“But you know I do not love you,” she whispered,
lifting her face at last with the tears yet
undried.

“I know, too, that if I do not make you, I
shall not deserve to have you,” he said. “My
life is yours. You must! You shall!”

When the bell rung, and Mrs. Stanhope's voice
itself was heard in further summons, they crossed
together into the little tea-room. Beaudesfords
went behind Mrs. Stanhope, and, bending back
her head, gave her forehead a filial salute.
“Mamma Stanhope,” he said, “there is going to
be a wedding here next month. You are all
going to live with me at Beaudesfords.”

It was even as he said. There was a wedding
there. Catherine had no reason for delay, and
they all went to live at Beaudesfords. But when
his wife grew more white and thin with every
day, more listless and languid, failing to find
pleasure in her splendor, in the envy of her
friends, to like the lustre of her silks or the
glory of her gems, Beaudesfords took her away
alone with him into strange scenes and foreign
countries. Tender care, serene skies, enjoyment
of all the novel pleasure that the Old
World has to give, beguiled her from herself at

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

length. She came home, when two years were
over, a woman full of health, with a gracious yet
commanding presence, more beautiful than the
vision of a dream, satisfied enough with life;
and when she crossed the threshold, the first
person that she saw was Gaston.

V.

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

“Beaudesfords!”

“Gaston!”

“The last man I dreamed of seeing here!”

“The first that I desire to see! You remember
my wife, Gaston?”

How long ago it seemed to him since Gaston
had seen her! He himself had been so nearly
happy that these two years were like a blessed
age, beyond which he could scarcely recollect.
He had known well in the beginning that Catherine
did not love him; but when month by month
of their foreign sojourn went by, and under the sunbeams
of his constant care her heart seemed to
open like a flower, with little acts of graciousness,
an intimate word, a clinging to his arm, a seat
reserved beside herself; when, into all the familiar
intercourse of daily life, sometimes there slipped
from her lips a half-endearing term, sometimes a
smile, — once, he remembered, a caress, a slight

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

and brief and trivial thing, yet a caress, — then
Beaudesfords' heart had lightened of all the load
it ever bore, and he believed that ere long he
should win her for his own indeed, that her heart
would be his, as his had so long been hers; and
possessed of what he fancied to be an infinite
patience, he waited, and day and night his one
thought was her pleasure. But, in fact, Beaudesfords
had no patience at all: he had in its place
a plentiful perseverance. He had never been
called upon to suffer seriously: had he been, he
would have rebelled and fallen at once. He would
not suffer in his siege of Catherine's heart: it
must end but one way, he thought, and it was all
a precious endeavor. To serve those we love is a
delight. Beaudesfords then, during these two
years, had been happy in earning the wages of
bliss. The time seemed to him a period that had
no date behind it. He forgot that Catherine had
ever stood upon the verge of want, forgot that he
had ever conferred a benefit upon her. This
wealth and ease seemed to provide her natural
atmosphere; and thus he almost forgot that Gaston
and she had ever exchanged a glance.

“You remember my wife, Gaston,” said he.
“You remember her when you first saw her,

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

standing on that ledge of rocks;” for the picture
she had made in standing there flashed back upon
him at the moment. “Ah, that was a thousand
years ago! She was an airy nothing then,” he
said: “now she has a local habitation and a name.
She is Beaudesfords of Beaudesfords now!”

To all this Gaston replied not a syllable. He
only bowed lower and lower over a cold hand that
lay in his one instant, and seemed to melt away
like a snow-flake; and scarcely could it be said
that his brown face darkened with a deeper hue
than the mere bending gave it.

But across Catherine's memory flashed another
picture, — the starlit midnight, with the swinging
shadows of its tree-branches, his lips that bent to
hers, her lips that rose to his; and a bitter flush
of shame burst over throat and face, and dyed
them with a stain that Beaudesfords had never
seen before. Then she had passed on to receive
the welcome of the hurrying and clustering servants,
and to her mother's rooms, where Mrs.
Stanhope and her other daughters sat without
suspicion of the scene below.

Gaston had arrived at Beaudesfords only that
day, intending to take away with him various
articles of his property that, during his

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

expedition, had remained under the protection of its
roof. Mrs. Stanhope, who kept the house in her
daughter's absence, or rather kept the housekeeper,
and who held one of the diplomatic principles
of always treating a man as if you might
some day want to use him, now that there was no
danger, with Catherine safely provided for, and
out of the way besides, and with Rose too much
of Caroline's mind to be affected one way or the
other in a single day and night, felt the coming
of this adventurous gentleman to be a great lightener
of the tedium she experienced in their splendid
but lonesome country-seat, could not forbear
reading to him, in her magnanimity, the latest
letters from her son and daughter, and urged him
to pass the night beneath the roof that had, in
truth, been wont to be as often his shelter as that
of Beaudesfords himself. She was as much surprised
as everybody else when Catherine stood
smiling in the doorway, like the embodiment not
only of a great sunbeam, but of a whole sky full
of sunshine; for Beaudesfords was a spendthrift
in surprises, much as he had once declared that
he detested them, and always contrived to swoop
down on his household when they thought him a
hundred horizons away.

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

Beaudesfords, of course, would not hear of
Gaston's leaving; on the contrary, he must stay, —
stay indefinitely. Just back from his expedition,
what engagements had he? None at all. This
was his home: he had no other. Did he understand
that? Did he suppose that because he,
Beaudesfords, was married, his wife banished his
friends? No: Catherine and he had but one
wish. The western wing, as of old, as much as
he wanted of it, should be in his undisturbed possession
so long as he chose to occupy it or to
return to it: if ever he made another home for
himself, with a hearth-stone in it, and anybody
sitting beside the hearth-stone, well and good;
but till he made it, — and Beaudesfords didn't
believe he was a marrying man, — till he made it,
the fiat had gone forth: bring his traps down to
Beaudesfords.

And so he did.

VI.

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

There was a world of work out of doors for
the master of Beaudesfords. A thousand things
were in arrears. Though Mrs. Stanhope had
done the best a woman could, her dominion ended,
to all essential purpose, with McRoy in the flower-garden:
her arms were not long enough to reach
the limits of the great estate, nor strong enough
to hold it in subjection. Beaudesfords and Gaston
spent day after day in dismissing and engaging,
superintending, ordering, and seeing the
orders executed. Catherine, wearied with travel
apparently, kept her room in great measure.
Mrs. Stanhope's managing ways held all in order
about her; while her lively, handsome face, and
Rose's bewitching little liberties, and Caroline's
languor and exactions, made the drawing-room
scenes any thing but tiresome. Still, there was
a great vacuum where Catherine should have
been. Beaudesfords too, when under the roof,

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

divided his time between her place of abode and
that of the others — the others who had countless
things to say and hear — in an unsatisfactory
manner. And so, when at last it had been
decided that Gaston was to remain, and after one
or two weeks had given her rest, and afforded no
earthly reason for her longer absence, one day
again Catherine took up her sceptre, and began
to reign through her prime-ministers.

There was a low fire on the wide hearth, that
filled a small portion of the spacious drawing-room
with a rich and ruddy half-light: the rest
of it was remote in twilight and shadows. But,
just as the door swung open, a long frolicking
flame darted into life and shot up the chimney in a
flash that sent its ray straight to the spot where
Catherine stood, surveying the group by the fireside,
a revelation of light herself. The two men
looked up together; and if she were not photographed
upon their memories for ever, as she delayed
that instant, it is because no photography
has any means of perpetuating such color and
such brilliance. She was in dinner-dress, wearing
a heavy gold-colored fabric full of lustre and
sweeping from her in broad folds, and a knot of
vivid scarlet geraniums was at her breast. With

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

her pale, gold-colored hair, with the sudden bloom
upon her cheeks, with her wide and shining eyes,
she seemed the very answering spirit of the flame
that had just shot up to the outside freedom of
stars and night. There was that about Catherine
always reminding Beaudesfords of light. Gaston
and Beaudesfords both sprang to meet her; but
Gaston paused after the first motion, and it was
the other who led her to her seat and brought the
cushion for her feet. If Beaudesfords had shown
one atom less devotion, had demanded something,
refused something, not so lavishly have given all,—
for a woman loves a master, not a slave!

“Well, Mistress Beaudesfords,” exclaimed
Rose, “welcome home! If you 're a good girl,
you may stay: you may sit at the head of your
own table!”

“Many thanks,” replied Catherine, slowly. “I
shall not deprive Mamma of her seat.”

“Mamma likes it, though,” said Rose. “It is
a remnant of authority. If we are naughty, she
cuts off our soup.”

“I 'm sure, Catherine,” cried Mrs. Stanhope,
“I shall never think of taking your place in your
house.”

“As you please, Mamma,” she answered, with

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

the air of one speaking on a disagreeable topic.
“It is so troublesome for you.”

“Yes, yes, Mamma Stanhope,” exclaimed
Beaudesfords, who would perhaps have liked to
see his wife the mistress of his house, but who
would not have her troubled even to humor his
fondest wish. “She is too worn and tired yet, — by
and by, perhaps!” And he turned to Catherine
his smiling, asking face.

It was a little thing, that matter of Catherine's
seat at table, giving the housekeeper her orders,
and overlooking her accounts; but it involved a
greater one. To have assumed her place at once,
that would have been a sheltering rampart; to
have directed the affairs of her household, it
would have impressed upon her the fact that it
was her household, the fact of how it became hers;
to have been the mistress in Beaudesfords would
have given emphasis to its master. But she
shrank from all that, as if she had no right either
to the burden or the honor. “By and by, perhaps!”
repeated Beaudesfords. “By and by,”
she answered wearily, and dropped her fan into
her lap. But Beaudesfords was content: with
him, so much was always the promise of more.
It was enough just to see her there. The stream

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

of small talk rippled from the others, the fire
sparkled, he hovered here and there, restless as
some winged thing, now bending over Catherine,
now sparring for a turn with Gaston, now wondering
if dinner would never be served. Rose
joined in the sparring; Caroline, even, had her
sofa wheeled up that she might lose none of the
hour's enjoyment. As for Catherine, she said
nothing; she seldom said any more; she was one
of those persons whose reticence is eloquence, having,
besides, a language of lip and cheek and eye,
of hand and breath; she listened to the utterance
of a philosopher or of a fool, and understood both,
be it said; in truth, it was her comprehensiveness
that, when one was habituated to her beauty,
impressed the most; too thoroughly womanly to
originate, she received every thing; and whether
it were through some clear understanding, or
some fine instinct, or on a common ground of
perfectly developed humanity, the speaker always
felt that not a syllable was lost upon his listener.
When she did open her lips, her words carried
weight. Thus with Beaudesfords, well wont to
her ways, other women's speech indeed might be
silver, but Catherine's silence was golden.

Gaston sat with the bright tongs in his hand,

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

stooping forward, and building up an edifice of
the falling coals, watching the life run through
them and die; and then dinner was softly announced,
and Beaudesfords called Gaston to
Catherine, and himself led Mamma Stanhope to
the contested seat. But that touch of Catherine's
hand upon his arm was so light that Gaston could
not feel it: the next moment it was withdrawn,
and she had taken her chair. By some ill-will
of circumstance, Mamma Stanhope failed to call
Gaston to her own right hand: he sat at Catherine's,
and the order of things was established.

“I don't know why it is,” said Beaudesfords,
when they were again in the drawing-room, and
sipping their coffee, “but, faultless as I used to
think things were in this lodge, they never seem
one half so home-like as in your charming cottage,
Mamma Stanhope.”

“That is because there are none of our little
rooms, where, in turning round, you tipped over
the centre-table, and put an elbow through the
mirror,” said Rose. “How can you be at home
in these great parlors, with their alcoves and
suites that may hold a thousand ambuscades?”

“Why fear ambuscades with a soldier beside
you?”

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

“And then the music,” complained Caroline.
“It spreads into thin air.”

“So?” said Beaudesfords. “Let us see.
Catherine, if you would sing” —

To his surprise she rose at once. Gaston had
just given his cup to the servant, and was standing
before her, leaning one arm on the mantel:
perhaps she did not care to dwell on the sight.
Ere he could offer to conduct her, a scale ran up
the keys of the piano: she had seated herself and
commenced playing.

“Frost-bitten,” said Beaudesfords. “The tones
tinkle like icicles, as they fall from your fingers.”
He lay in the great cushions of a lounge, their
soft carnation lending his face a flush, and deepening
the tint of his yellow curls. Catherine
looked at him a moment, and thought of some of
the richly colored canvases she had stood before
in Europe. His head was something superb:
it had the look of some Capitolean god's; such
youth and beauty had a kind of majesty next to
immortal majesty. Then, the piano facing down
the room, she raised her glance, and Gaston still
stood against the mantel, surveying her with his
darkening eyes, — the plain face with its scar, its
ruggedness, its gloom. And the other went out
of her mind like a star in the night.

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

“The voice! The voice!” cried Beaudesfords.

“I have none to-night,” said Catherine, after a
little while, as if she had just understood what
he had said.

“Not for this?” was spoken beside her, and
Gaston's arm, reaching forward, set a sheet of
music on the rack. “You sang it on the night
that we dropped down the river from Beaudesfords.
Do you remember?”

“I remember,” said Catherine. It was the
first sentence, save in brief greetings, they had
exchanged since that night. And for the second
time the color overspread her face, beheld by
Beaudesfords. He rose on one arm, and watched
her as she sang, as her voice soared, — of a sudden
inspired by bitter strength, and penetrating
every heart with the wild sweetness of its inmost
tones.

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

Beaudesfords rose from the lounge, and began
to pace up and down the drawing-room. “Why
do you sing such songs as those?” he said, as
she still turned over the music, and when Gaston
had strolled out to smoke his cigar on the veranda.
“They are the merest nonsense. It must
have been a love-lorn lassie who implored after
that fashion. My wife,” — his voice always loved
to linger over that word, — “sing to me


`His very step has music in't
As he comes up the stair.'”
And he woke her in the night to know if that
silly song had any meaning for her, if she would
never find her happiness in loving him truly, if
she had indeed rather die than live his wife.

“You are very good to me, Beaudesfords,”
said Catherine, unconsciously adopting the words
of the wife of Auld Robin Gray. “Do not fret

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

yourself imagining vain things. Are we not
friends. Do I not bear your name? Be content,
dear Beaudesfords.” She laid her hand
upon his eyes, and lest the soft and seldom touch
should leave him he neither stirred nor spoke till
sleep took up the tale in one long happy dream.

VII.

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

“Catherine,” cried Beaudesfords, one wet afternoon
a day or two subsequently, coming in with
his thumb and finger between the leaves of a
worn clasp-book, “you must hear Gaston's journal:
I must read it to you” —

“Willingly,” said Caroline, with her usual
backwardness.

“No, though: on the whole,” added Beaudesfords,
“I will have Gaston read it himself, while
your needles fly — did I ever see you sew before,
Catherine?” And he looked at her a moment,
smiling with a pleased sense of the domesticity
of the scene; for Catherine and her mother, in
pursuance of a salutary plan of the former's, a
plan for clothing certain destitute people in the
neighborhood, were engaged, each after her own
fashion, — Mrs. Stanhope, that is, earnestly, as if
it were a debt she owed her own good fortune,
a pledge for her future; Catherine dreamily, like
one who understands the idleness of trying to

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

cozen fate, — on the wicker of sewing-work which
had been brought down to the southerly parlor,
a room much used at Beaudesfords in the autumn
days, since all one side of it was a latticed window
opening on the bright beeches and maples
of the lawn, though to-day the glory of the trees
was only to be seen there flying in gusts upon
the gale that tossed them. “I have been poring
over it,” continued Beaudesfords, — “over what I
can make out of it; for he writes a cursed shorthand
of his own invention. Here, Cyril,” as the
lad answered the bell, “ask Major Gaston if he is
too busy to join us in the morning-room.” And
Beaudesfords planted the book on the mantel-shelf,
and stood leaning over the fire while he
turned the leaves. “About as strange a record,”
said he, “as if it had been kept in another planet.
To-day the guest of an emperor” —

“Major Gaston!” cried Mrs. Stanhope, the idea
of the thing causing the degree of the man's
consideration in the good lady's mind to rise perceptibly.

“Bless your dear soul, of a greater yet! of
Christopher Columbus himself!”

“What in the world are you talking about,
Beaudesfords?” said Caroline.

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

“Wait a bit, — you shall see,” answered
Beaudesfords, fluttering the pages. “Here it is.
`My interview with the emperor to-day was all I
could desire. He received me with only a single
gentleman in waiting, and entered at once upon
the business in hand, examining my maps and
proposals with a swift scrutiny that showed an
amazing acquaintance with the subject; and,
observing my surprise, he remarked that he had
had time to consider many things. I told him I
was not Vespucius or Columbus to eat my bitter
bread at the gates of princes, but that, engaged
to survey in the region for private interests of
another nature, I saw opportunity for vaster
things, and came to him as the only monarch
whose sight reached beyond the boundary of his
own kingdom. “What is good for the world,”
said he, “is good for the empire,” while he admitted
with me that the cutting of Darien and Suez
would diminish the circumference of the globe
by at least one half, or, in other words, so far
as human progress is concerned with commerce,
would double the life of man. “A proud ambition,”
said he, “to fulfil the hope of Columbus,
and make the east and west one,” and he promised
the funds from his private purse to carry out my

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

plans in my own time, engaging only that when
completed they should be put in the hands of his
capitalists. “Certainly,” said he, “whoever has
the canal that unites the Atlantic and Pacific
has the keys that were promised to Columbus in
his dream, the keys of the gateways of the sea.”
A great man, — holding Europe in the hollow of
one hand, and reaching out the other to grasp the
vital spot of the American continent, — if in this
mighty age, when all the floods are out and
crowns and sceptres are floating down with the
raff, personal government can succeed at all, it
must succeed with him.' So much for so much,”
said Beaudesfords. “Here's the other, — listen.
`Gracias á Dios is far behind us. There Columbus
gave thanks to God. For my part, I give
thanks to my own energy. And yet as I hear
the anchor-chains rattle down where his own did
once, and I look out on the low, palm-fringed
shore with its purple mountain-line beyond, doubtless
much the same now as then, I confess that
the other had the better of me: he worshipped
an unknown power whose mere contemplation
engendered vast ideas and led him on towards
the “secret things of the sea that are bound with
such strong chains;” and as for me, — well, I am

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

forced to remember what the man wrote to the
Queen, el mundo es poco. But here I am in his
domain, he makes me welcome, to-morrow we go
ashore, and I begin my work, a bequest he left
me perhaps, — to make the Atlantic and Pacific
strike a balance, to bring the antipodes underneath
Greenwich meridian, to find by land the
“secret of the strait” for which he sought by
sea; a part of that most immense of all the testaments
when under stress of shipwreck he willed
away a hemisphere. Shall I link my name with
great thoughts, great deeds, great men, or is it
all another Spanish castle in the air?'”

“Gaston with castles in the air!” exclaimed
Caroline. “Well, tell us, Beaudesfords, did he
do it?”

“Oh! he made his beginning. He made famous
headway till those little tempests in a teapot,
that they call civil wars down there, rendered it
impossible to proceed. But he will be busy with
his estimates and drawings here till the coast is
clear to resume” —

“He 's a modest man, isn't he?” said Caroline.
“Offsetting Columbus with himself!”

“Well — Gaston hasn't much reverence. He
doesn't believe in the supernatural, you know.

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

But he believes tremendously in humanity, —
that 's what this work means. And I suppose
it is exactly because he so fully appreciates that
single-minded old sailor that he aspires to put the
best there is in himself beside him, you see.”

“Doesn't believe in the supernatural?” exclaimed
Caroline, whose mind having received
one idea could not immediately accommodate
itself to another. “But you do, Beaudesfords?”

“Oh, yes! I believe in every thing,” said
Beaudesfords, lightly, still turning the leaves.
“Wraiths and swarths, and the whole train of
hobgoblins. It requires more moral strength
and vitality than I possess to be sufficient to
yourself in the way Gaston is. I fancy I should
fall flat in the dust sometimes if I did not now
and then take the tonic of a religious idea. Here,
listen to this, Catherine. `Night before last on
a shelf of rock, Heaven only knows how high in
heaven, a precipice climbing behind me into a
ghostly sky, a precipice dropping before me into
the bottomless pit for aught I know, a blast roaring
over me On Mighty Pens, a suffocating whirl
of snow whose terrors embruted my guides
beneath the level of the mules, and in which,
without fire, without food, cold as a frozen corpse,

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

I fought for breath till day dawned and fervent
heat made the way clear for us again. This noon
resting in the bowels of the earth, in the huge
fissure of an earthquake whose walls a century of
summers have been hanging with mossy curtains
of green lycopods, draperies of blossoms more
brilliant than the birds that haunt them, waving
heavily at the breath of a mysterious breeze blowing
from nowhere to nowhere. One sunbeam
enters the place; far up on the brink a bamboo
feathers into a fountain of light in it; then it falls
on a pool of still water that glitters as if it were
a sheet of quicksilver; falls on the scarlet wings
of a flamingo flying down, a living flame; falls on
a white ibis standing sleepily in the ray on the
pool's edge and shining like an apparition. In
the rent above my head, the sky, a vast height
up, burns with a violet tinge so deep and sparkling
that I could swear the stars themselves were
burning there in the midday. A fine cut, — Nature
may have made it for my purpose. If we could
but foresee the oscillations of the crust and turn
them to our own uses, and with another throe open
it from sea to sea! Science is a barbarian yet, in
the age of flints; by and by will get beyond pottery
and the boiling-point perhaps, and then possibly we

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

may look to have the vibrations of the sphere's
surface reduced to a system, to find out a motive
for the capriccio. The eternal years of God are
hers, indeed, as well as Truth's, — she needs them
all, she will do nothing in less. Government,
too, is in the same condition, — no forecast, no
preordination: when my ditch is dug, there is its
barbacan, — the long outlying fortress, the island
that is to take tribute of the nations, commanding
presently the argosies of the Orient as they flock
by, gathering into free ports the wealth of the
world, the richest thing itself on earth, — and not
a hand reaches out to grasp it! But the Queen
of the Antilles must belong to the power that
holds the inter-oceanic strait; or else, as the centre
of the great Republic of the Archipelago, another
Venice, rising in the west as that did in the east,
renewing, by one of history's reprisals, — the
swinging of the pendulum, — those maritime
glories which the older Venice lost when Vasco
de Gama closed the Alexandrian highway by one
which must be in time abandoned for this ecliptic
of commerce, she herself will possess it!' Hm,
hm, hm,” said Beaudesfords; “now he is off on
his theories again: they won't interest you.”

“But, my dear child,” said Mrs. Stanhope,

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

much as if she had found a scorpion in the
house, “this man is a filibustero!”

“Gaston? Oh, no! He doesn't care the toss
of a copper for our politics, doesn't believe in
Manifest Destiny, thinks we are as given over to
stupidity as Spain is to sottishness. Gaston has
the Napoleonic bee in his bonnet. But you can't
think, Catherine, how this diary renews my
youth!”

“I should think it might,” she said.

“Yes, indeed! I see the same sights over
again that I saw when your father took me there.
Your father had some of these same fancies, you
know” —

“The same with a difference,” said Mrs. Stanhope,
sententiously.

“I remember one place in particular,” continued
Beaudesfords. “The scent of that rose
in your breast reminds me of it. I wonder if
Gaston ever came across any thing of the sort,—
the merest trifle, — entering one of those dark
old cities after midnight, where the gates were just
matted in a white convolvulus that flowers all
night long, and where the streets were carpeted
with scattered blossoms, pomegranate-buds,
orange-flowers, oleanders, jasmines, tuberoses,

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

frangipanis, that had been strewn there by a
religious procession to some shrine, and whose
fragrance rose alone in the moonlight still like
incense. Let us see — Leon — Granada — a
hurricane that lost its way and whipped the fish
dead in the lakes, and flocks of wild cockatoos
into the houses, and strange white unnamed
beasts fawning out of the forest — ah, here it is,
by all that 's good! The same! Now, do you
know, Catherine, just having Gaston see that
same sight a dozen years after me, gives me
more idea of the antiquity of those Spanish
places, their unchanging age, — doing the same
thing generation after generation, — than remembrance
of all their three hundred years can
do!”

“It must be very interesting to you,” said
Catherine.

“I was sure you would think so! There, you
shall take the book,” tossing it into her lap, “and
read it to yourself: you will enjoy it so much
more that way. You can make out enough of
it; and I want you to see him as I do, for one can
never have such a chance again with a man who
is as silent as a sphinx! I wonder where he is,
by the way. Not in the house, did Cyril say?”

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

“There he is now, coming round the lawn with
Rose,” said Caroline, rising on one arm to look
out. “How I should like a run in such a rain as
this! But I never shall have it — For mercy's
sake, what is Major Gaston carrying in his arms?”

“Ah? Oh! a child, — McRoy's May, isn't it?
Now that's as it should be! If Gaston had wife
and child” —

“He wouldn't be Gaston,” said Mrs. Stanhope,
breaking her thread with a snap.

“No: I suppose not,” said Beaudesfords, half
sadly. “They would make too much light for
him.”

“He ought to marry though, for all that,”
added Mamma Stanhope, not without an anxious
glance at Rose in a juxtaposition that was not
agreeable to her.

“Of course,” answered Beaudesfords, strolling
to the window. “A man is only half a man till
he completes himself by marriage. I told Gaston
yesterday that McRoy was happier than he, —
McRoy, with his clod of a wife and sprite of a
child. She is a rare child, — don't you think so?”

“I have thought that perhaps we might educate
her, Beaudesfords,” said Catherine.

“Why, so have I,” said Beaudesfords, still

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

looking out the window, though the subjects of
their remark had disappeared round the corner
of the house.

“Here they come!” cried Caroline. “Wet
through, of course. Do tell us where you picked
up Miss McRoy?”

“Major Gaston found her running after a rainbow,”
said Rose, glittering herself like her namesake
in a shower, “and he had snatched her up
under his cloak when I met them. I am not
wet” —

“Don't stand a moment, Rose,” said Mrs.
Stanhope, with displeasure. “I am surprised” —

“Don't you fret, Mamma Stanhope. Cyril
took my overshoes at the door, and there's my
cloak, and I 'm quite as dry as Dryasdust. It
is the most absurd child,” as Catherine laid aside
her work and took the little May on her knee,
while Gaston sat down by the fire and opened
the map for which he had gone out, — “the most
absurd child,” said Rose. “She was tired of
her hiding-place before we were half-way home,
and when Major Gaston said he certainly could
not leave her on the road, `Well,' says she, `I
suppose we must struggle on.' O you little old
woman!” cried Rose: “will you come and be our
little girl?”

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

“May can't spare herself yet,” said the child,
archly, brushing her pretty hair out of her eyes, —
hair like the “thistle-down tinted with gold.”

“Not even to stay with us and hear the bird in
the piano sing all day long?”

But May's lip trembled lest the sport were
serious. “I am my father's child,” said she
gravely then.

“That she is,” said Beaudesfords, “the apple
of McRoy's eye!”

“His May apple,” said Catherine, smoothing
the little locks.

“But I love you,” added the child, as if to
soften her dissent; and putting one arm round
Catherine's neck, she kissed her cheek, — a cool,
sweet, dewy kiss, but Catherine felt it like a drop
of blistering wax.

Beaudesfords stooped and kissed the child's
mouth after it, and then caught her on his arm
and began flourishing round the room with her
aloft, till, with shrieks of laughter and fear, her
little dimpled cheeks were red as peaches, and
her Scotch blue eyes were bright as stars.

“Beaudesfords,” said Mamma Stanhope under
her breath, as Catherine gathered up her work,
and rose and went upstairs, “you will make

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

the child forget that she is only the gardener's
daughter.”

“And so she is!” exclaimed Beaudesfords, as
he held the door open for Catherine to pass
through. “The same in person, or will be if she
lives: violet eyes, and Hebe bloom, and all the
rest that Eustace and the poet went to see, — `a
sight to make an old man young!' Why shouldn't
I play with the gardener's daughter? Mamma
Stanhope, you forget about the grand old gardener
and his wife! Oh, God bless the children!”
cried Beaudesfords. “How they brighten the
world for us!”

“That is true,” said Mrs. Stanhope. “Mine
have done so for me. My husband used to say
they held us in communication with the people
that are dead and those that are not born.”

“Make us ourselves a part of the great perfect
race to come,” said Beaudesfords, setting
down the child for Rose to give her to Cyril to
take home.

“Well, Beaudesfords,” remarked Caroline, with
her faculty of always saying the wrong thing at
the wrong time, — perhaps, on the assumption of
two negatives making an affirmative, thinking
two wrongs might make a right, — “if you have

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

no children to make you laugh, you 've none to
make you cry.”

“I wish to heaven I had!” cried Beaudesfords,
hotly and forgetfully.

“To make you cry!”

“Ah, sister mine,” for Beaudesfords' sunshine
gilded even Caroline, “love is our salvation, you
know; and the love of children is a perpetual
breaking of sacramental bread!”

“There is the dressing-bell,” said Mrs. Stanhope,
who considered such conversation very
unprofitable. “You will be late for dinner,
Caroline.”

“By the way,” said Gaston, looking up from
where he sat toasting his feet at the blaze, “I
passed Ruthven on the road. He is coming up
here presently.”

“He will stay to dinner, then,” said Beaudesfords.
“So have your symptoms ready, Miss
Stanhope. I can't say I 'm glad you 're not well,
my dear; but we shouldn't have half so much of
Ruthven if you were!”

“Thank you for nothing,” said Caroline, as
her maid came for her cushions, and the ladies
left the room.

“Ruthven loves his rubber,” said Gaston; “and

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

a partner like your good mother-in-law is after
his own heart. What is this, Beaudesfords?”
folding his map, and then bending to pick up the
old morocco case of his journal from the hearth.

“So you have found me out?” answered Beaudesfords,
mischievously. “I gave the book to
Catherine. She and I are one, you remember.
You haven't a word to say!”

Was it the blaze that burned so on Gaston's
dark cheek as the room darkened? or was it the
reflection that from that day Catherine must be
coupling the thought of him with lofty ideas,
heroic enterprises; with tropical magnificence,
with the music of the great South Sea singing
over the siren-caves that he had told of there,
with the antique Aztec cities he had explored,
with the traces of those mighty men who swam
on bladders down the falls and foam of mountain
rivers to the sack of Spanish cities; the colors
of Caribbean waters, the landscapes lighted by
volcanic fires, — must couple him with all the
dark, rich mystery of such adventurous travel, till
something of the atmosphere of its scenes and
sights were made over to him, and he towered
transfigured in half their grandiose splendor?

No: Gaston thought of nothing of the kind.

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

He only thought that at that moment Catherine
was spelling out the record he had written, —
Catherine, to whose eyes words to which Beaudesfords
was blind would stand in letters of
light.

And as for Catherine, when locked in her
room she hung above the book, it seemed to her
that the dark side of the moon had turned its
hidden things toward her.

VIII.

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

There was only a day or two of this sort of life, —
life that in its close domestic contact must not
last; and then — nobody knew who first proposed
it — the house filled with guests; and all the
autumn days the gentlemen shot upon the meadows
and between the hills, and the ladies beamed
and brightened at nightfall when they returned.
Gaston, for the present superintending the erection
of some great water-works in the vicinity,
came and went at his pleasure, now here, now
there. If, when the shooting was over, Beaudesfords
had ever enhanced his own value, ever
made a gap in the circle, by any such brief
absence!

If the house was full of guests, it appeared to
be full of happiness too. Mrs. Stanhope was
happy in receiving guests; Rose was happy as a
firefly might be supposed to be; Caroline — since
there was always some one to listen while she

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

expatiated on her complaints; Beaudesfords was
happy in giving happiness to all the rest; and
Gaston, even Gaston, looked as one looks who is
happy, — yesterday he touched her hand, to-day he
wrapped a shawl about her, to-morrow he would
lift her into the saddle. And Catherine too, the
general tide bathed her, the tide was rising round
her that soon should touch her lips.

It was not, after all, an easy course that Catherine
had to follow: indignation in remembering
how lightly she had once been thrown over; the
ashes of an old fire rekindling day by day; the
quiet affection and respect for Beaudesfords pulling
her heart toward him with pity, honor, and
the duty that a woman owes her husband, — each
a strong current of feeling; and when all were to
be blended into one stream of right action and
pure emotion, it required a self-knowledge and
self-control that do not often enter into the elements
of any single character. Gaston, who
sometimes read one's thoughts, you would almost
say, watched her across all the phases of his own
experience, — watched her too as a curious study,
nearly sure she would succeed, and then half
trembling with his certainty, if it could be said
that Gaston ever trembled.

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

There had been a great snowfall at Christmas
time. All the guests were imprisoned at Beaudesfords
whether they would or no. When day
dawned, the world was a white, pure thing, as
fair and dazzling as it might be on the resurrection
morning.

But on the previous night the storm had
whirled round the great house and rumbled the
length of the chimney-stacks, snapped off the
boughs of the old Beaudesfords oaks, and roared
abroad in a way to make a stout heart quake;
had there been any bells to ring in the Christmas
eve at Beaudesfords, they would have been
silenced in all the voices of the winds that swept
at large in fury. But within doors it had been
one glow of brightness and warmth; fires had
blazed, lights had beamed, mistletoe and holly
lent their cheer, the windows shed out their lustre
on the driving whiteness of the tempest till all
the snow-flakes round them seemed but sparks
of fire; gay games had been given to the younger
company; music and dancing, and verses dramatized
on the moment, beguiled the elder. Catherine,
too, moved round among the guests in a
warm, womanly way that was new to her: there
was a bloom upon her cheeks, a softer light in her

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

eyes, — so gentle, so smiling, so dreamy, she was
like those we read of in the mediæval lays, whose
lives some sweet yet poisonous enchantment holds
in thrall.

“Where is Gaston?” suddenly asked Beaudesfords
of Rose, as he met her in a doorway with
her arms full of fantastic finery for the charaders.

“Oh! we shan't see Gaston till to-morrow
night,” she lightly answered. “He told me yesterday
he feared he should be detained at the
water-works, and would not return till Christmas
night.”

“Christmas eve, you mean. You misunderstood
him, Rose of Cashmere: he told me
Christmas eve. He should have been here two
hours ago. I wonder if he has been so foolish as
to undertake coming on foot from the station.”

“He is a perfect tramp,” said Rose.

“Perhaps — Have you heard the engine
whistle?”

“No whistle but the winds to-night,” gathering
up the trailing ends of a bit of silver damask.

“It can't be that he has — He always chooses
the short cut, and that leads over the little bridge
that it takes all one's head to cross in clear
weather.”

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

“The old willow that lies from bank to bank
you mean?” asked Rose, looking back. “He
would never think of it! It makes me so giddy
in summer, when the brook is half dry; and
now it is a roaring little icy cataract, and the
snow gathered on either side would mislead
every step. No, indeed! Gaston won't come till
the great banquet on to-morrow night is spread:
he likes to keep people waiting too. So summon
all your fortitude, and live without him until then,
if you can!” And she flitted away.

They had spoken at the entrance of the conservatory,
as they passed each other there, Rose
laden with a pile of brocades rummaged from
forgotten wardrobes of the old Beaudesfords
ladies. Catherine was just within, directing
McRoy as he bound the wreaths and baskets
for those who were to interpret that fragment of
the old ballad —

She turned her head unthinkingly, and only to
hear their voices; then her hands grew cold as

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

she listened, so cold and numb that the flowers
dropped from them unheeded, violets, purple,
white, deepest black and goldenest yellow, in a
rain of fragrance on the floor.

“He will get bewildered in all the dizzy tumult!”
she heard Beaudesfords exclaim in a
smothered voice. “He could not breathe an hour
in it! I urging his return to-night! Quick
there, Frye! Have out every man on the place —
ropes and lanterns!” —

He was hurrying, swift-footed, ere he finished,
to reach the hall, down whose length he hastened
and threw open the great door. A wild
white gust out of the fearful storm blew in, and
tore onward, devouring the lights before it; but
not till Beaudesfords had seen as wild and white
a face across his shoulder, looking out with him
into the raging night.

The music, the laughter, the voices of the
clusters within the parlors, came on snatches,
from far away. “Gaston!” he cried. “For
God's sake — Gaston!” At the same moment a
shadow took shape in that awful whiteness before
him, — the awful whiteness of a midnight snow-storm
which has neither darkness nor light, —
and Gaston staggered up, fell again across the

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

doorstone, like an avalanche of snow; rose
half on the arm of Beaudesfords, half on the
relief of finding an end to his fierce and toilsome
endeavor, while Beaudesfords dragged him across,
and with all his force threw the door back upon
the windy drifts, shutting themselves in once
more with light and rest; then drawing him
down the hall to his own den like a whirlwind of
force and fury himself, while Catherine moved
back into the parlors, — but not till Gaston too,
half dead with weariness as he was, had seen the
wild white face that searched the storm for him.

“I thought I had lost you this time, Gaston!”
exclaimed Beaudesfords, as soon as he had made
the other swallow some champagne. “My God!
I suffocated with you! How black the world
grew to me of a sudden! Life would not be
worth a rush without you, I found, in that second
before you rose. You and Catherine are my life!”

Pale as Major Gaston's face was with fatigue,
it grew livid with Beaudesfords' words. He had
not one murmur to reply. He closed his eyes
till the black lashes lay on the cheek below like
that of a corpse. His heart stood still, his head
fell forward and drooped upon his breast, as if he
were ashamed that even the universal air should

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

see his face. He put away Beaudesfords' arm,
and rose from his seat himself.

“So, you don't give me the slip after all?”
cried Beaudesfords. “A moment since I
wouldn't have given that for your chances!”
snapping his fingers gayly. “By Jove! you 've
not nine lives, but ninety.”

“I 've not crossed a hundred cañons to founder
between here and the mill. Train snowed up,”
he added, in a different tone.

“And you walked the five miles? I will call
Frye, and you shall go to bed at once, and be
rubbed down like a racer!” said Beaudesfords.
“Some more champagne! How could you do
such a silly thing! To-morrow a fever may
finish you! Have you the strength of a Titan to
heave yourself through these hills of snow?”

“Do nothing of the sort,” said Gaston. “I
shall be well enough when I get my breath.”

“And drenched, of course.”

“That is soon remedied. Then a breath, I
say, and I 'll not” —

“Call the king your uncle?” Beaudesfords
stood before him, putting a hand on either shoulder,
and looking him in the face with those glad
and honest eyes of his. “But I thank God I

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

have you safe!” he said. Then sounded a truce
to all emotion of that nature by ringing lustily
for Frye; and in an hour Gaston was sitting at
one side of the drawing-room fire, renovated as
to his apparel, but pallid with his fatigue.

“Will you give Gaston some hot tea, Catherine?”
asked Beaudesfords.

“Cyril shall,” beckoning the passing servant
with the tray.

“No; but take it to him yourself. It is only
a slight condescension. When a man is ill and
tired, and has no real home of his own, such
things touch.”

“Perhaps, then, Mamma had best: she is
dispensing it.”

“Nonsense, bonnibel! we are making a great
affair out of nothing! Show my friend another
spark of interest yourself.”

Catherine took a cup that had just been filled,
and carried it across the room.

“You must drink this,” she said softly, looking
not at Gaston, but at the cup.

“Thank you, no.” He remembered Beaudesfords,
and his love, like that of a woman's. He
had been thinking he would leave the place.
He would have nothing at her hands.

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

“But you must, he says. It will perhaps hinder
a fever: you were so cold and wet. Or else,
indeed, you may die.”

With her voice, that shook ever so slightly,
addressing him, her hand extended toward him,
her face drooping above him, so gentle, so lovely,
so near, — her sweet breath touching his forehead, —
with the mad quickening of his pulse,
shame, remorse, Beaudesfords, honor, were flung
off, he held his hand half-way for the cup as
he rose and stood before her, the fire behind
throwing out all his profile in a black relief.

“And if I do?” said he. “Is there any thing
better than dying? If the cup holds life, —
shall I drink it?”

She trembled an instant as he spoke, with his
eyes bent upon her: then she had left the cup in
his hands, and was gone; and Gaston drained it at
a breath. A simple thing; but Beaudesfords, following
her with his glance to observe the graceful
action, saw into what earnest pantomime it
turned, and wondered as he saw.

Old Dr. Ruthven strolled down that end of the
room where Gaston sat alone. “My friend,”
said he, “you must have some hell-fire in you
since all that snow and ice outside has not chilled

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

it!” And Gaston, replying as curtly, strode
away to his western wing.

That night, when Catherine dismissed her
maid, she pulled away her curtains and looked
out with her brow bent upon the cold glass.
She seemed herself to be resting in a state of
well-being: within it was all so warm and rosy;
but without a white frenzy of storm was rushing
by the pane, scourging it with sleet, mounting in
mighty gyres, and driving up a black immensity
of the midnight vault. War of wind and cloud,
darkness of desolation, the great cry of the elements
sweeping overhead through the gaping
gulfs of space. Of a sudden Catherine cowered,—
a mere atom she; then her sense of insignificance,
under all these prodigious forces of sky
and storm, opened out into a sense of sin and
tumult as vast as they, — bloom and warmth
dropped from her, she shivered away to her pillow,
and wept there half the night long.

IX.

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

A feverish dream in the gray of the morning;
and then the day broke, the clear and crystalline
day, with calm and peace on all the outer earth,
with cheer and good-will at all its hearths. Joyous
salutations floated to Catherine before she
left her rooms: daylight, that shuts the world
in upon itself and robs it of all large outlook
into heaven, shut Catherine in as well upon the
moment that was passing.

“No church to-day!” cried Rose. “The
Beaudesfords teams are going out to break the
roads, — the heavy drags. And Beaudesfords
says we may all go with them. Such sport!”

“All but me,” moaned Caroline, who had entered
her appearance at an earlier hour than
usual that morning, roused by the gay stir and
bustle of the house.

“No, indeed, Caroline! I shall not go,” said
Catherine.

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

While she spoke, she saw the train of horses,
shaking off the music of their peals of bells,
the great dray-horses for which the Beaudesfords
place was famous, trampling past the window,
with the sledges that they drew well heaped with
rugs and skins. Beaudesfords had taken the
reins from the teamsters; and Gaston, looming in
the light, rode the leader, — a wild and powerful
creature, little accustomed to harness or to bridle.

“No, no, Catherine!” cried Beaudesfords, as
she followed the others to the door, with an end
of her breakfast-scarf thrown across her hair.
“I cannot trust you on such a break-neck expedition!
It is one of Rose's freaks, — Rose and
Gaston's. She would chill to death: would she
not, Gaston?”

“Cold withers japonicas,” said Gaston, but
without looking up, while he curbed his prancing
beast.

“I did not think of it, dear Beaudesfords,” she
answered.

Beaudesfords, standing aside while his guests
were crowding on the teams, flung his reins loose
one moment, sprang up the steps, and, as if gently
forcing her within, seized both her hands and
kissed them, and flew down again. She felt the

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

pressure on those hands long after all the madcaps
were out of sight.

“I 'm sure I don't see the use of your staying
at home with me,” exclaimed Caroline, “if you're
going to roam the house in this way, like an
unquiet spirit.”

“Shall I read to you, Caroline dear?” her
sister asked.

“As if Susette couldn't read to me! No: I
want you to sit still and talk. I want to know
what you think about Rose and Gaston. How he
follows her with his eyes! Mamma says it 's a
sick whimsey. Do you think it is, Catherine?
Beaudesfords has always promised Rose a handsome
portion; so they can afford it. I like it.
Though of course that 's no matter! I like Major
Gaston: he 's one of the Satanic sort, — run
you through, and make nothing of it; the Festus
lovers, though, that Rose says do not cut up into
good husbands. I wonder nobody ever thinks of
my marrying.”

Caroline was complaining to the empty air.
Catherine had moved away from her as a ship
sails, — moved down the long suite from the
breakfast-room, and out, and away.

“Well, I declare,” groaned Caroline, lying on

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

Catherine's sofa, eating Catherine's dainties, and
sipping Catherine's coffee, “Catherine takes no
more interest in her family than if such people
didn't exist on the face of the earth!”

Rose and Gaston! Rose and Gaston! Beaudesfords
had spoken of them; so Caroline had.
Rose and Gaston! Catherine kept repeating the
phrase as a bell tolls on the wind. The thought
of its association bewildered her. She held her
head in both hands as she went up and down
her own room. What was the pomp of that
place to her now? She never noticed it, — the
place for which Beaudesfords had ransacked
Europe, — its satin flutings and Venice lace, its
paintings on sheets of gold and blocks of lapislazuli,
its vase that some Etrurian woman had
heaped with flowers three thousand years ago, its
tiny water-clock that had measured the hours once
for some Roman woman perhaps as wretched as
herself: she neither saw nor remembered any of
it. One thought only ruled her, — a tent in the
desert would have answered just as well to think
that thought in. If only Gaston loved another
woman, how much more easily she might tread the
path before her. But she knew better! she knew
better. And Gaston had no right to Rose, —

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

too ignoble, too unworthy: if he were a good
man, he would not now be here. He never should
possess her! Then came over her the quick doubt
lest she deceived herself by a mere sophism, and
were simply barring him about from escape, fearful
of Rose or any other woman.

As still she paced the place, when some hours
had elapsed, there came the rush of the sledges
and their bells, the trampling of the great dray-horses,
the chorus of gleeful voices. Catherine
fell on her knees behind the window-curtain and
looked out. She had all at once grown guilty
enough to need the shelter of those clinging folds.
It was Gaston only at whom she gazed, — Gaston,
whose restive horse plunged and swerved
and reared in his long loose traces, while the
rider seemed a part of him, and pulled him up
till, poised in the air and outlined upon the
dazzling snow, both horse and rider might have
been hewn from black marble. Her eyes grew
to him, and gazed and gazed. What was the
force of this man? What made it? Where
lurked it? Not beauty, for Beaudesfords had
that; not goodness, for Beaudesfords' life was a
sacrifice to others. His identity — himself —
only himself — Gaston! She forgot the

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

concealment of the curtain, bending forward, following
him. He looked up, and for one moment, bold
and steady, caught and kept those wild and eager
eyes. Then she sank upon the floor, and, her
face hidden in her loosened hair, grovelled out
of sight.

What time had passed, impossible to say. She
stirred at the sound of Beaudesfords' foot and
voice, as he approached in search of her. He
was singing the hymn that they had heard in
church not many days before, — absently forgetting
it was no festival song. He had a full, rich
tenor voice, that at other times it was a pleasure
to hear echoing through those long and lofty halls
in its clear, golden strains; but now each note
pierced her ears like a stab: —

He sauntered through the gallery, looking at
the handsome, honest faces of the old

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

Beaudesfords portraits that lined the wall, repeating and
dwelling on the last verse, unmindful what it was.
But as for Catherine, listening to him, she arose;
and it was like a human being transformed to
some vile shape of elf or newt that the advance
of morning touches with a sunbeam and sets free.
She seemed to grow a loftier stature as she stood.

“I am not vile!” she cried. “I will not live
in this bondage to sin. I will blot out this man—
this Gaston. I will conquer, or I will die!”

As Beaudesfords entered, and she faced him,
shaking out all her fallen locks of palest gold,
her cheeks vivid, her eyes flashing, she looked—
more than she had ever looked before — like
the spirit of some great rose full-blossomed in the
noon. He stood still, almost transfixed with the
sight of her beauty, that blazed so upon him.
And, while he gazed, the voluptuous color faded,
and left the cheeks white, and only the eyes shone
out, so full of purpose and endeavor that they
were like the stars of heaven. And, while he
gazed, he thought he heard her murmur again
those words, — unconscious that she spoke, —

“I will conquer, or I will die!”

X.

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Catherine had Olympe in to arrange her fallen
hair, and then followed Beaudesfords below. He
ran lightly down the stairs, like a boy, glancing
back and calling her to hasten; while she lingered,
leaning over the baluster, and looking, in
her ermined wrapper and with the set bloom
upon her face, as if she had just stepped forth
from one of the old carved frames that lined the
walls, — the last lady of Beaudesfords. Gaston
turned silently as she came in, and thrilled, perhaps,
to think that all that unwonted color and
fire had kindled in the long look they interchanged
a half-hour since.

Catherine surveyed the joyous faces that clustered
round the luncheon-tables, she listened to the
quips and cranks, and wondered what cross-purpose
of fate it was that had overtaken her, and
wrought her life, which should have been as
smooth as theirs, into such a tangled snarl. A kind

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

of fever burned within her, and gave her a parched,
dry, and dusty feeling: she was like one perishing
of thirst in the desert, with all manner of illusive
mirages of palm-plumed water-springs in sight, —
for her heart ached for love, and there was Beaudesfords',
and it was nothing to her. Who could
help her? Rose, to be sure, pretty, laughing
Rose. But she had never dreamed of her sister's
trouble: why darken her innocent sunshine with
such shadows? There was her mother. Unfortunately
Mrs. Stanhope was more foreign to
all the needs of Catherine's nature than if she
spoke another language; she would neither sympathize,
nor understand, nor overpower; she
would be but indignantly scandalized, — which
was only to her credit, she would have said,
had matters been explained to her. And as for
Caroline, that young woman in the whole course
of her life had never been of any more use to anybody
than a rag baby. And then, as her rapid
thoughts ran on, while she shrank more silently
within herself than ever, feeling like a guilty
wretch among all these sinless people, — if any
such there are, — her eye lighted on Dr.
Ruthven.

Who has not had a family physician whose

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touch was healing; whose words were balm;
whose kind, keen eye searched many a disease to
its seat in the soul; whose smile was comfort;
whose knowledge, though it compassed the world
and filled you with awe, was yet lost in his gentleness;
to whom one turned as to the dispenser
of life and death; to whom one told those burdens
of sorrow no father-confessor ever heard;
who was a staff to strengthen, an arm to uphold,
a god to give health? Dr. Ruthven was not
different from his order, — a kind, brave, sagacious
gentleman. He had made his round of calls that
morning after the drags had broken out the roads,
and had been peremptorily brought back to Beaudesfords
by its master. Catherine looked at him,
and a course of action or of physic rose before
her mind. She never dreamed of the time when
another might go to him as she to-day intended.
A quick suggestion flashed upon her, — of how
many subtle, gentle, viewless poisons he must
know, that would so soon medicine her to that
sleep unvisited by dreams of sin and struggle.
She crossed to his side and sat down, meaning to
lead him to speak of such secrets of his art. But
then came the thought that this trial was a thing
of her destiny, after all: if she contrived to escape

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it in this life, in the next it might be all to endure
over again; and since already she had suffered
the half of it here, why seek to renew the whole
there? And so — restrained by no other scruples,
for Catherine, it is unnecessary to say, was
not yet a religious woman, she had found no
rock to cling upon when washed by overwhelming
seas — she said nothing at all.

Perhaps the Doctor was pleased with the little
compliment of her singling him from among
all these gayer guests: he was playing with his
dry wine and biscuit, and put them away as she
sat down between him and the fire; for there was
nothing set about luncheon at Beaudesfords, —
except the viands, — and people did just as they
chose. He stretched out his artful hand and
took her wrist.

“Physician's privilege,” he said. “What is
the meaning of all the red roses?


`'Twould be no stranger sight to see
Red roses blooming in the snow.'
A little fever?” continued the Doctor. “I have
noticed in the way of my practice that in summer
all diseases are inflammatory, as you may
say; in winter they all partake of a typhoid

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

character. My dear, there is nothing typhoid in
this pulse.”

“Why should there be, Doctor?”

“Your pulse is always a slow one, somewhat
heavy, different from that beating wire
which springs like a repeater in Gaston's wrist,—
ah! ah! ah!” cried the Doctor suddenly, but
half under his breath.

Catherine snatched her hand away, angry and
injured.

“Have I sprung a trap upon your confidence?”
said the unabashed old Doctor, looking over his
glasses. “My dear, we probe some things to
relieve them.”

It was just at that moment, as Gaston had
sauntered to the other side of the fender and
stood looking down at the two, with their drama
of one moment's span, that Beaudesfords — who
had taken up an open book of ballads which
some one had brought from the library, and
laid, face down, upon the table — strolled in between
them, and took up his position on the
rug, with his back to the fire, glancing through
the volume.

“The sweetest verse in the world,” he said.
“Catherine, it always puts me so in mind of

[figure description] Page 114.[end figure description]

you,” turning toward her, for the four were
quite by themselves on that side of the room.
“Do you remember it?


`Once I kissed Sir Cradocke
Beneath the greenwood tree,
Once I kissed Sir Cradocke's mouth
Before he married me,' —
only it was not you, but I!”

If Dr. Ruthven had held her pulse then, what
a leap he would have had to cry out at! The
picture of that star-lit night, with Gaston's face
bending toward her own beneath the swinging
tree-shadows, started so vividly before her
eyes that it seemed to dazzle her to tears: she
felt the tears springing up full and hot; and,
holding them back till they almost scalded her
brain, she bit her lip in a sudden desperation, and
then the blood gushed out in a spirt.

At the sight, Gaston sprung to seize her with
a single impulse. Beaudesfords dashed down his
book. But Dr. Ruthven had been before them
both, had caught her handkerchief and pressed
it to her mouth as if the danger were from something
more than a bitten lip, had pulled her to
her feet, and pushed and helped her through the
door, and had her in her own room, with Olympe

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

running this way, and Rose that, and Mrs. Stanhope
the other, ere either of the two had entirely
recovered his senses.

“Only a hemorrhage,” said the old deceiver,
reappearing after a few seconds for his prescription-book,
which had fallen from his pocket.
“Only a brief hemorrhage. This extreme cold
produces a slight congestion. Frequent occurrence.
No danger, — no danger with proper
care, that is. Must be kept perfectly still. No
company. Her own room. Beaudesfords, can
you send for this at once?” And he handed
him the cabalistic scrawl which means so much,
but which in this case meant but a mild concoction
of harmless trifles.

“Give it to me,” said Gaston, hoarse and
quick.

“No, indeed, Major Gaston,” replied the Doctor,
blandly. “We do not trouble our guests
with such errands.”

Gaston drew back at once, as the sky blenches
before a light: he saw in that sudden light the
nature of the attack as plainly as Dr. Ruthven
did. Alarm, as those lips reddened, had, for the
first moment, blotted ballad and Beaudesfords
and every thing else from mind.

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Beaudesfords was throwing the saddle over his
swiftest horse himself, as Gaston sauntered back
again to the frightened groups that were gathered
in questioning and answering about the event, and
then, still as leisurely and unconcerned, sauntered
away to his quarters in the western wing.

“Hurry! Hurry!” cried Beaudesfords to his
apothecary, as he handed him the prescription, a
half-hour later.

“I should not suppose there was occasion for
any particular despatch,” said the compounder
of simples, measuring out his drops with precision.
“If any one lies at the point of death,
a little red lavender, ammonia, and camphor-water
will hardly bring him back.”

Beaudesfords took the vial, and, vaulting into
his saddle, was half-way home before the words
recurred to him. But they did recur, — idly and
passingly, — yet sufficiently to show that, though
he took no notice of them just now and they
had no peculiar significance for the moment, they
were pictured upon his memory for that future
period which should make them, and a hundred
other things of their kind, start out in a fiery
charactery.

XI.

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Major Gaston's door having closed upon him
did not open for himself again on that day or the
next. The storm had prevented further advance
with the great water-works which had employed
him; his servant brought him the black coffee on
which at that time he principally subsisted; Mrs.
Stanhope had a tiny French dinner faultlessly
served for him alone each day, and regretted that
he was too ill to enjoy it; she had feared he was
overworking himself, she said. She paid him a
visit; but the smoke-permeated atmosphere, the
fearful confusion of the apartments, the taciturnity
of the yellow Major, were combining influences
which caused the visit to be a short one,
and she felt herself excused from repeating it, by
sending the French dinner and the Doctor every
day in her stead.

“Hm — ahem!” uttered the sturdy Doctor, not
to be daunted by all the Majors in existence. “It

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

is plain that the air of Beaudesfords does not
agree with you — does not agree with you. And
the sooner you leave it the better.”

“I am not ill,” said the Major. “I wish you
and Mr. Beaudesfords would attend to your own
affairs. When I want a physician, I order
one.”

“Perhaps the physician wants you.”

“Well,” turning on him suddenly, “what does
he want of me?”

“Possibly to quit the place. Possibly such a
great healthy fellow hulking round is an eyesore,—
eh? Possibly, Gaston, possibly he takes a genuine
interest in your health, which is not, after
all, such alarming health, — you yellow fellow —
need sea-air, — and is sincere in advising you to
leave Beaudesfords.”

“Do you advise Mrs. Beaudesfords to leave it
too? or did you say him?” with a sneer worthy
of the father of sneers.

“That is not your affair. However, I fear I
may have to order her a warmer climate.”

“We might all go together then. A charming
party, Doctor!” As Gaston stood before the fire
in the room that was growing dark, a strange
glow came into his eyes, and illumined his bitter

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

smile. He looked more like a thing of evil than
he was.

“Let me have your pulse, sir,” said Dr. Ruthven,
possessing himself of it after the fashion
of medical men, before the patient knew how to
resist, and opening out his watch that had beat out
so many of its seconds over men's hearts. “Nervous
system highly wrought,” muttered Dr.
Ruthven. “Bromide of potassium — dessertspoonful
every three hours. Nothing like it —
mere magic. Now your tongue.”

Gaston waited, before complying with this last
demand, which was apparently too humiliating to
be borne, till the Doctor had replaced his time-piece;
then he took him by the shoulder and
reseated him in his chair, so quietly but so
potently that there was no appeal.

“Now, sir!” said he, “I told you I was
not ill. I keep my quarters, being absolute
master of them, thanks to — not to you, Dr.
Ruthven!”

“No, sir! Not by the holy poker, sir! Not
to me, you may take your affidavit!”

“Life is not all play, even to me, Dr. Ruthven,”
continued Gaston, without noticing the
little man's outburst. “I draw my plans, clear

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up my details. The guests survive without me.
I choose to be alone just now, sir, because I am
working out a problem! Good-morning!”

“Good-evening!” said the Doctor. “Don't
confuse the hours of the day, whatever you do.
I hope you will not forget the most important
quantity in your problem — one which people
laboring under high nervous excitement are apt
to overlook. I think you had better try the bromide,
though. Good-night!”

Then Gaston filled his huge pipe, and when
Beaudesfords came in, he could by no means
have discovered the whereabouts of his friend,
had it not been for the spark of fire glittering at
the mouth of the big bowl, and looking as much
like the single eye of some monster glowering
through the darkness as any thing that could
be imagined.

“Tartarus?” said he. “Or the Black Hole?
Ruthven said you were at work on your problems:
you must be extracting the root of all
darkness. Why haven't you rung for lights?”

“Let me alone, Beaudesfords. I love the
dark.”

“Because your deeds are evil? Well — land
at last — a glimmer in the grate, that is;

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

anchored — that's a chair. Now, what did Ruthven
think of you?”

“Thought I had better go away from Beaudesfords.”

“Go away!” cried Beaudesfords, starting to
his feet. “What! is the air unhealthy here? Is
it that ails Catherine?”

“Not in the least. He spoke merely in relation
to myself. Life is too pleasant for me here. It
is time I was up and away on my rounds, like
the outcast Jew.”

“Fie, fie, old fellow! Don't put on your
misanthropes. Ruthven is only a good, pottering
soul — fancies you rusting out. You never shall
leave Beaudesfords with my consent. See, we
are going to have a railway laid to the bay now.
The straight line, you know, lies across as many
pretty difficulties as anybody wants to overcome
in a summer's day. When the water-works are
opened and done with, you will have your contract
to lay it out. What say to that? Headquarters
at Beaudesfords, and a year's job if a
day's. Some of our directors were here to see
me this morning about it. No danger for you of
rusting, even at Beaudesfords. It is I who should
rust without you. In fact, Gaston, though I

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wonder what existence would be to me without
Catherine, I wonder quite as often what it would
be to me without you! I couldn't say it,” added
Beaudesfords, like a girl, “if it wasn't as dark
as your pocket!”

Poor Beaudesfords! He could not have said it
at all, had Catherine ever given him the bliss of
being loved in return with the decimal of that
devotion which he lavished on herself. But he
was an effusive nature, and, having broken the ice
on the night of the great snow-storm by a tantamount
assurance, it was necessary for him to
attest the fact again, and yet again, lest it were
only deemed the impulse of a moment.

But as for Gaston, he answered not a word.
And the two sat there silent in the darkness;
Beaudesfords a little despondent about his wife,
but not positively unhappy, turning over a thousand
things in his mind; but Gaston, chafing
with hateful thoughts, finding it impossible to
speak, and yet every instant of the prolonged
silence getting more unbearable than the last.
Suddenly he was upon his feet, had snatched both
of Beaudesfords' hands and wrung them, crying,
“What should such fellows as I do, crawling between
earth and heaven!” had pushed him back

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

again, found his own hat, and stalked from the
room.

“That was just like Gaston!” said Beaudesfords
to Catherine, when he was detailing to her
the conversation and its close, on the same evening,
alone with her in her own sitting-room.
“To sit mulling over my words, when I had forgotten
all about them, and suddenly to burst out
in such a blaze! What a soul he is! Noble
from heart to lip! One of those men that wear
the purple, — that were born in it, — porphyrogene!
When was there ever such a man before?
It is no wonder that I love him, Catherine! You
are not jealous of him, eh?” with a smiling side-long
glance.

“Jealous of Gaston!”

“Ah! true. How is it possible? I think you
are better to-night, Mrs. Beaudesfords,” gazing at
her again a moment as he spoke. “There is such
a color on your cheeks, such a light in your eyes,
that I have half the mind to bring him up here
to tea.”

Catherine looked at herself in the great glass
as he spoke: it was an image but little like a sick
woman's that she saw there, with that triumphant
flush and brilliance which had risen as she had

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heard Gaston praised, as she had felt that he was
not altogether vicious, — a short-lived rapture on
such false foundation. If he were not vicious,
why did he linger here?

“You seem so much improved indeed,” continued
Beaudesfords.

“No, no, no!” cried Catherine, hastily. “I
mean the Doctor said,” she added, “that I must
see no one, — that” —

“He was right,” interrupted Beaudesfords. “I
am an idiot. Happiness makes a man lose his
senses, they say; and since I see you look so well,
I feel like snapping my fingers at fate.”

“Do not talk so, Beaudesfords,” said Catherine.
“Read to me. There are the new books that
came to-night. I had them brought on purpose,
because you like to open them so, and I like to
see you.” And Beaudesfords, cutting the leaves
of one at random, plunged into poetry of such
bewildering waste of passion and power, such
mad melody and rhythm, that, seeing Catherine
fall asleep, worn out with all the emotions
that had their battle-ground every day in her
heart, he stole softly from the room, and then
took the great staircase at three leaps, with the
book in hand, that he might break in upon

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

Gaston's quarters, and waking him from his black
apathy revel there with Swinburne, in a symposium
of splendid image and luxurious music
till midnight.

XII.

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The winter days went slipping by, and Beaudesfords
still kept the place filled with guests, and
Catherine still kept her room. Beaudesfords
would have recalled his invitations and dismissed
his friends, but Catherine would not listen to it:
she had double reason indeed to wish his house
and his hands full, just now, that he might be
diverted from too close attention on her retirement.
One would have thought that, having
tried that experiment of seclusion in the early
days of her return home, its failure would have
answered. But she had no option about it; for
Dr. Ruthven, though small in body, was the
greatest tyrant that ever ruled. She was not
obliged to complain of any symptoms, — Dr. Ruthven
did that for her: he made her walk up and
down in the open air on her high balcony, that
commanded such a wide outlook of country; took
care that her diet was all as it should be; and by

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

degrees, when he had seen that her room was
darkened rightly, all in an unostentatious way,
and as a physician is wont to do, he invited up
one guest and another to wile away an hour, to
let her know the gossip below; while Beaudesfords
had a company of musicians brought from
a distant city, that, stationed in the hall, made
delicious murmuring of violin and flute, not for
Catherine alone, but for every one that chose to
listen. Gaston threw open his doors sometimes,
and suffered the spell of music to work, if perchance
it might cast out his devils; but it needed
a mightier magician even than music to effect so
much as that.

Gaston, meanwhile, had shut himself up during
these three weeks in his own apartments as
well: it seemed possible that he intended to return
only when Catherine herself returned; and
as Caroline and Mamma Stanhope plied her with
the details of all transactions below, so at least
Catherine interpreted it. He did not choose to be
eluded by any such evasion as her mock illness:
he meant to force her back by staying away himself
till she came. It seemed to Catherine cruel,
even then, cruel on Gaston's part, to stand so
between her and safety, — safety, which meant

[figure description] Page 128.[end figure description]

virtue, peace, heaven. Dr. Ruthven did not need
much feigning in his meddlesome and benevolent
device; for the conflict of feeling left Catherine
every day more pale and worn, every night more
feverish and impatient.

She was just stepping in one evening from the
balcony, that opened from her sitting-room and
extended far enough down one side of the house,
blank just there of windows, to allow her a sort
of promenade, and Olympe had removed her
wrappings and carried them away, when Beaudesfords
tapped upon the door, peered in, and then
put his head and hand back in the hall, and drew
in Gaston after him.

“She doesn't look like a martyr to disease,
does she, Gaston, with such a rose-petal of a
cheek? Dr. Ruthven is a tyrant. Death to all
tyrants, say I! I shall have you downstairs to-morrow,
my lady. Good heavens, how cold
your hands are!”

“I have just come in from the balcony,” said
Catherine, losing the color the wind had fanned
up on her cheek. But she did not tell him that
when she came in her hands were warm and well.

Tea was served for the three; and Rose flitted
in and made them four. Catherine leaned back

[figure description] Page 129.[end figure description]

in her chair, growing whiter and whiter, and,
while Rose and Beaudesfords fenced out their gay
dialogue, gave no response of word or smile.

It seemed to her as if fate were fighting against
her, — as if she felt the game go on between good
angels and bad, herself the stake; and when she
glanced up, and Gaston stood before her and bent
from his height and said some gentle thing in a
tone whose tenderness was all the more enhanced
because that tone was usually so haughty and so
brief, she shuddered to think she saw the dark
angel in person, to think how he possessed her;
and then she thrilled and thrilled to look at him,
all her soul seemed welling up into her eyes, she
could not move them from their fascinated gaze,
her hands trembled and her lips, her head fell on
one side, and she would have swooned had not
Gaston himself caught her, and had not the knowledge
of his touch acted like an electric stroke to
call her back to herself, to this strange being of
hers, half-filled with such wild joy as she looked at
him, half with as wild abhorrence of herself, and
bathed, besides, all through and through with
pity for Beaudesfords, and sorrow. She used to
think she was insane, that some evil spirit acted
through her, since she found it so impossible to

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reconcile her conscience and reason with this
passion of her senses and her heart, to understand
why in herself alone the flesh and the spirit so
contended. She ought to scorn him, she said,
since he betrayed her; she ought to hate him
that he lingered here to torment her; and instead—
but she would not utter to herself that
pitiful instead. Only she had not the strength to
forbid Beaudesfords to bring Gaston any more
to the room, to keep her eyes off him with their
greedy gaze when he was there. Only all the
time she hated bitterly those honest, happy Beaudesfords
women on the wall! It was a kind of
rapt and trance-like happiness while he remained:
after he was gone, came the misery and shame.
Once it occurred to her to ask herself what had
become of her resolve of that bright Christmas
morning, the resolve that she would conquer or
she would die. Well, she answered, she could
not conquer, but perhaps she could die! Heaven
help her and let her die!

Gaston came now with Beaudesfords every
evening. Dr. Ruthven knew nothing about it.
He sat opposite Catherine, the little tea-table
between them: he waited on her in a dozen
trivial ways, and the blind Beaudesfords felt

[figure description] Page 131.[end figure description]

nothing but delight in believing that the friendship
between his friend and his wife was springing up
so sweet and strong. Every night Gaston brought
some large and lovely flower, freshly full-blown,
from the green-house, and gave it to her: their
hands touched as they gave and took, loitered
perhaps one trembling moment; and while she held
it and gazed down upon it and caressed its petals,
it half seemed to her that it still was Gaston's
hand she held. She was weak and pale, tender
and appealing: a man's heart would have been
stone which in some way in those days she did
not touch. And yet she could hardly hold herself
to be like any polluted thing; for Gaston's very
tenderness was so lofty; he never used word or
expression beyond that silent manner, in appearance
so full of deep respect; yet, for all that,
she knew the truth, — his tone told it, his delaying
eyes enforced it. In fact, she was ceasing
already to make any effort, fancying herself
controlled by some fatal charm, questioning if she
should not take what bliss she found, shutting
her eyes and glad to be drifting — drifting.

XIII.

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Catherine had kept her own rooms for about five
weeks, — for sometimes she lacked the inclination
and sometimes the courage to go down, nor had
Dr. Ruthven, still maintaining his fiction, yet
given his consent that she should do so, — when
Candlemas came — came to break the back of the
winter, as some one said. The January thaw had
just passed over all the white world, and the
snow-covered expanse of the long lawn and level
field beneath her windows had been washed with
the rain, and flooded and frozen in an icy glare.
Beaudesfords and Gaston sat round the little tea-table
with Catherine, having left Mrs. Stanhope
and Rose with enough upon their hands below.
There came a rap upon the lower door, and May,
the gardener's little daughter, entered timidly and
presented Mrs. Beaudesfords with an offering from
her father, — a single scarlet blossom, the offshoot
of a rare plant that the gardener had been secretly

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

fostering and urging for a surprise; since Mrs.
Beaudesfords in her floral fury, as her husband
used to call it, had often worked with McRoy in
the conservatory, and had established with him
a pleasanter acquaintance than with her other
servants.

She took the fiery flower, and set it in a glass
before her, where it seemed to throw a lustre
round the table, while Beaudesfords detained May
with a shower of little silver pieces, and set her
to singing her particular gypsy ballad which was
always such a delight to him for its oblivion of
the laws of prosody and ballad-making in general,
and which the child sang with such an abandonment
to the tune and want of understanding of
the burden that the effect reached that one step
from the sublime. Beaudesfords and Gaston,
leaning back in their chairs, laughed a choral
accompaniment, which, however, in nowise disconcerted
the little girl, who, with her eyes
fastened on the scarlet flower, still sang on
unconcerned, — an old ballad, once perhaps in the
Scottish manner, but which, in its passage through
the memory of May's grandmothers and great-grandmothers,
had lost much of its rhyme and
nearly all its reason.

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

“There were seven gypsies in a gang,
They were both brisk and bonny, O;
They came to the Earl of Castle's house,
And the songs they sang were many, O.
Earl Castle's wife came down the stair,
And all her maids before her, O;
As soon as they saw her well-fared face,
They cast the glamor o'er her, O.
They gave to her a nutmeg brown,
And also of the ginger, O;
She gave to them a better thing,
The ring from off her finger, O.
The Earl would hunt in Maybole woods,
For blithesome was the morning, O,
Following the deer with the yelping curs,
And the huntsman's bugle sounding, O.
Earl Castle's wife came down the hall
To have a crack at them fairly, O;
`And oh!' she cried, `I will follow thee
To the end of the world, or nearly, O!
`So take away my silken gown,
And bring a highland plaidie, O;
Though kith and kin and all had sworn,
I 'll go with my gypsy laddie, O!'
When our good lord came riding home
And spiered for his fair lady, O,
The tane she cried, and tither replied,
`She 's away with the gypsy laddie, O!'
`Oh, saddle me my milk-white mare
Because she goes so speedy, O!

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I 'll ride all day, and I 'll ride all night,
To overtake my lady, O!
`How could she leave her children three,
How could she leave her baby, O,
To follow under the greenwood tree
Along with a gypsy laddie, O!'
He rode beside the river's bank,
With its waters black and dreary, O;
When he espied his wedded wife, —
She was cold and wet and weary, O.
And we were fifteen well-made men,
Although we were not bonny, O;
And we were all put down but one
For a fair young wanton lady, O!”
All this poured forth to a charming tune, and
with a voice like a bird's. Gaston and Beaudesfords
saw only subject for merriment in song and
singer. But Catherine leaned back, all hurt and
humbled, while she sang, as if the hand of innocence
had touched her guilt.

It was just at that moment that a thousand
lights seemed suddenly to strike up the ceiling
and drown the soft radiance of the shaded lamp
in a myriad dancing flashes; and before Catherine
knew what had happened, Beaudesfords had
wrapped her great fur mantle close about her and
had thrown open the casement, and she was

[figure description] Page 136.[end figure description]

leaning over the balcony's edge with May beside her,
and was gazing down where all the lawn and
level field were alive with twinkling sparks, ruby
and emerald, azure and golden, that, borne by
almost viewless shadows, circled and recircled
and wove a tracery of brilliant flourishes till the
whole field was brocaded with trailing lines of
light. It was Candlemas; and Beaudesfords was
keeping it in this fantastic way, having marshalled
guests, tenants, and servants into his use for the
pretty spectacle.

“How lively, how beautiful, how silent!” cried
Catherine.

“It is the `dance of the dædal stars,'” said
Gaston.

“It is the Feast of the Purification of the
Blessed Virgin,” said little May, using the phrase
she had caught from a servant's lips.

As Catherine heard the simple words last
spoken, she shivered despite herself. How remote
from her were beauty and purity, the festivals
of holy people, the worship of holy women!
All at once she was forlorn as some lost soul
might be when gazing from the outside of a
star upon the world of happy people moving
there.

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“You are cold?” exclaimed Gaston, and he
reached his arm across to gather about her the
heavy cloak that had slipped down where its rich
fur was unconsciously trampled by May's clumsy
little feet. He gave it a sudden wrench to set it
free, without thinking what he did: the child,
leaning half over the low railing in her eagerness,
lost her balance, pitched forward, and throwing
up her hands with a sharp scream plunged head-long
down upon the ice below, that glittered
harder and colder than a rock.

As Catherine sprung forward to snatch at her,
and snatch in vain, she was caught back herself
with a smothered word; and for an instant her
forehead felt the fierce pulsation of Gaston's heart
as it rocked beneath, while he too bent to learn
the fate of the thing that lay in a little quiet heap
below, and to which Beaudesfords, springing
across the rail and swinging himself down, had
dropped in less time than it takes to tell.

But as soon as Catherine had comprehended
the thing, — it was but a half-dozen seconds first,—
she broke from that restraining grasp, and
sweeping through her room like the wind, was
down the stairs, and out upon the ice with Beaudesfords,
and in again, the child in her arms;

[figure description] Page 138.[end figure description]

while Gaston, moved by some impulse new to
him, had started for the Doctor.

“O my God!” she cried. “If I had not been
keeping my room, this would not have happened!
If Gaston had not pulled up my cloak for me, it
could not have happened! Am I a murderer, a
murderer — with all?”

It was Beaudesfords that heard her, too sorry,
too much agitated, too busy in getting splints and
bandages from the maids and Mrs. Stanhope and
the housekeeper, to heed the meaning of any
exclamations at such a time as that.

XIV.

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The terrible touch of pain, beneath Dr. Ruthven's
hand, brought back the child to life, only for her
to lose consciousness again, unable to bear its
burden. The broken bones, one of which had been
bruised almost to fragments, were set at last, and
the child was put to rest in Catherine's bed, if
rest there might be for her; and Catherine hung
over her night and day, refusing to yield her
place to servants, sleepless and tireless, supported
by the one wild fear lest the child should
die and the blood be on her head. Gaston
himself never imagined the real reason of her
devotion: he supposed it to be but the natural
treatment of a child by any woman. He only
saw that Catherine through it all was very calm
and composed where his own hand would have
shaken. McRoy and his wife were as useless as
two children themselves. They came into the room
and sat stupidly staring at their child, and then

[figure description] Page 140.[end figure description]

broke out into sobs and cries till they had to be
taken away. Catherine was father and mother
both to the suffering little thing that lay in her
bed. The sudden horror had awakened her from
her lethargy; she saw the precipice to which the
current on which she reposed had been bearing
her; she was alert and alive on her own behalf
with watchful fire.

The guests had left the house to its hosts.
Gaston roamed up and down the empty apartments
like a shadow, galloped off to the water-works
and back again at all unseasonable hours,
as heated and unquiet as the blast of a sirocco.
Caroline betook herself to her bed, and required
in one day more nursing and attendance from
Rose, her mother, and the maid, than the child
whose life hung in the balance — and whom
Beaudesfords and Catherine never left — required
in all her illness. Catherine watched the Doctor's
face at morning and night, as if her own salvation
depended on it: for May grew worse with pain
every hour, and at length, after a night of agony
in which it seemed as if day might never dawn,
or could only dawn in the blackness of death
when it did come, Catherine left Beaudesfords
with her charge, and ran over the crisp, white

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fields to bring the Doctor herself, as the day began
to issue gray and pallid from the night, — Beaudesfords
unable to detain her, and feeling sure the
clear cold outside air was only a needed tonic.

“Bring every thing!” she cried. “I am
afraid — I don't know what I fear! It may have
mortified — you will have to amputate — Oh, if
she only lives, no matter how, Beaudesfords will
adopt her, for my sake, — we will make her our
own child! Doctor, you must, you must save
her!”

“I do not know,” said Dr. Ruthven, when he
had examined the cause of alarm, and stepped
into the adjoining room, “if it is best or not.
Her parents should decide. Beaudesfords, call
McRoy.”

But the man had been waiting without, summoned
by Catherine as she returned to the house.
The Doctor went up to him, and laid his hand on
his shoulder. “My poor man,” he said, “if I
perform this operation, in which, God granting,
the child shall feel no particle of pain, she may
live, — crippled, it is true, but well and happy,
and cared for by these kind friends. If I do not
perform it, she cannot live till night.”

“And why are ye waiting?” whispered the

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

gardener. “Haste! haste, man! Be quick with
you, — and life and death hanging from your
hands!”

“Oh, you are right, McRoy!” cried Catherine,
though in no loud key. “But there is something
to make us hesitate. She may not have the
strength; and though she will not suffer — she
will not suffer, — she may die before it is done.”

“But there is a chance?” he asked, looking
with strange, scared eyes from one to another.

“A chance,” said Dr. Ruthven, “a chance, —
not a certainty, — but a hope.”

“Then out with your knife, sir, and never
spare a thrust! Every cut will strike my heart,
but I shall have my child when all 's done, — my
dear, my little May! We shall have her back —
have her back!” And staying only to see Catherine's
arm beneath her, — while strengthened
by the fresh air she had inhaled in her run across
the fields, and by her longing for the child's life,
Catherine herself held the napkin and the blessed
ether, — he was away to bring his wife, and wait,
out of hearing of a groan, till the word of joy or
of despair should be spoken.

As the gardener went down, Gaston met him
on the stairway. His face, so whitened, and lately

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grown old and furrowed, struck Gaston as if he
had seen a ghost. Instead of seeking his own
apartment, he went boldly onward, drawn, he
knew not by what instinct or what fear, and
paused in the inner doorway, and remained there
looking on the scene, — whether he had no right
to shelter himself from one stroke of that knife,—
whether it was destined that he should see
Catherine hold the child without a tremor, while
the warm blood gushed upon her and offended
her. Not a soul spoke, no one stirred, there was
not a breath of sound, save that made by the swift
movements of the Doctor. When it was all over,
the bandages bound tightly down, the napkin
taken away, and the Doctor had swallowed a glass
of raw spirits to steady his hands, that had no
innate love of surgery, and after their work was
done began to shake like two leaves, then the
child opened her eyes, wide and quiet, and gazed
up at Catherine. “The angels will look like you,”
she breathed: “I shall be one of them. Then I—
shall take care of — you. I would — like to
see my father.”

As if he had heard the half-articulate breath
through walls and doors, McRoy was in the room,
as it seemed, with a single bound, and down

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

beside the bed with his head on his child's heart.
May placed both her pretty hands in his hair, held
up her face to Catherine for a kiss, — a trembling
kiss, — and Catherine closed her eyes. Then the
mother, who had followed her husband, all dazed
and numbed, sat down in Catherine's seat, and
gazed before her into the emptiness, and uttered
at last a loud, wild cry. The Doctor went to her,
knowing better how to solace her than any other
could; and Catherine passed through the doorway
where Gaston stood, and looked him level in
the face with eyes that said, “Your work and
mine!”