumph as tenderness upon my shoulder, when
I would have pressed the kiss of betrothal upon her
lips, a cold shudder ran through all my veins. I closed
my eyes for a moment in the struggle to regain my

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self-command, and there, before me, I saw Bertha stand
as she stood that morning. I saw her pale, rapt face,
her eyes dilated with thought, fixed on the mist over
the valley. I heard her inspired voice—

“Some time, even thus, from all proud hearts the
mist will roll goldenly away, and we shall see as we
are seen, and know as we are known.”

Alas! in vain had the mist rolled away from that
proud heart of Bertha Payson, showing me its hidden
treasures. I had rejected the golden fruit of the Hesperides,
lured by the fair-seeming apple of Sodom, and
now I must wait vainly at the closed gates of Eden.
We have but one birth and one death, and the charmed
hour of fate comes but once to life.

My betrothed was speaking; I roused myself to listen.

“I liked you the very first time I saw you, Mr. Osborne,
and I meant to make you like me. You see I
thought it would be more difficult, for Dr. Greene told
me you were half in love with that pale, proud Bertha
Payson, and I meant to see if I couldn't make you
fancy me in spite of all.”

“You succeeded only too well, little charmer.”

There was a mournful truth in my answer, which
her light heart did not penetrate. I do think Nellie
loved me, or, as she said, liked me, as well as she was
capable of liking. Her freely-expressed preference
was fully sincere. I should have a true wife, as the
world reckons truth; and yet, in God's sight, I should
be unmarried still. We two could never be made one.

I made haste to announce my engagement. I hurried
the preparations for my nuptials. I felt that my
only safety would lie in leaving Ryefield as soon as

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possible. Now that the excitement of the love-chase
was over, and the young law-student had subsided into
the quiet friend of my affianced, I could not conceal
from myself that I had set the seal to my own mad
folly, and condemned myself to an eternal yet unavailing
despair. I carefully avoided any opportunity
of seeing Bertha. I would not have dared to trust
myself in her presence.

It was the day before my bridal. So far had I traversed
my path of thorns. I rose early and went out
of doors. One more walk I would have to the hill
where the knowledge of Bertha's love had come to
me—down whose slopes I had been borne with her
hand in mine. It was September, but it had been a
cool, damp summer, and the verdure along the hill-side
was still fresh as in June. I climbed it rapidly.
When I was within a few rods of the summit I looked
up. A tall, slight figure was clearly defined against
the sky. Should I go on? Dared I meet Bertha
then and there? I answered these questions to myself
by climbing on silently and quickly. I could not
help it.

In five minutes I stood at Bertha's side. She had
not heard my approach. Proud woman as she was,
she had not been too proud to weep. The tears glittered
heavily on her long lashes. She made no vain
attempt to conceal them. She met my glance steadfastly.

“Bertha,” I said, in a choking voice, “I did not
think to find you here.”

“Or I you,” she answered. “See, the mist lies as
heavily over the valley as when we stood here last.
How little the scene is changed!”

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“And how much every thing else is!” I interrupted
her, wildly. “Bertha, it may be madness, but I
must speak. I love you better than my own soul. I
always did love you, but never with such passion,
such despair, as now. Is it too late? Must it be too
late?”

She looked at me a moment in wonder, in sorrow.
Her dark, searching eyes questioned me. Then her
lip curled.

“Would you be twice a traitor, Frank Osborne?”

“No,” I answered, impetuously. “I would but return
to my only true allegiance. Nellie's pride would
be wounded, but her heart would not suffer much.
And you, oh! Bertha, you did love me—you do love
me. Do not wreck your own life and mine.”

“Frank,” she said, quietly, yet earnestly, “this is
worse than folly—it is sin. To-morrow you will be
the husband of another. What right have you to
speak to me of love? True, I did love you once, but
that dream is past. If you were free to-day I could
not trust my happiness to your keeping. Forget me,
or think of me only as a kind, well-wishing friend.”

“Is there no hope, Bertha?”

“None.”

But I could not so give her up. The hour had
come I had dreamed of through my long convalescence.
I stood with Bertha again upon the hill-top
where I had meant to tell her my love. I must plead
with her a little longer. Scarcely knowing what I
said, I assailed her with wild prayers. I poured out
my very soul at her feet. But she only looked at me
with her dark, wistful eyes, and returned the same
firm, reproachful No. At last I was silent. I saw it

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was of no use. I had myself cast away my pearl of
great price. I must be contented hereafter with the
glitter of my paste brilliant.

“Well,” I said, humbly and sorrowfully enough,
“I do not deserve you. You are right, Bertha. But
give me your hand once more, as you did that morning.
Friends claim that much.”

She laid her fingers in mine. They did not tremble,
but they were very cold. She said, with a deep,
pathetic earnestness,

“God bless you, Frank Osborne! I, who know
you so well, believe that you are sincere in the words
you have spoken to me this morning. But you must
think such thoughts no longer. Happiness only
comes to us in the right. Your duty now is to Miss
Ireton. Fulfill it, I conjure you. You have a woman's
happiness in your keeping. You must answer to
God for it. I conjure you to make her future bright.
Trust nothing to her light-heartedness. I tell you no
woman's heart is light enough to bear up under any
want of love from the man for whom she has given up
all things. Do your duty, and you will find comfort
even yet. Good-by.”

She turned away, and once more, as on that other
morning, I watched her light figure tripping down the
hill. Her step was firm. Her heart must have been
strong. She did not once look back. I watched her
till I could see her no longer, and then I turned and
looked moodily over the valley. Already the mist
had parted, and before the sun's fiery eye the valley
lay unshrouded, undisguised, as our souls must stand
some day before His eye at whose word the first sun
rose and the last sun will set. I thought of the

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solemn import of Bertha's words. I had indeed a duty
to do. I could lay my burden of sin and punishment
on no other shoulders. It was not Nellie Ireton's
fault that I had turned away from Bertha and asked
her to be my wife. I owed her my life now. She
should have it. I knelt upon the hill-side. I bared
my forehead to the cool breeze of the September
morning. I cried out to Heaven for strength. I think
my prayer was heard.

The next day I was married. We left Ryefield at
once, and for three years I did not return there.

I do believe—thank God for this gleam of comfort—
that I made Nellie happy. In her own way she
was very fond of me. She loved society, mirth, and
fashion. She had them all. I placed no restraint
upon her pleasures, though I seldom accompanied her.
Often she has returned from some gay party late at
night, and found me sitting alone in my study. She
would bound into my lap at such times with her old,
childlike abandon; tell me what a fine time she had
had; who had talked to her, and who complimented
her, and then ask, with a comical air of self-satisfaction,
if I was not proud of such a handsome little wife.

“You know I am handsome, you provoking, teasing,
clever old fellow—now don't you?” was usually
the conclusion to her harangue; and I would always
give her the confirmation she coveted. Thank God,
she never knew how lonely my soul was in those
days—how my heart pined for companionship—how
my spirit panted for a kindred spirit to share its
doubts, its triumphs, its seekings after the Infinite!
Thank God that the lark in the meadow was not gladder
or merrier than she!

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She had been my wife more than two years when
she went out, one bitterly cold night, with her fair
neck and arms uncovered, and only an opera cloak
thrown over them, as she drove to a gay party. I had
remonstrated, but she had pleaded to be allowed to
have her own way, and I never could bring myself to
cross her in any thing—I, who could never look at
her without a remorseful consciousness that the heart
which should have been hers only, shrined in secret
the image of another. I strove, by the most lavish indulgence
even to her whims, to make what compensation
I could for the heart devotion I could never give
her, and so this night, as usual, she had her will. She
did, indeed, look lovely with her azure satin dress falling
in such graceful folds about her—the golden curls
just veiling, but not concealing, the snow of her neck,
and her arms gleaming through misty lace. Most men
would have been proud of her; but I had known one
woman whose simple superiority to all outside decorations
so far transcended all the aids of dress and fashion
that I could not triumph in the mere beauty of the
external.

For once the consequences of my indulgence were
disastrous. That night Nellie took a severe cold. In
a few days it settled upon her lungs, and then medical
skill was of no avail. She grew rapidly worse, and
they made her grave beneath the cold, gray sky of
March. Through her illness I had been a patient
nurse. She died with her head on my bosom. With
almost her last breath she told me that I had made
her very happy. When I stood over her grave I
mourned for her sincerely. I would have given much
to call her back to life; nay, I would have been

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willing—life was not very precious to me—to have taken
her place under the mould, so that she could have
walked forth again in her youth and beauty. And
yet, as weeks passed on, God, who judgeth not as man
judgeth, will forgive me if a secret thrill of joy did
sometimes make my heart-strings quiver when I
thought of the love of my youth and remembered that
I was free.

After a time I went home to Ryefield. I sought
Bertha's society. At first it seemed to me that she
tried to avoid me; but I persevered. I know she must
have felt to the core of her heart the sincerity of my
love. Would she ever again return it?

At last, one night, I asked her to go with me the
next morning to the hill overlooking the valley, where
we had stood together so many times in other days.
She consented.

We went up the hill almost in silence, and when we
reached its summit we still stood silently for a time.

At length I turned to her.

“Bertha, there was a time when, as the morning
mist rolled away from over the valley, the mist rolled
away from your heart, and I saw its hidden treasure,
your love for me. I have sinned since then; but oh!
Bertha, I have suffered. I loved you first, last, always.
With all the might of my soul I love you now. Will
you take me, and weave the broken threads of my life
into brightness at last?”

She looked at me steadfastly and sorrowfully.

“Frank,” she said, with a gentle, pitying aspect, “I
came up here with you because I knew you wanted to
ask me that question. I could see that you were cherishing
hopes about me that I ought not to let you

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cherish any longer. It is all in vain. I will be your
friend, your warm, tender friend; but the day for any
thing more is past. There was a time when I would
have gone with you to the world's end; but you yourself
made my love a sin. I could not cherish it for
the husband of another. I conquered it, and on earth
it can have no resurrection. By the wild agony of
its death-throes I know that it is dead—dead utterly.
You can never again kindle the life in its cold corpse.
If you wronged me once, I forgive you. If you are
unhappy, I pity you. On earth I can never have a
dearer friend than you, but the flame on my heart's
altar is burned to white ashes. I can never be your
wife.”

I looked in her clear, friendly eyes. An angel's
pity softened their glance, but they were not once cast
down. I could see in them no shadow of hope. I
turned away from their wistful look. I uttered no
more prayers. I only clasped her hand in mine, and
some tears I was not ashamed to shed fell over it.
Then I let her go. Once more she went down the hill
alone, and I was left upon its brow to struggle with
the anguish of my despair. Oh, Bertha, Bertha!

Look out, my friend. From this eastern window,
even now, you can see the mist rolling goldenly away
from the valley of the Quinebaug. Just so, I have
sometimes thought, I shall one day see it roll away
from the valleys of the Upper Country, and, perchance,
the love that was dead, when I would have awakened
it on earth, will have its own resurrection in heaven.
God knows!

Joseph Thorne—his Calling.

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p653-164

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NEVER have I heard any thing so like to the musical,
half-uttered wails of a prisoned spirit, as the
sad, sweet complaints of Ole Bull's violin. Sometimes
the spirit lingers tenderly over the memories of old
hopes—hopes that long ago faded into memories—and
its tones are not all mournful, for a thrill from the past
joy trembles through them. Then again the spirit is
tortured. It sobs. It shrieks. Fain it would be delivered
from its prison-house. Then, hopeless, it sighs
itself into silence.

In one of these pauses a story came back to me; a
mournful tale of one who died young; a story I used
to like to dream over in other days, imagining to myself
how every word that told of a dead hope and a
dead love had been spoken. The very scent of lilacs
and laburnums haunted my fancy. I saw the old farmyard;
the June twilight, so long and bright; the dewbeaded
flowers and grass, and the trees, all in blossom,
shaking their odorous boughs downward, over the
heads of Joseph Thorne and pretty Mabel Emerson.

Can any one describe a lovely woman? Say that
she has blue eyes, and light hair, and a sweet mouth,
and it might apply equally to fifty blondes whom you
may chance to know, of entirely varying character. I
think one gains a truer estimate of the nature of

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beauty by being told what thoughts it awakens. Joseph
Thorne, unknown to himself, was a poet. He had
known Mabel all his life, and he said that seeing her
made him think of long summer days, when the blue
sky looks not only bright, but deep, and still, and solemn;
of lovely flowers, growing all alone in desert
places; of a rippling stream, with the stars shining on
it; but most, oh, most of all, of sweet music. Perhaps,
however, he was the only one who had ever
looked into her heart; ever seen, beneath her gay,
smiling exterior, the deep-flowing fountains of tenderness
and self-sacrifice. Most persons thought her
merely a pleasant, light-hearted maiden, whose presence,
like a sunbeam, always carried brightness with
it, and to whom sorrow and weariness were unknown.

Her mother had died in her infancy, and her father,
the richest and busiest farmer in all Westvale, had
never found time to learn any thing of her inner nature.
Perhaps he was not even capable of appreciating
her. It was enough for him that she was well
clothed and well schooled; that her bright face was
always ready to welcome him home at night, her dextrous
hands to preside over his early breakfast. Nor
had Mabel any female confidants. Kindly and gentle
to all, there was a maidenly shyness and reserve underlying
her nature which made it impossible for her
to unveil to careless eyes the altar of her heart, the
very holy of holies, where the love of which she was
capable, the dreams and fancies so brightly tinged with
the glory of her youth, all lay an unclaimed sacrifice,
till the heaven-elected priest should come, and her
whole being should acknowledge him and do him reverence.

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Like herself, Joseph Thorne was bereft of one parent,
but his mother, a true, pure woman, had been
spared to him. He had grown up from childhood
with one strong, all-absorbing passion. He worshiped
music. The earliest delight he could remember was
the low, plaintive interludes of the flute and viol between
the singing at church, or his mother's voice as
she caroled the ballads of her girlhood.

The first purchase he ever made, with money for
which he had worked indefatigably at odd jobs, was a
small violin. He had a marvelous delicacy and aptitude
of touch, and, as he grew older, a singular power
of improvisation. He talked through his violin. It
uttered all the griefs of his lonely boyhood; all those
vague longings that trouble the heart of an imaginative
youth after power and fame, or a dim, undefinable
greatness and goodness shining afar off, like the
pale beauty of a half-hidden statue.

In all these dreams he was to be a musician. In
that way he was to draw near the far-off good. His
little violin was to talk to many hearts. The world
should hear its cry and obey its teaching. He would
do a good work—be a master among men. With all
these visions his mother fully sympathized; nay, her
simple, unworldly heart was as fully imbued with faith
in them as his own. They were poor, but she managed
to send him to school all through his boyhood,
and afterward to keep herself so neat and comfortable
that he should never see she wanted for any thing, that
no care for her might ever disturb his progress.

As I said, he had always known Mabel Emerson.
As a child he had led her to and from school, or drawn
her over the drifts on his little sled. She was dearer

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to him then than any thing else, save his mother and
his violin. She was not yet seventeen when he had
learned to place her even before these. As a child,
she clung to him with caressing, childish fondness; as
a maiden, she loved him with all the strength of her
heart. She recognized in him the consecrated highpriest
of her life. For him the altar was unveiled, and
he looked unchidden upon all the thoughts and fancies
of her innocent soul. She possessed, what to such
a nature as his was more than all things else, entire
faith in him. She believed in his power to do great
things; to be not only the noblest of men, but the first
of musicians; and it was very soothing to him, so poor,
so proud, so sensitive, to turn from the world to her;
to be comforted by the singleness of her devotion, the
implicitness of her trust. Yet it was many months,
even after they each believed themselves dearer to the
other than any thing else on earth, before any binding
vows of love were spoken. Such utterances are of
slow growth in a mind so dreamy and sensitive as Joseph
Thorne's. The uncertainty of her girlish ways
was so sweet—the coming and going of her delicate
color—the fluttering of her fingers when he took them
in his own. He hesitated to exchange all this even
for the assurance that she would be his wife.

But the charmed hour came at last. I think every
human life that is worth living has its hour of destiny;
its one golden number in the twenty-four, at whose
chiming is ushered in every important change, whether
of joy or sorrow. To some it is morning, rosy and
bright with sunrise and sparkling dew, and vocal with
bird-songs. Others find it at high noon—the zenith
of power, and pride, and passion, when the sun woos

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the earth with his most fiery kisses—the hour in which
bold and daring souls recognize a peculiar heritage.
For others still—men and women of sober, thoughtful,
mysterious lives, half superstitious, owning a ready allegiance
to the unseen—the hour of fate is the solemn
noon of night. For Joseph Thorne, and such as he, it
was twilight. On a summer twilight had he been
born, and on a summer twilight he told his love.

They stood—those two young things, for whom life
and sorrow were still invested with a sweet, serious,
half-melancholy charm—for whom the dark days had
not yet risen—under the trees of Farmer Emerson's
old front yard. The balmy summer air was burdened
with the fragrance of blossoms. The sunset clouds
were like that hour of their two lives, all couleur de rose,
and the chimes of the village bells, mellowed by distance,
rung out a pleasant chorus—a sort of consecrated
amen to their plighted vows. In that hour no new
tale was told—both had been fully satisfied before that
they were beloved; the very words were the sweet old
words that have trembled all along the discords of so
many centuries of years upon so many loved and loving
lips.

But their utterance changed the whole current of
Joseph Thorne's life. They made it necessary to him,
for he possessed a high sense of honor, to go the next
day into the presence of Farmer Emerson, and, telling
his story this time to ears that would not be sympathetic,
to ask for his Mabel's hand.

It was a terrible ordeal to the young, sensitive musician.
He had an intuitive knowledge of the farmer's
character. Instinctively he felt that this busy, energetic,
matter-of-fact man would look upon him and his

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music with distrust, perhaps disapprobation. But, fortified
by Mabel's solemn pledge that nothing on earth
should ever have power to change her love, fortified
anew by the soft touch of his mother's fingers upon
his hair—his mother, to whom he confided every thing—
and her whispered, “God bless you, my son, for you
have been a good boy all the days of your life,” he
sought the man in whose hands lay his destiny.

It was just after dinner. He knew Mr. Emerson
would be resting, as was his habit, on the wooden settee,
under the porch at his front door. He walked
into the yard with desperate courage and approached
him. He was kindly received, and invited to sit
down.

“I wanted to speak to you, Mr. Emerson.”

“Well, my young friend, what is it? Any assistance
about getting into business? I will do all I can
for you, gladly, were it only for the sake of your dead
father, as good a neighbor and as honest a man as ever
sat in Westvale meeting-house.”

“No, sir, it is not that;” and Joseph plunged bravely
in medias res. “I love your daughter, and she loves
me; will you consent that she shall be my wife?”

Wide opened the farmer's eyes in wonder. “Your
wife! my daughter Mabel! What are your prospects?
What is your business? What would you
keep her on?”

Joseph's tones faltered. “I did not mean just at
present, sir. We will be satisfied now with your consent
to our engagement. I hope to be a musician. I
think that is my true calling. For nothing else have
I so much talent; in nothing else am I so happy.”

There was silence for a few moments, and then the

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old man broke it. His voice was firm and clear, and
yet it seemed almost sad.

“I am sorry—I am truly sorry. Mabel is like her
mother, and if she loves you she will not love lightly;
but, if such is the life you have marked out, I can not
give her to you. I do not care so much for money.
It is a good thing, though I would let her marry without
it; but a musician! a fiddler! It is an idle, wandering,
useless life: I speak to you frankly. No good
will come of it. I can not give her to you.”

A wandering, useless life! Alas! Joseph Thorne,
where were your lofty dreams, your high hopes now?
You that had aspired to talk to the world through
your instrument, to sound upon its delicate strings the
awakening calls to a higher, purer life—you to whom
this had seemed the noblest of missions. Small wonder
your voice faltered as you asked,

“Can you, then, give me no hope?”

“Yes, I can give you one hope—one test of your
love for Mabel. She is my only child; I would not
cross her lightly. If you will give up these vagaries
about music, and become a practical working-man, you
shall have her. I will take you on my own land, under
my own eye, and when I think you competent to
manage for yourself, you shall marry her, and I will
give you the Widow Sikes's farm for a wedding-portion.
There isn't a snugger little place, or one under
better cultivation in the state; and you'll be close by
home too. But I am a man of my word; and, unless
you give up this foolery about the music, you shall
never have Mabel. If you want time to decide, you
can take three days.”

“I will give you my answer in that time;” and,

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bowing gravely, Joseph Thorne went out of Farmer Emerson's
yard with crushed hopes.

He made no attempt to see Mabel. He went home.
His mother read the sorrow on his face, but she was
one of those rare women who know when to keep silence.
Heavy as her heart was, she asked no questions.
He went into his own room and sat down by
the window. He took his violin, which lay upon a
stand beside him. He had been accustomed to translate
into music all his griefs, but now that the first real
trial of his life had come upon him, its chords seemed
dumb and powerless to comfort. He bowed his head
over it, and tried to think.

Mabel and music—twin inspirations of his life—how
could he give either of them up? No one knew—no
one could know—what this gift, which he had fondly
deemed his calling, had been to him. Something else
he might, indeed, make his business, his profession,
but it would be only a profession—a living falsehood.
To this only God had called him. His soul was full
of a light, a heaven-bestowed revelation. The world
had need of it. How, save through this voice of music,
could he give it utterance?

At one moment he had well-nigh resolved to cling
to his chosen vocation through every thing. He would
go out into the world, and do his duty manfully. This
great world should recognize him. He would do it
good. But he must grow old; and there rose before
him a picture of a lonely, loveless old age; a hearth
which no woman's care made bright; a fireside where
no wife's sweet presence, no calm brow and holy eyes
would linger beside him; a silent house, where no children's
light footfall pattered along the floor, no little

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faces reflected back the vanished light of his own youth.
At this picture the humanity of his nature veiled its
face, and uttered a wail which would not be quieted.
His love was mightier than his genius. He could not
give himself wholly to the world. He had a heart that
only human tenderness could satisfy. Then Mabel's
face rose before him in the still, summer afternoon—
the calm brow, the holy eyes of his fondest dream.
He thought of her as his wife—the mother of his children—
in bridehood, wifehood, motherhood; and growing
old, at length, by his side, yet never old to him,
with the smile which age had no power to dim lingering
still about her lips, till death should freeze them
into the last and sweetest smile of all, and they should
be young once more in heaven. And, thinking thus,
his soul seemed to clasp and tighten round her image,
and involuntarily his lips cried out,

“Oh, Mabel, Mabel! Mine own—mine own!”

All the afternoon he sat there, lost in troubled
thought, his fingers now and then wandering listlessly
over the chords of his violin. At twilight he rose,
and went silently down stairs and out of doors. Standing
at the window, his mother watched him as he
walked with rapid step toward Farmer Emerson's
house. The knowledge had come, at first, to this gentle
woman with a sharp pang, that her son loved another
better than his mother, but for his sake she had
conquered it; and now she said to herself, thankfully,

“I am glad he is going over there. Poor lad, he is
in heavy trouble, but God grant Mabel may be able to
console him.”

Mabel was standing under the trees at the gate. He
saw her waiting for him as he drew nigh, but he had

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never seen her face so sad before. He took her trembling
fingers in his own. They were icy cold.

“I know it all,” she said, with sorrowful calmness,
through which thrilled the smothered cry of a breaking
heart; “father has told me. I know you can not
give up your music, and I can't disobey my father.
We must—”

She could not finish the sentence. Her voice broke
up into sobs, and Joseph Thorne drew her shivering
form to his bosom. Swift as lightning, the thought
flashed through his mind that thus Heaven had taught
him his duty. He had not considered her suffering
before. What claim had the world on him, what claim
his beloved music, that could be weighed for one instant
with this breaking heart—this pure, woman's
heart, which was all his own? He pressed his lips to
the forehead lying against his breast. He said, very
tenderly,

“Hush, Mabel—hush, darling! I have decided for
us both. God has joined us together, and nothing can
put us asunder. I shall accept your father's proposal.
What would music be to me without you—you, my
soul's best music? If I went forth without you into
the world, the thought of Mabel alone and suffering
would unnerve me and make me powerless. What
could I give forth but utterances of despair? No;
God calls me to stay here. Look up, my darling, my
sweet Mabel. You do not fear I should ever tire of
you?”

She raised her eyes, and looked long and earnestly
into his face.

“No, Joseph, no; I do not fear you will tire of me,
for I know your steadfast nature. I know God has

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made us one. But it will break your heart to give up
your fame, your calling, your beloved music. Better
give up Mabel. Go, Joseph; I am not selfish. I will
believe that you love me always. It shall be the glory
of my life. You must go to your career, your duty.”

“My career is here. My duty is here. My world
is in your heart, your priceless heart. Nay, Mabel, I
have decided. Urge me not. How could my heart
break for music when the clinging tendrils of your
love bound it together? Be satisfied and smile, for I
shall be happy.”

With these words, and such as these, he soothed her;
in some measure he won her from her sorrow; and
yet, though the smiles came to her lips at his bidding,
in her heart was a prophetic silence of fear, lest, in giving
up his music, her lover gave up the best half of
himself.

They went together at length to her father, and,
holding in his the hand of his betrothed, Joseph Thorne
said,

“I require no longer time, Mr. Emerson. I have decided.
Your daughter is more to me than all things
else. I give up all for her. I accept your offer with
thanks. To-morrow I will come and place my time
at your disposal.”

And then he went home to his mother. It was dark,
but there was no light. She had been sitting alone,
absorbed in her anxious thoughts. He knelt at her
feet as in his early boyhood days, and told her his story.

“All is settled now,” he said, steadily. “I go to
work at Mr. Emerson's to-morrow. Mabel will be
mine. Music must be given up—my dreams—my ambition.”

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His mother interrupted him with her sobs. She
clasped him in her arms. She wept over him; she,
who had gloried so in his gift, who, ever since he had
been laid, her first-born, upon her breast, had understood
him and lived in his life. And he wept with
her. He was not too proud, with his mother's arms
around him, to weep for the far-off fame-wreaths of
which his ambition had vainly dreamed — wreaths
which he must never more hope to gather. That
night neither of them slept. He laid his head, as in
boyhood, upon her motherly heart. He breathed into
her sympathetic ears all the hopes and longings which
this decision had crushed; and all the other hopes and
longings, which were blooming now brighter than ever,
which clustered around Mabel's name. And his mother
comforted him.

The next morning he commenced his task under
Farmer Emerson. His heart was almost buoyant, despite
all he had resigned, for he had had a few moment's
conversation with Mabel—Mabel, who was to be all
his own. She looked so lovely in her fresh calico
morning dress. The light of hope sparkled in her
eyes, and sat serenely upon her brow. Surely that
smile would have power to brighten any fate.

But the task which was set him, light as it seemed,
taxed all his energies. The delicate, study-loving
youth was not used to labor. The sun scorched his
slender hands pitilessly; the sweat stood in great, beadlike
drops upon his brow. It was a comfort when the
horn sounded for dinner. It was a sorely-needed refreshment
to sit in the farmer's porch, while Mabel
brought cool, sparkling water to have his burning,
dusty face.

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Day after day passed on, and he never faltered.
With steady, unflagging industry he performed whatever
tasks were appointed, and as rapidly as possible
made himself master of all the mysteries of farming.
But he drooped under his uncongenial toil. Even Mr.
Emerson could see this; but he predicted “the boy
would grow stronger and get used to it in time.” Mabel
saw more clearly, and the hope in her eyes grew
less steadfast. Often, when he came to her in the evening,
tired and worn, she would say,

“It is no use. You will have to give it up, or it
will kill you.”

And he would strive to answer cheerfully.

“Nonsense! I am tired, but you know, dear, it will
be so much easier when we get a place of our own.
I need only do the lightest work then.”

But he could not blind Mabel's clear eyes.

It was during Ole Bull's first visit to this country,
and, as the autumn grew into winter, the papers were
full of his success. They often read of him together;
of his tall, swaying figure, his face so calm and spiritual,
and the wonderful music which seemed the voice
of his soul. One morning, with a paper in his hand,
Joseph Thorne came to Mabel. His face was kindled
with enthusiasm. His eyes flashed, and his manner
was eager and hurried.

“See here, Mabel,” he said; “he plays at New Haven
to-night. Only thirty miles off. I can resist the
temptation no longer. I must go. There is not much
to do on the farm, and I can borrow your father's horse.
Oh, Mabel! it will give me new life.”

She entered eagerly into his plans. Her father did
not oppose them, and in half an hour he had started.

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Most tenderly had he bidden his betrothed the good-by
which was to be so brief, and she stood at the gate
and watched him with a cheerful smile until his eyes,
looking back, could discern her no longer. Then she
went into the house, and the grief smothered, woman-like,
for his sake burst forth.

“Oh,” she murmured, “he will never be the same
to me again—I feel it. This music will speak to him
like a clarion. It will awake him from dreams. His
life-work will rise up before him, and the necessity to
go forth and do it will be upon his soul. And I—woe
is me!—how shall I learn to live without him? Hush,
selfish heart? Wouldst thou hold him back from his
true life, weak spirit?”

But the chidden agony would come back again.
The veil was rent away from the pale brow of the future.
Swift and sure she saw her fate coming toward
her. All that day, all that night, all the next day, she
wrestled with it, but still its face was set resolutely toward
her—still its steps were onward.

It was almost nightfall when the watched-for figure
came in sight. She went to the gate to meet him. He
sprang from the horse and folded her in his arms. His
kisses thrilled upon her lips, yet even then she felt
there had been a change. She drew him into the
house and questioned him eagerly. It had been as
she expected. The wonderful music had troubled all
the depths of his nature. It had bound him captive.
In vain he struggled against the chain.

Unfalteringly she gave her counsel.

“Go!” she said; “you must go! I told you it would
break your heart to give it up; and see, already in
these few months you have grown prematurely old,

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and weary, and feeble. Go: you will be false to the
highest part of your nature if you do not serve your
soul's master. It is the task God himself has set you;
it is not yours to deliberate whether you will accept
it.”

“But you, Mabel, my life's life—I can not give
you up.”

For one moment the white face grew whiter. But
there came no quiver into her quiet tones.

“You need not give me up. I shall be yours only,
till I die; nor need we despair. If you succeed, perhaps
my father will give me to you. I believe he will,
he loves me so. And you will succeed, you must succeed.
For such as you there is no such word as fail.
Go, Joseph; it is right.”

A troubled, anxious week intervened before he had
decided, but Mabel saw how it would be all along.
Not for an instant did she beguile herself with false
hopes. He went. The farewell kisses of two pure
women, mother and betrothed, were upon his lips.
Their blessings were the last sound in his ears. Their
prayers followed him. He seemed to suffer more than
Mabel in the prolonged agony of their parting. Twenty
times he was on the point of giving up his career,
his future, to stay with her, but she would not suffer
it. She sustained him, she cheered him; she, who
knew better than himself how impossible for him was
any other life than the one which had haunted all the
dreams of his boyhood. When he was gone at length—
when anxious eyes, strained ever so widely, could
not catch another glimpse of the beloved form—the
two women, both bereft of their dearest thing in life,
went in silence, each into her own home, to struggle

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alone with her sorrow. In that hour there could be
no partnership of grief.

Mabel suffered most. It was natural for the mother
to wish her son to go out into the world, to do and be
all that God gave him power; and, whatever change
came to him, the one tie could never be broken—he
would be her son always. But to Mabel, despite her
strong faith in him, the light of her life seemed to have
gone out, and her soul shuddered—alone in the darkness.
She had exhausted all her energy in soothing
and encouraging him; she had none left to struggle
with the grim presentiment which oppressed her own
spirit.

She had always been strong, in spite of the extreme
delicacy of her figure, and she did not grow feeble
even now. All her accustomed duties were performed
with her usual energy. There was no visible
change, save that her lips smiled a little more seldom,
and her cheek was white as marble. She seemed to
strive to be continually occupied, as if fearful if she
gave herself time to confront her grief it would overmaster
her.

Her face always brightened after a letter from her
betrothed. They were not very frequent, but when
they did come they overflowed with love and hope.
She felt that now, indeed, was he living his true life.
Nor had success been so very difficult to him. Ole
Bull had been his friend. He had sought, at once,
the gifted Norwegian. In secret, for he was not one
to bestow his benefactions in public, the master performer
had given him a few hints, a few instructions,
that he might know better how to translate his soul's
depths into his music.

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Soon Mabel heard of him. He was making a tour
under an assumed name, to which only those who
loved him best had the key, and every where he was—
as Mabel had felt he must ever be—successful. The
small country places which witnessed his first trial of
strength were moved as they had never been before.
No mind so dull but his tones made themselves understood.
The country press was full of his praises.
This young performer—they wrote—so delicate, so almost
boyish, but with such a wonderful genius! They
told of his face beaming as if inspired; the eyes sweet
and bright, yet sad; the slender figure; the almost
transparent hands; and, as she read, the prophetic
fear in Mabel's heart grew heavier. His letters became
more and more rare. It was not that he loved
her less. Mabel had never doubted him for a moment.
But he was doing his work, and it absorbed all his
energies. If it were brief, it must be mighty.

One afternoon in May she sat alone under the trees
where they had so often sat together. Her thoughts
went back over all her life—that young, innocent life,
where were no blighting plague-spots of willful sin,
few even of unintentional wrongs, and yet where, of
late, so many tears had fallen. She remembered the
long-ago time when Joseph Thorne had been her
childish friend and confidant; she retraced the days,
unquiet yet so blissful in their uncertainty, when her
heart awoke from its maiden sleep, and she knew that
she had given him the love for which his words had
not yet sued. Then she lived again the evening of
their betrothal, and whispered over and over to herself
every tender word which had fallen from his lips.
Her father's step along the highway disturbed her

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reverie. She looked up as he entered the gate, and something
in his face startled her. There were tears in his
eyes, and his whole expression was full of an unwonted,
sorrowful tenderness. She sprang to his side.

“Poor Mabel!” he said, as if speaking to himself,
“how hard it will fall on her!” Then, folding his
arm about her, as if in terror lest she should be overcome
by the shock, he said,

“I have seen Joseph Thorne. He came home this
afternoon, as I think, to die. He wants you. Go to
him, Mabel. I give you free leave to stay with him
to the last. Poor child, it's all the consolation you
can have now.”

Mabel did not faint. “Thank you,” she whispered
gratefully, as she withdrew from her father's arm and
went into the house. The blow had come so suddenly
that she did not realize its force. Mechanically, as
one moving in a dream, she put on her bonnet and
walked out toward the Widow Thorne's cottage. The
door was open, and she stood in it for one moment,
silently watching her lover. He lay upon a lounge.
His face was very thin and white, and his eyes seemed
supernaturally large and brilliant. His mother was
kneeling by his side, with her face buried in his bosom.
A solemn awe was upon Mabel's soul. She
dared not go forward or break the silence. Already
he seemed to her like an angel. He was the first to
speak.

“Mabel! Thank God! Come to me, darling!”

His mother rose, and, almost without her own volition,
Mabel had crossed the room; her arms were
folded about his neck, her lips clung to his in a long
kiss of love and despair.

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