Mrs. Henry Fordyce looked out of her window the
forenoon after the picnic, and saw her handsome elegant
cousin sauntering in at her gate. She was weak enough
to feel a little pride in her relationship with him, — in
his talents, his breeding, his good looks, his grand air,
his magnificence, generally speaking. She knew that
half Lenox was envying her her kinship with him; and
few things are more delightful to a naturally constituted
woman than those which tempt her erring sisters to
break the tenth commandment. She received her visitor
with impressment.

“I looked for you, Elliott. I thought you were sure
to come and tell me how you liked Lenox.”

“What I thought of your husband's nieces, you
mean,” he corrected her, with a smile which held a
little covert satire.

[figure description] Page 024.[end figure description]

“Well! if you choose to put it in that way. I saw
that you drove Elizabeth home. Don't you think the
others handsomer?”

“Yes, I suppose so, if they weren't such duplicates
of each other. I like individuality.”

“They are a good deal alike. People call them `the
three Graces,' you know, — or `the handsome Fordyces.'
When they say those things, of course they don't include
Elizabeth.”

“Does that hurt her feelings?”

“How absurd. Would she say so if it did? But
really I doubt if she cares, she is so full of her daydreams.”

“And the others are not dreamers, — real blue and
gold, flesh and blood. Jule, it is warm, and I am lazy,—
just in the humor for gossip; which, after all, men
like quite as well as women, if only the subject is interesting.
So let me lie back here in this great easy-chair,
and you tell me about Elizabeth Fordyce. She
has excited my curiosity, just because she is so unlike
the rest of them. How is it that she hasn't the family
beauty?”

“Why, you see her mother was a Nugent, and that's
where the dark eyes and hair, and the reserved, dreaming
temperament come from. She's very like a picture
I've seen of her mother. There's but little Fordyce
about her, poor thing.”

“It is unlucky, if her face is her fortune; but perhaps
she has money?”

“Not a dime of her own. I've heard rumors since I

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came here that she wasn't fairly dealt with in that matter;
but Henry wont talk about it. You see her father
and the uncle she lives with were in business together,
and just after her father's death there was some embarrassment
about money matters, and the firm came near
being insolvent. So it was made out, somehow, that
no money was to come to her; but then her uncle took
her home, and has done by her just the same as by his
own children; so, after all, there is no fault to be
found. They've all been good to her, only I don't
think they understand her very well. They say she's
queer.”

“I suppose she likes her life?” he asked, with secret
curiosity.

“I don't quite know. She was eighteen last spring,
and Kate told me that she had been restless ever since
to get away and do something for herself. She would
have gone before now, only that her uncle was so opposed.
But she has been studying with all her might
to fit herself to go as a governess at the first good
opening.”

Elliott Le Roy smiled at the thought of some of Elizabeth's
cool, little ways, and crisp, curt speeches. The
governess element did not appear to him to be very
strongly developed in her character. Having found out
all he wanted to know, he got up lazily.

“What, you are not going?”

“Yes, I'm afraid I must. It's a bore, rushing round
in the sun, and you know, Jule, how I like to sit in
your cool, quiet parlor; but I must not quite forget all

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social laws even in this Berkshire Arcadia. It becomes
me to inquire about the health of the Fordyces after
their picnic.”

As he walked along, however, it was only one of the
Fordyces of whom he thought, and that one, Elizabeth.
He had said to himself, yesterday, “How that girl could
love!” and he was curiously tempted to try the experiment
of making her in love with himself. He fancied
her petulant little ways; her pretty insubordinations;
the shy sweetness of her rare and hard-won tenderness;
and then the triumph of her full and free surrender.
Once it came across his mind that it wouldn't be so
very bad a thing to marry her. If he married at all, it
must be a woman who would not fetter him, — who
would demand little, and take what he gave, thankfully.
He had bachelor ways, single-man tastes, which he
would not be willing to sacrifice to any one. A girl in
his own set, well posted as to her dues, would not be
satisfied with any such half conquest. But this “wild
thing, shy thing,” would she not be easy to content,
once that a man had tamed her? If some one were to
save her from her governessing career, and surround
her with elegance and luxury, how gratitude would
deepen and sweeten her love.

That reflection, by the way, showed how little he
really knew of women. Gratitude and love run in
parallels. There may be room for both in the same
heart, but they never touch, nor do I see how one can
deepen the other.

Mr. Le Roy laughed, a cynical little laugh, all to

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himself, as he came to the Fordyce gate and the end
of his revery at the same time. After all, what did he
want of a girl with whom he certainly was not in love, —
who, at best, would be more or less of an incumbrance?
Still, it was only Miss Elizabeth Fordyce for whom he
asked at the door; though the rest might be supposed
to hold equal claims upon his courtesy.

He was shown into a little room which, by tacit
consent, had been abandoned to Elizabeth. It was
furnished with quaint, old-fashioned furniture, which
had been her mother's. A bookcase, well filled, was
one of its adornments. Ivy-vines had been trained
over the windows, into leafy cornices for the soft, white
muslin curtains. The few chairs were all easy-chairs.
The windows were open, but Elizabeth had a Southern
temperament, and liked warmth, so there was a little
grate with a tiny soft-coal fire, clear and bright; and,
near the fire, her delicate cheeks flushed by its glow,
sat Elizabeth. She had no means to make expensive
toilets, but she had the tact to make effective ones. Her
dress was white, with violet ribbons; and a violet
odor floated out from her filmy handkerchief. Her eyes
kindled when she met Mr. Le Roy, and then drooped
again; and her visitor took in the whole picture, —
room and furnishings, and graceful woman, — and
scoffed at Lenox for not having found out, before
this, who was the handsome Fordyce.

The shy eagerness of her welcome charmed him.
He sat down beside her, and began to talk to her about
some of the books lying on her table. He found that

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

she had both read and thought, though her high estimate
of his ability made her diffident of expressing her
own ideas. Once or twice, however, she flashed into
passionate earnestness. Once was when he took up a
volume of Goethe.

“So you like the grand old German?” he said.

“Like him!” The dark, gray eyes flashed, the cheeks
flamed. “Mr. Le Roy, I hate him!”

“I presume you do not question his genius?”

“The more genius, the more shame!” she cried, hotly.
“A man that could coolly go to work to win one
woman's heart after another, just to see how love
would affect each different type, and then throw them
away like squeezed oranges. I try to think good will
always triumph over evil, in the end; but I have often
wondered whether there were soul enough in that man
to be worth saving. Mind he had plenty of; but it is
not mind to which the saving promise of immortality is
given.”

“So you think trifling with a woman's heart is the
unpardonable sin?”

“I don't know,” she said, slowly. “God forbid that
I should pronounce any soul's sentence. Still, I know
but one worse crime in a man than winning a woman's
heart for pastime.”

“What is that? Your code of morals interests
me.”

“To marry a wife without loving her,” she answered,
in a still, controlled voice, but with cheeks and eyes
aflame. “When a woman found herself trifled with

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and deserted, pride might come to her rescue, and her
day and chance for happiness might not be quite over,—
for, romance about it how we may, women, and men
too, do sometimes love more than once. But, deceived
into a loveless marriage, what is there for the wife
to do but to die? I think I could never forgive that
wrong on earth or in Heaven.”

“How if a woman marries a man without loving
him?”

“She wrongs him, surely; and her own soul yet
more. But the cases are not parallel. Love is not so
vital to a man; and, besides, I firmly believe that any
husband who has married a wife with a free heart can
win her love if he tries.”

“Your experience must have been very limited; how
have you formed your theories of life?” he asked her,
wonderingly.

“They are only theories, as you say. I cannot tell
how they would stand contact with actual life. But
they were strong enough to make me hate Goethe.”

She rounded her sentence with a smile, and then
took up some delicate sewing, and began stitching on
it, as if she considered the discussion finished.

Mr. Le Roy drew “Men and Women” from his
pocket, and opened it first to “Evelyn Hope;” that
hopefullest poem of love and woe which poet ever
penned. Afterwards he turned a few pages to the
“Toccata of Galluppi's,” and read it through. Two
lines stayed with Elizabeth, and kept her company
long after he had bidden her good-morning, and gone
away, —

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

Would her life come to nothing? Was she one of
the “butterflies” to “dread extinction”? Her existence,
just then, seemed laid upon her as a burden, not
given her as a blessing.

Elliott Le Roy went out again into the June sunlight.
He was becoming singularly interested in
Elizabeth; but it was precisely in the Goethe fashion
of wishing to try experiments with her.

“It would almost pay to marry her,” he said to
himself, with his cool little laugh, “just to see what
kind of wife she would make. She talked desperately
and defiantly enough, but she would be very submissive,
I think, when she couldn't help herself. It's the
way with these high-mettled, true-blooded creatures,
whether horses or women. Once well-broken to harness,
and there's no end to their faithfulness and
submission. I'd trust her. But she wouldn't give away
that heart of hers in a day.”

He walked on, switching off dandelion-heads with
his light walking-stick. Lenox was more exciting than
he had expected. Perhaps he could not make Elizabeth
care for him, even if he tried; but at that thought he
smiled a little scornfully to himself. He had found
women so far very easy to win, though he had won
them not to wear, hitherto. So far in life he had loved
and ridden away; but curiously enough he did not for
a moment contemplate pursuing this course with

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

Elizabeth. If he won her heart he quite understood that he
must pay the legitimate price for his triumph. Nor
did this prospect very much trouble him. Partly because—
come how those things may — she was so essentially
thorough-bred that he could trust her to be equal
to any position in which he might place her; and
partly — though this was unacknowledged to himself —
because even his Mephistophelian nature was not
wholly free from the human longing to be loved, to
have one human creature to say a prayer for him if he
were in peril, or drop a tear for him if he were dead.
I think, too, that even this man of the world would
not have been quite bold enough deliberately to
resolve on trifling with such a “being of spirit, and
fire, and dew,” as Elizabeth.

Still, whether in the character of trifler or man in
earnest, he went day after day to the Fordyce dwelling.
He read to Elizabeth, and talked to her. The country
ways learned to know his horse's footsteps, and the people,
for a radius of ten miles round the village, grew
familiar with the handsome, haughty face of the horse's
master, and the slight, dark-haired girl beside him.

Elizabeth's soul was in a strange tumult. All of life
had become savorless to her except the hours when he
was beside her; and yet with him she was never quite
happy or at ease. She wished in one breath that she
had never seen him; while in the next she shivered at
the thought of what Lenox would be when summer and
he had taken flight together.

“Do you love me, Elizabeth?”

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He asked her this one day, in a half-reckless mood;
piqued to do it, perhaps, by her inscrutable self-possession.
It was six weeks after the picnic, — six weeks
during which there had not been a single day when
they had not met. In August he was to go to Newport;
and now it was the middle of July. They had
been talking of this, and it had seemed to her as if something
tight round her heart were strangling it. She
sat silent, because she had not self-control enough to
speak calmly; and into this silence his question fell, —
“Do you love me, Elizabeth?”

She grew very pale, and her voice shook as she answered, —
“God help me, I do not know. I never cared
for any one else, and I don't want to part with you;
but I had thought love was something more, or different.
Can't you help me to understand myself, Mr. Le Roy?”

The soft pleading in her eyes moved him. Her helplessness
was so appealing, her voice so faltering, her
face so pale and sweet, that Elliott Le Roy came
nearer to loving her in that moment than ever he had
before. He took her close into his arms, and kissed
her, — a long, silent kiss, — his first. He felt something,
but I think he feigned more; for his was a nature to
which shams fitted themselves as a garment.

“I think you do love me, Elizabeth. Is it not so?”

With his eyes and lips on hers, the whole magnetism
of his nature swaying her towards him, she answered
under her breath, — “If you care for my love, Mr. Le
Roy, I think you can keep it.”

And in saying this she told him neither more nor less

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

than the truth. If he had honestly loved her, honestly
cared for her love, it would never have failed him.
She did not yet know herself; but he had all things in
his favor. He satisfied her pride, — he fulfilled the demands
of her taste, — her heart might easily be his by
right of discovery, if he chose to enter in and take possession.

Would he choose?

For a moment a vague longing for the possible sweetness
there might be in a true love, a true home, came
over him, and his manner was very tender.

“Shall I be a grand dame enough for your sphere in
life?” Elizabeth asked humbly.

“If I had not thought my rose perfect, should I have
tried to gather it?” he said in answer. “There are
other flowers in other gardens, — I have chosen here.”

He had not said one word about his love for her, but
Elizabeth had not noticed the omission. Nor had he left
such words unsaid from any conscientious scruples, any
doubts of himself, but simply because they did not come
naturally to him. He was not an affectionate man;
and just here was the reef on which, had all her skies
been fair, all her winds favoring, Elizabeth was sure,
soon or late, to come to woe.

Underneath all her delicate shyness, her nature was
tenderly affectionate, and, where she deeply loved, very
demonstrative as well. She would never have wearied
of the manifestations of affection; while to be fond and
caressing, or even to endure such things patiently for
any length of time, was not in Le Roy's mental

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constitution. Elizabeth's instinctive and refined womanliness
was sure to keep her from wearying any man with unsought
caresses; but it offered her no security against
that hunger of the heart of which one dies at last, just
as surely as of bodily famine.

The time for discovering this lack had not yet come,
and she fancied herself very happy as she sat at Le
Roy's side, and heard him tell how she had interested
him from the first. Nor was he insincere in this talk.
If I have given you the impression that he was a man
with no good qualities, no tender human feeling, no
respect for moral obligations, I have failed to render
him to you fairly. The trouble about correctly understanding
people is that there are no pure temperaments;
no one is altogether bad or altogether good. The bad
preponderates fearfully in some natures; but no man is
left to live on earth when he is quite a devil, or fails of
translation when he is all a saint.

Sitting beside Elizabeth, in those first hours after he
had won her, Le Roy certainly felt a tenderness for her,
a real interest in her, which he had never experienced
for a woman before. It was far enough from the grand,
self-sacrificing devotion of a nobler man; but it was the
best he had to give, — let us do him justice.

As for Elizabeth, thinking of her in those hours, one
wishes over again that she could only have had a pure,
wise, good mother. Poor child! She was not in one
sense ignorant. She had read and thought in her way,
and framed her fine-spun theories; but she knew so
sadly little of her own heart.

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And this engagement was but the type of half those
formed by young girls of eighteen the country over.
They do not guess what true love is or should be, —
they mistake for it their first heart-flutter, — they do
not comprehend their own natures, or divine what they
will need when they come to the full stature of their
womanhood; and yet they are very honest, and mean
all they say when they utter, in their ignorance, that
solemn vow which neither Heaven nor man could help
them to keep, until Heaven or man should be able to
make the sun move back on his course, or the streams
flow upwards towards the mountain tops.