Project Gutenberg's True to a Type, Vol. II (of 2), by Robert Cleland

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Title: True to a Type, Vol. II (of 2)

Author: Robert Cleland

Release Date: July 24, 2012 [EBook #40325]

Language: English

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                            TRUE TO A TYPE






                            TRUE TO A TYPE




                                  BY

                              R. CLELAND




                            IN TWO VOLUMES

                               VOL. II.




                      WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS

                         EDINBURGH AND LONDON

                             MDCCCLXXXVII


                        _All Rights reserved_






                    CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

     CHAP.

       XX. PAUL AND VIRGINIA.

      XXI. IS SHE HERE?

     XXII. "WELL, PETER?"

    XXIII. "POOR SUSAN!"

     XXIV. "THEY MET, 'TWAS IN A CROWD."

      XXV. ROSE AND THE RING.

     XXVI. THE MOTHERS.

    XXVII. AN OBDURATE DAUGHTER.

   XXVIII. THEY HAVE IT OUT.

     XXIX. "IT IS ALL A MESS!"

      XXX. A CLOSE OBSERVER.

     XXXI. THE LADY PRINCIPAL.

    XXXII. "YOU MAY TRUST ME TO HOLD MY TONGUE!"

   XXXIII. SUSAN IS EQUAL TO THE EMERGENCY.

    XXXIV. MISS ROLPH IS SEVERE.

     XXXV. MILLICENT.





                           TRUE TO A TYPE.




                              CHAPTER XX.

                          PAUL AND VIRGINIA.


The storm exhausted itself at length. The thunder passed on westward,
the rain abated and ceased, the clouds parted and rolled away, leaving
the sky clear but paler for its agony of tears. It was now evening,
and the air felt fresh even to chilliness, for the temperature had
fallen a matter of fifteen degrees--from 90 deg. to 70 deg. or 75 deg. The party
stood round the fire with something not greatly removed from a shiver,
and warmed their hands. It was not actually cold, but the transition
had been sudden and violent, which came to the same thing.

"And now to get back?" said Wilkie, looking at his watch. "The gong at
the beach is just going to sound for supper. I confess I feel peckish.
Should we not be thinking of a move, Blount?"

Blount coughed. "There are rather many of us for my small boat, in the
present state of the weather. There is probably more wind, and
certainly more swell, than you would suppose from looking at the
landlocked channel down there. I fear we must postpone thoughts of
supper for the present."

"If we delay, no one can say when we may get in. I don't see why we
should not make the attempt at once. We shall at least have daylight
to lessen our difficulties if we attempt it now. What do you say?"

"I fear it is impossible. What do _you_ say, Jake?"

Jake caught a look from his "boss," and understood. "No, sir-ree! you
won't reach Lippenstock to-night in that aar boat with a crew of six.
It 'ud be more'n a man's life is worth, with the sea as is on in the
bay now."

"Suppose we go four, then. I could take charge of the young ladies."

"We won't break up the party, neither Margaret nor I," said Rose. "You
might try the voyage with Jake, however, by yourself. You could tell
them at the beach to expect us for breakfast."

Wilkie looked doubtfully to Jake; but Jake's eyes were averted. He had
pulled out his plug of tobacco, and was intent upon judiciously
whittling off the exact quantity for a chew. He had no idea of making
the voyage twice for the accommodation of one man, that man not being
the "boss," and one, besides, who did not seem over-likely to remember
to tip. Jake's look afforded little encouragement to make a proposal,
and that reminded Wilkie in time that the figure he himself would make
would not be heroic if he arrived alone at the beach and said that the
others were coming. He elevated his eyebrows into the British
equivalent of a Frenchman's plaintive shrug, and sighed, and resigned
himself to his fate. If he had even had some one to "spoon" with, it
would not have been so bad; but after his experience in that hut
during the hours of the thunderstorm, he realised that he was in the
position of one who at the last moment goes to a place of amusement,
and finds every desirable place ticketed "engaged."

"Worse than Robinson Crusoe," he grumbled to himself, "for I've no man
Friday."

"Then you would make the rest of us stand for the savages," laughed
Blount; "which is scarcely flattering. But keep up your heart, old
man; it might be worse. It is warm in here, at any rate--thanks to our
absent hosts the fishermen. We must not forget to leave something
behind in payment for the use of their wood-heap."

"Why didn't they leave provisions when they were about it? Even a
ship-biscuit would be agreeable now."

"And sugar and tea," laughed Margaret. "They might have left some
tea--and cups and saucers."

Wilkie objected to being chaffed. He looked severe. "I feel almost
faint, I can tell you, Miss Naylor. Brain-workers, I suppose, are more
susceptible to physical privation than the generality," and his eye
rested on the other two gentlemen, as though they were instances in
point. "The brain is a delicate organ, and easily thrown out of gear.
It needs frequent nourishment at short intervals, to keep it in good
working order."

"You will have to give your brain a rest to-night, then, Mr Wilkie,
and husband your fibre, as there is nothing here to renew it with--no
larder, even, except the sea down there. I am glad that, being a
woman, I have no brain to speak of. The exhaustion of its fibre won't
be noticed."

"You've hit it, Margaret!" cried Blount--"without even caring--as you
so often do. Smart girl, and don't know it. The sea is our larder,
full of fish, and Jake has lines in the boat's locker. Let's go
fishing."

"The boat will be wet after the rain," said Rose, "and I have had one
wetting already. I shall not go fishing, thanks; but I do not mind
looking among the rocks for limpets and mussels, and things. They tell
me they are good to eat, when people are very hungry."

"Not a bad thing to do. Whoever likes, can fish from the boat; I shall
_shell_-fish on shore," chimed in Margaret.

"To shell-fish is not wisely selfish," retorted Wilkie, with the air
of a wag. "How much more comfortable to sit in the boat hauling up
your fish, than go pottering and stumbling over slippery rocks with a
lapful of rubbish you won't be able to cook after you have got it!
while we could broil some fish nicely on the hot coals. Believe me,
it's better to be wisely selfish than to bother about worthless
shell-fish."

"I don't think I am selfish; but you may end in becoming a punster if
you are not warned in time; and to show you are not selfish, you had
better go out with Jake, and we will all assist you to cook and eat
whatever you may be lucky enough to catch."

Wilkie looked to the other two men, but both were reaching down hats
for the girls from lofty pegs where they had been hung. No one heeded
him, and he deemed it best to follow Jake, who had already gone down
to the boat and was preparing to launch it. If he was condemned to be
a supernumerary, it was better to be a useful and independent one
afloat, than merely in the way on shore; and he had his reward in a
calm and tranquil evening on the water, his self-love unfretted by the
view of less learned men preferred to himself, his hand bobbing
peacefully with his line, and his head in a cloud of soothing tobacco.
Occasionally he would get a bite, and hauled in his fish with the
consoling thought that there were some creatures whom he could catch,
and that the girls would not object to partake of his fish, however
they might disregard himself.

The four remaining in the hut stood by the door and watched the
launching of the boat; then they likewise descended to the beach and
began to look among the rocks for shell-fish. But either there were
few to find, or the seekers were inattentive in their search, for they
did not find many, and soon wearying, abandoned even the pretence of
being useful.

They wandered idly along in the purple light, now waning swiftly into
bluish grey and shadowy indistinctness. Of the wild and lonely scene
of half an hour ago, nothing was left but the dusky darkness of the
land lifting its solid outline against the tinted sky, where wan
transparent gleams of the departing day contended with the darkling
blue of night, and the dim sea escaping from the shadows of the
islands spread away to the horizon, to bound the low-down glimmer in
the southern sky.

The talk had split itself into two separate strands, and the talkers
had drifted apart, each couple following the thread of its own
discourse, and oblivious to its divergence from the other. Joseph and
Rose were alone again. She was walking by his side, looking with level
gaze straight out before, to the distant line where sea and sky,
straining to meet each other, were yet parted where they touched, as
two who could not be united. She was thinking--or more, perhaps, she
was waiting--with head inclining forward and to her companion, while
his eyes sought the ground. His footsteps sounded irregular as he
walked, as though he were not at ease, but laboured with something to
be said, for which the word was difficult to find. He looked up more
than once as if about to speak, and then his eyes fell again without
his having spoken. She did not observe. Her eyes were on the horizon
and the light was dim.

At length he clenched his hands, stopped short, and spoke abruptly.
His voice was low, but there was an intensity in the utterance, which
made her start although she had been expecting him to speak.

"Rose! will you be my wife?... Why should I try to lead up easily to
what I meant to say? I am too much in earnest to be able to coin
phrases."

She turned and looked at him. She did not look up shyly, but yet she
was not bold. Doubt, if there had been light enough to see, or if his
mind had been calm enough to observe, was the prevailing sentiment
which her face betrayed. She looked, and her lips grew tense, and then
she drew a heavy, deep, slow breath; and, like a sleep-walker obeying
an impulse apart from common consciousness or volition, she held out
her hand.

He caught it in both of his, and raised it to his lips, and clasped it
as if he never would let it go; and the boiling blood went tingling
through his veins in a transport of tumultuous joy, which shook his
frame and made it vain for him to try to raise his voice.

She thought she heard him whisper, "Rose! My own!" and straight the
tears began to gather in her eyes, and her breathing broke into a sob.
She thought, she was about to give way, and covered her face with the
other hand. And yet there was a stillness in her heart, as though it
were some one else--a looker-on--a curious and yet an approving
onlooker, but one who felt no joy at her being sought, no hope and no
elation, though it bade her accept. And then a despairing pang shot
through her. Was it impossible for her to love? But she would! She was
resolved to love--to love this man. She had read in him that he loved
her well. He was good and true; she more than liked or even respected
him. She was resolved to love as fondly and as faithfully as ever
woman had, if only to show----but she would not think of that--never
again. The past was buried. Let it lie.

Joseph, in his own tumultuous exaltation, felt the trembling of her
hand. He heard her sob. He saw her cover her face as if to hide her
tears, and caught her in his arms, folding her in, and pressing her to
his heart in a tender transport. To dry those tears was now his
rightful privilege; and very tenderly and softly did he whisper in her
ear, bidding her calm herself and have no fear, for he loved and
worshipped her, and would devote his life to shelter her from care or
harm.

And now the stars came out upon the night, looking down with friendly
understanding eyes, like beings of a higher sphere, approving the
troth-plight and bidding them be happy. They sat them down upon a
broad flat rock; her hand was nestling in his palm, and her form drawn
up against him within his encircling arm; and the silent peace of
night, tranquil and still beneath the keeping of the kindly stars,
wore in upon their agitated spirits, helping the fever in their blood
to cool.

To realise that there is some one in accord, and all our own, who
shares desire and hope, our present and our future, to whom the inmost
thought might be revealed, if that were possible, without the
conventional disguises in which we hide while we converse with one
another, is a sensation of the rarest joy, but seldom known, and never
known for long. To Joseph, who had lived alone in heart, it was very
new and inexpressibly delightful. There were no words to image forth a
tithe of what he felt. Speech failed. He held her hand, and breathed
the pure delicious night in gasps of satisfaction: and it was all so
still and simple; only the outlined rocks against the sky, and
glimmering faint reflections of the stars on the dim water; no
troubling details or petty objects, no motion but the ceaseless
current of the universe, the noiseless unseen marching of the host of
heaven from east to west. He and his love were the only two in all the
mighty vault. For them the night was still, the air so sweet, the
stars so kind and friendly. They and the universe were in company and
at one in some mysterious way, and the peace of the universe flowed in
upon his soul.

Rose sat in wonder at the intensity of the silence. How this man must
love her! It was sweet to be so loved, but it was solemn. She felt
small within his clasping arms. Her hand was laid in his, and nestled
in the tender warmth of its grasp, so strong and so protecting. He had
taken her for his very own, and she felt humble in the unworthiness of
the self he set such store on. She felt ashamed at the inward
stillness which could respond so coldly; but the feeling roused and
warmed her somewhat, and she was glad of it. She had striven to win
him. Honestly she had striven, if in a divided spirit, which made
her blush now to think of the depth and tenderness of the love which
she had won. But at least he should never have ground to suspect
half-heartedness. She would compel herself to love him more; and if
the reality fell short of what she felt she owed, at least the
expression should not fall short in fulness. She crept closer, and
strove to thaw away the numbing chill which hung about her heart, and
was so stubborn to dispel. He responded with a tightening clasp
against the strong warm throbbing of his breast, till she vibrated
with the pulses of his perfect love. She looked out across the sea,
and vowed to be more than he had hoped or dreamed, and felt still and
strengthened by the peace spread out around her. And so they sat,
together, and yet so far apart in feeling; and time went by without
their taking heed.

                          *   *   *   *   *

At length--they knew not when or how the idea came into their minds,
but probably it was because a star, appearing to have parted from the
rest, came down, and seemed to be pursuing an independent course, and
to outstrip its fellows, being only, when they looked a little later,
the lantern hung out upon a passing ship--they started from their
reverie and stood up.

"The dew is falling; you will be chilled." It was Joseph who spoke.
"Let me button my coat round your shoulders. It is not thick or warm,
but at least it adds another fold of covering."

"Thanks, but I am warm.... No; I do not want it. But you are kind to
mean giving it. Only you should not think that I would strip you of
your coat. Is it not time that we were turning back?"

"Yes; we have strayed a long way from the hut. The ground is rough,
and it is so dark one cannot see where one steps. You will stumble.
Give me your hand, and let me lead."

The unevenness of the ground, and the consequent stumbling among rocks
and boulders in the uncertain dimness, soon brought them back to the
level of everyday life; and when at length, after an hour of
floundering and groping, they came in sight of the fire-glow streaming
from the fishermen's shelter, they were completely themselves
again--gayer even than their wont, in the reaction from the deeper
feelings in which they had been lately steeped.

They were the last of the party to come in. The others were already
round the fire, assisting with their advice the experienced Jake, who
was on his knees broiling fish upon the coals. They made a tolerable
supper, without bread or salt, Jake assuring Wilkie that, coming from
the sea, fish needed none, and that they would lie the lighter on his
"stommick" for lack of fixings. And then the girls were left alone,
and the men withdrew to the boat, under whose shelter they contrived
to sleep till morning, when they sailed from the desert island, each
with some memory or experience to mark it in his recollection for
life.




                             CHAPTER XXI.

                             IS SHE HERE?


The house was very quiet when Gilbert Roe met Maida and Mrs Denwiddie
at breakfast on the morning after his arrival. Only an invalid, one or
two old people, some dull ones who had no friends, and a few young
children with nurses, were scattered here and there at the deserted
tables. He adjusted his eyeglass and looked about. He saw as well as
other people; but, like them, he found the glass useful as a
demonstration on many occasions.

"I thought," he said, "you told me the house was full. This is the
poorest showing I have come on yet for a seaside resort in August. Not
by any means a promising crowd to live in--and to-morrow is Sunday.
One can't well get away before Monday morning."

"There was not a vacant place yesterday at this hour," Maida answered,
a little hurt. "That I can tell you. Can _you_ tell, Mrs Denwiddie,
what has become of them all?"

"Did you not hear the fuss an hour ago or more? It woke me out of my
morning sleep. Such gabble and uproar I never did hear--slamming doors
and scuttling feet, everybody speaking at once, enough to wake the
dead. And when I got up and looked out, there they were, just starting
away in buggies and 'buses and rockaways, the whole lot of boarders it
seemed to me, and it just astonishes me to see so many left behind.
Jest those that couldn't go, I guess, or didn't care to go, because
there was nobody to mind them."

"Where have they gone, then?" asked Maida. "As I went away, so to
speak, yesterday, I was taking no interest in the plans; but I am real
sorry for Gil----for Mr Roe's sake, that I did not know; and I wonder
you did not go with the rest, Mrs Denwiddie."

"So I would, perhaps, if it had not been for promising to breakfast
along with you, under the circumstances;" and she looked most
knowingly into the other's eyes with her head on one side. But seeing
the humour was not appreciated, she went on--"though I don't know
either. I don't much hold with boat-rides, and there'll be sech a
crush! Jest think of a boat on the water in Lippenstock Bay a day like
this! for it's there they're gone to, and Fessenden's Island, for a
picnic. And won't they find they've had enough of their steamboat-ride
afore they're done with it! I went last summer, and I know."

"We must resign ourselves to a quiet day on the sands, then," said
Maida, with a little sigh which expressed nothing but satisfaction.
"Let's go at once, Gilbert, before the heat comes on. There's a nice
grove down near the shore, about three miles along, and it'll be just
splendid to rest there about noon."

"Three miles, Maidy--and three back! And how am I to go that far in
the heat?" exclaimed the widow.

Maida opened her eyes, just a little. It was convenient to have her
aged friend--for so she was now for the first time disposed to
consider her--sit by her at table, and fend off curious remark; but to
have her make a third in her intercourse with Gilbert was more than
flesh and blood could be expected to bear. Her lips tightened, and
there was a quiver of the nostril suggestive of a sniff; but she took
care to make no emendation of her first proposal.

"I think, now," said Mrs Denwiddie, "the best thing Mr Roe can do
would be to give us a ride along the sands in one of the landlord's
rockaways. He'd find it real smooth and pleasant for conversation."
She was indeed loath to part from "these two interestin' young
things," as she would have called them now, though twenty-four hours
earlier she would certainly have spoken of Maida as a forlorn old
maid; so completely will circumstances alter cases. The young man made
the difference--the old, old story which is always new. She was too
old herself for these sweet passages; but if she could no longer hope
to woo or be wooed, it was pleasant to assist at the wooing of some
one else. People do not cease to be hungry when they lose their teeth,
and a Barmecide banquet is better than no feast at all. Is not this
"the long-felt want," to quote the prospectus-writers, which finds
readers for the shoal of love-tales published every week?

"I'm going for a smoke," Gilbert observed, after an interval in which
the play of knife and fork had absorbed their undivided attention; and
marshalling his companions out of the dining-room, he withdrew to the
male lounging-ground of the establishment. There he found the
"proprietor" and his clerk, each with a newspaper and a toothpick,
arranging themselves on three chairs apiece to ruminate on the
breakfast they had eaten, and to anticipate the meal which was to come
next. The day was _dies non_ with them, their customers being away at
the picnic, and they were promising themselves a morning of complete
repose. Gilbert's appearance was not particularly welcome; however,
they both favoured him with an inclination of the head, the proprietor
combining his with a flourish of his toothpick towards the regiment of
empty chairs, by way of inviting him to take a few and make himself at
home.

He condescended to accept one of Gilbert's cigars; and finding
it good, he relaxed so far as to vouchsafe a reference from the paper
he was still reading, with regard to the state of politics in
"Bhoston,"--to which Gilbert replied, alluding in passing to affairs
in the West. Thereupon the proprietor woke up sufficiently to put one
of his feet to the ground, and proceeded to interrogate him as to
where was his home, what was his occupation, why was he travelling in
the East, &c. Having received all the particulars which his guest
seemed disposed to communicate, his interest subsided again, his leg
resumed the horizontal position, his eyes returned to his paper, and
his answers to Gilbert's efforts to converse became so brief and
indifferent that the latter gave it up, and pored over his own
newspaper in silence. The captain of a ship may be an important person
on his own deck, but his grandeur is nothing to that of a hotel
proprietor when his house is full. He is so accustomed to be spoken
fair by guests desiring improved accommodation and eccentric
et-ceteras, that he stiffens into an autocrat of the severest type.

Gilbert smoked, and read till he grew tired of it, and then he got up
and sauntered away. He was becoming a bore unto himself, and longed
for other company. On the gallery near the entrance he espied Maida
hatted and gloved, awaiting an invitation to walk. She was alone; he
had only to signify his wish, and away they strolled along the sands.
It was not unpleasant, he found, now that the restlessness of his
spirit had been chastened by the proprietor's severe neglect, to be
looked up to, made of, and courted. His weed became more fragrant in
the freshness of the air and sunshine as they wandered along by the
water's-edge. Maida's low eager tones mingled agreeably with the
babble of the breakers coming on, curling and retreating respectfully
within some inches of his feet, and made him realise once more that he
was lord of the creation, and a very fine fellow indeed.

Maida's flow of conversation trickled on without intermission. It was
wonderful, indeed, how she found so much to say; but the well of happy
feeling within yielded a steady flow of purling talk, not deep,
perhaps, but clear and cheerful, with opportunities for him to answer
if so it pleased him, yet able to babble along pleasantly if he said
nothing. She did not talk about herself, which might have grown
tedious, nor did she trouble him with questions about his own career.
He must tell her of that, she thought, when he chose, though she
longed to know. Her thoughts were back in the time when she used to
know him, and her talk was reminiscences, touched with the ideal
brightness which the days of our youth never assume till after they
are fled.

Gilbert listened, remembering enough to verify her words; but yet it
seemed most different, as she described it, from what he had supposed.
It was like being told about some one else, especially when she
recalled their conversations in those ancient days. To think that he,
a weather-beaten worldling, shrewd, clear-headed, and cool, could
ever have been given up to fancies and enthusiasms such as she spoke
of--such as she seemed to cling to still! There had been no changes of
circumstance and position with her, to show things in new lights and
under new aspects; and so she had continued to serve the old gods.
They had flown away from him long ago, as birds escape from their
nesting-places when the sun is up. He knew them no more, immersed as
he was in the hurry of workaday life, and it seemed strange to have
them brought before him now. They were pretty and curious, but oh, so
narrow and mistaken! A moth may feel as he did, when, shown the
chrysalis out of which it crept, it realises how impossible it would
be for it to fold and compress itself again within the old limits.

For one morning, the sensation of being made love to by Maida, and
being courted under the form of his older self, was distinctly
pleasurable, though mild. She thought all the world of him--that he
could see--and he would be kind to her by way of making some small
return, especially in the absence of any one else to amuse him. After
their early dinner, the house being still in its deserted condition,
he brought her into the billiard-room to teach her the game. It was
her first lesson, and she was eager to learn; but she could not do so
quickly enough to play with him that day, however many points he might
give her--so he tired of that, and then, being still in a gracious
mood, he remembered Mrs Denwiddie's suggestion of the morning, that he
should give them a drive, and he fulfilled her desire. Both ladies
enjoyed it immensely; and to crown their triumph, they found that the
picnickers had returned only a minute before them, and had the
gratification of alighting in state with their escort, in full view of
the whole houseful of guests.

The thunderstorm which had reached Fessenden's Island an hour before,
came on shortly after; wherefore the remainder of the evening was
spent within doors, in the usual way, save that the company were more
disposed to sit still after their long day in the open air. Music,
singing, and conversation were the occupations at first; but the
quicksilver in Lucy Naylor and one or two more prevailed at last, and
by the time it grew dark the dance was in full force as on other
evenings.

"Now!" said Maida to Gilbert. "Are there enough people for your idea
of being sociable, now? You are always the same old man, as fond of
company as ever. Do you remember the country-dances and cotillions at
Deacon Benson's? How we used to keep it up! And the walking home
afterwards in the early morning--with the grass running dew, and
taking the starch out of my flounces! But you don't remember that, I
guess. Ah, those parties! They were just too sweet to last. I have
never been at any, since, I cared so much for.... Do you know the
cotillion now as well as you used to? My! how you did know it! We
girls were always wishing to have you call the figures. Nobody could
ever guess what you were going to make us do next. It kept up the
interest, and was real exciting. When we'd expect to have 'ladies'
chain,' it would be 'set to partners,' or 'ladies in the centre,' or
'first gentleman to the right,' or something quite unexpected. They
don't dance cotillions here. I guess it's because they don't know how;
though they pretend it's because they've gone out, and the upper
circles don't dance them. It's all round-dancing here, except when
it's lancers; and then they don't call the figures, so I never know
what to do next."

"Well, this is a round-dance. Come! No use sitting here the whole
night."

"I'll try," said Maida, delighted to be taken out, but with a
misgiving. She did not dance often, and she felt doubtful whether she
would acquit herself to the satisfaction of her hero. "Not too fast,
please--not any faster than you can help. The waltz is apt to make me
giddy," she ejaculated as they started off; but then she was in
rapture, and said nothing more. Were not his arms around her? and was
it not he whom she held and clung to as the room began to swim, and
her sense of terra firma to grow vague and indistinct?

"Don't hang on quite so altogetherly, Maida. And if you could keep
your feet to the ground, it would _look_ better, you know. You're more
hefty, as we used to say, than when you were a baby," Gilbert
observed, as they swung and revolved laboriously round the room; but
at length he got out of breath, and they had to stop.

"Oh!" sighed Maida, with closed eyes, clinging to her partner for
support because she was giddy, and also, perhaps, because she liked to
do it. "I am quite run out! But it was lovely."

"Come and sit down then, and rest," said the matter-of-fact Gilbert,
"and get back your breath;" which was not just the form of answer
which Maida had looked for. However, the music was ending and it could
not be helped.

And now Gilbert, having done his duty by his old friend, thought it
was time for her to be of some little service to him in return. He
asked her to introduce him to some of the other young ladies whom he
might ask to dance; and she could not but consent. It seemed a strange
request to make, she thought, a strange desire to feel, when she was
by--so soon after returning from so long an absence! It was a
masculine caprice, she supposed. And those men! Who could understand
them? She could take care, however, that the ladies she presented him
to were not more than moderately endowed with beauty. And she did. One
cannot be expected to court misfortune--to introduce rivals to even
the most loyal of swains--to fetch a stick from the wood to break
one's own back with. Perhaps she rather overdid it, in fact; at least
Gilbert did not invite many of her beauties to dance, and when the
introductions were over he could not help saying, "What a homely lot
of friends you have, Maida! They must be awful good, if appearances
are as deceitful as folks say. Now there's a little girl over yonder,
a peart little filly, that it would be a real pleasure to dance with.
What's her name? Can you not introduce me there?"

"I don't know her. She's a stuck-up little thing; and if I'm any judge
of girls, as I ought to be, there's not much in her. I hear them call
her Fanny Payson, and she belongs to Senator Deane's party--Deane of
Indiana, you know."

"I knew Deane well; he lives part of the time in Chicago. Is his
family with him?"

"Oh yes; but they put on airs, no end of. We poor New Hampshire folks
ain't good enough for them to know."

Gilbert was not listening now. He had fallen into a brown study, and
presently without any explanation he left her. He wandered up and down
the rooms, wearing a look of impatient eagerness, and peering into
faces as though in search of some one. At length he darted forward to
the side of a lady standing up to dance. "Miss Deane," he whispered
hoarsely, "is she here?"

Lettice turned. "You, Mr Roe?" Then, recovering from her surprise, she
assumed a manner of great coldness, and opening her eyes, as if in
wonder at his audacious intrusion, she limited her answer to a clearly
articulated "No."

"Where is she? Pray tell! I----"

He had stretched out his hand as if to lay hold on her skirt to detain
her; but with a motion of her hand she swept it beyond his reach,
saying severely, "I cannot tell you;" and then, in turning away, she
added, "Do not expose yourself in this public place;" and giving her
hand to her partner, she was whirled away among the dancers.

Gilbert set his teeth, and a look of despairing woe passed across his
features. He traversed the crowded rooms once more, and then, too
miserable to remain, he went out upon the dripping galleries, where
darkness and the cooled and moistened air yielded a kind of
consolation. There he paced and smoked, till life grew bearable again,
though still ungenial, and then he went to his room and turned in.

Maida sat where he had left her on the brink of the dance, and grew
very sad when he did not return to her side. What had she done to
offend or weary him? But at least he was not dancing--that was
something. Yet where could he be? A heaviness came over her spirits,
and she felt depressed for the first time in the last four-and-twenty
hours.




                            CHAPTER XXII.

                            "WELL, PETER?"


Next day was Sunday. Compared with other days at Clam Beach, it was
the same with a difference--leisure combined with fresh air, but
partaken of in a different form. Church was the recognised occupation;
but the churches were at Blue Fish Creek, four miles away, down the
coast in the other direction from Lippenstock. Omnibuses were in use
to convey the inmates, and everybody went, even the old people, the
dull ones, the invalid, and the young children. It was the only outing
which the dull people allowed themselves; there was nothing to pay for
the carriage exercise, and they never missed it.

Mrs Naylor and Mrs Wilkie remained at home. They had had enough of
driving the day before, and found it agreeable now to sit still in the
deserted gallery, and absorb sunshine and fresh air in peace. At least
such was the state of Mrs Naylor's feelings. Not being a British
mother, she had considerable confidence in her daughter's ability to
take care of herself, so long, at least, as that pernicious young man
Walter Blount was away, and she had no ground to suspect his presence
on Fessenden's Island. Besides, she was aware now that the girl's
uncle had also been left behind, therefore she was safe, not to
mention Peter Wilkie, whose mother had been making herself ridiculous
on the subject all the previous evening. There was nothing very
compromising in the situation, so far as she could see; in fact, with
her desire to suppress the girl's kindness for Blount, she could
almost have wished there had been. It would have brought the other
young man up to the point of committing himself, and, with a little
maternal pressure, compelled her to accept him; and as she had quite
made up her mind that Margaret was to marry in Toronto, that pressure
would assuredly be forthcoming.

Mrs Wilkie's motherly feelings were in a state of ebullition which
would not let her sit still. She would get up from her chair and pace
the gallery with irregular steps, puffing and sighing distractedly,
get tired and plump down again, pressing her hands together, and
sighing worse than before. Her boy was done for--bagged by a designing
girl. Speculatively and in the abstract, she was wont to express a
strong desire to see him married, whatever she may have felt; but the
ideal spouse had never yet appeared--or rather, whenever there seemed
a possibility of any fair one finding favour in his eyes, she began to
see objections, even if she had herself recommended the girl and
fancied that she would like him to marry her. Speculatively, she had
held Margaret Naylor in the highest esteem; actually, she found
herself detesting her with all her might. She had struck up quite a
friendship with her mother, and the fellow-boarders had differed only
as to which of the mothers was most desirous of being allied to the
other. Now, alas! her son's fate seemed to be decided. She must resign
the first place in his care, and had her supplanter been a seraph with
wings come straight down from heaven, she could not have accepted her
without a spasm of jealousy.

"Cast upon a desert island," she muttered to herself, as she paced the
gallery. "A second Robinson Crusoe, with his man Friday. But it's not
a man Friday! It's worse; it's a girl Friday!--or rather, it's worse
than any Friday at all--it's the parrot! A gabbin', chatterin',
useless thing--all tongue and feathers, and not wan grain of sense in
its head. An empty, feckless, dressed-up doll, with nothing but the
face and the clothes to recommend her. How can men of intelleck be
such fools? And after all, it isn't much of a face even. I've
seen----" but here the soliloquy grew inaudible; only, judging by the
toss of her head, which set the little grey curls on her temples
a-dancing, it must have been what she had seen in her own mirror long
ago which was so much more admirable.

She dropped into a chair near her companion, panting, and fanned
herself vehemently, complaining of the heat. It seemed to make her
hotter still to sit beside Mrs Naylor, in her present frame of mind.

"Try to sit still, dear Mrs Wilkie. You will find it the best way to
get cool," Mrs Naylor said, very sweetly. "He will be sure to be home
very soon. My brother-in-law is with them, you know; and between two
gentlemen, they will be sure to contrive some means of getting away."

Mrs Wilkie snorted, and fanned herself more vehemently than before,
relapsing into her late mutterings about Robinson Crusoe and the
desert island; but, disturbed as she was, she had presence of mind
enough to suppress the parrot, and complained of the heat and her
palpitations instead.

Mrs Naylor grew positively nervous, and even began to feel an
anticipatory pity for her daughter, in the prospect of so tumultuous a
mother-in-law--when, quite unexpectedly, the truants drove up to the
door.

"Peter, you rascal!" his mother exclaimed, jumping up and running
down-stairs to meet him. "You've nearly been the death of me;" and, to
demonstrate how much she had suffered, so soon as she came within
range of his supporting arms, she pressed both hands upon her
"palpitation," crying, "Oh!" and made as if she would fall.

Peter caught her as intended, and supported her up to her room, not
soothing her, by any means, but scolding her roundly, in good set
terms; but then he had known her for many years, and understood her
idiosyncrasies. Doubtless his system was the right one. Soothing would
only have encouraged her to rave and do the scolding herself, till her
palpitations came on in earnest. He was an excellent son, whatever his
shortcomings in other respects might be; and there are constitutions
which require what their medical advisers might call "bracing
treatment," just as others agree with bland and soothing remedies.

"Well, Peter?" she asked, with impatient eagerness, so soon as they
were closeted together, in complete forgetfulness of the scene which
she had been enacting the minute before--forgetting her incipient
faintness, and likewise the rough restoratives which had been applied.
"Have ye done it?"

"Done what, mother?"

"You know very well what I mean. Have ye promised to marry that girl
down-stairs?"

"I have not."

She heaved a great sigh of relief; but she went on with her catechism.
"How's that? I never saw ye more taken up with anybody. Ye stuck to
her like a burr the livelong day; and many were the envious glances I
saw some others casting after you two, as ye went dandering over the
hills like a pair of lovers. I was sure ye were nabbet--just grippet
and done for like a wired rabbit; and, says I to myself, there's wan
of the simple wans that love simplicity, and she's just inveigled him
into makin' her an offer."

"She doesn't want to inveigle me. She is provided already. She did not
give me the chance to make a fool of myself, like your young friend in
the Proverbs, whom you are so fond of talking about. She availed
herself of my escort to bring her to a man she liked better than me;
that was all."

"The besom! She took her use out of ye, and let ye slide? Do ye mean
to tell me that, Peter Wilkie? And are ye going to stand it? Have ye
nothing more to say than just stand like a gowk and own til it? Have
ye no spurrit left?"

"Whisht, mother! and don't haver."

"Whisht yourself! Do ye think I'm going to sit still and see a monkey
like that scancing at my son? She'd have the assurance, would she, to
take her use out of my boy, and throw him away when she was done, like
a socket gooseberry! My certie, but she'll rue it yet!"

"She did nothing, mother. The girl is engaged, though we did not know
it. You would not have me cut in and break up an engagement?"

"Ye might, if ye liked. Your poseetion would justifee you, and the
girl would be the gainer."

"But I wouldn't, mother, if she was fond of some one else."

"And who's the young man?"

"You don't know him. He is a Mr Blount, who was staying here last
week, but he went away."

"I never saw him, and ye know I have been a great deal with the girl's
mother. I'm thinking the attachment has not gone far, or I would have
seen him hanging about Mrs Naylor."

"I do not think Mrs Naylor likes him, and that was why he came to the
island to meet her quietly."

"Illeecitly? It'll be an illeecit amoor!"

"Whisht, mother! and don't speak French. You are taking away the
girl's character without knowing it."

"She deserves it, and more. To trifle with a Deputy Minister, and have
a sweetheart without telling her mother! I never heard the like. Ye're
well quit o' her, Peter."

"I never had her. She would not look at me."

"Set her up! But it will be my duty to say a quiet word to Mrs Naylor,
and enlighten her about her daughter's ongoings. It'll be good for the
hizzy, and a warning to her not to make use of gentlemen of poseetion
to serve her underhand ends."

"You won't, mother. It is no concern of yours. We know nothing about
the Naylors' affairs. Let them settle their own hash."

"I cannot but let a mother know about her daughter's ongoings. And oh,
but she's fond of her! It will stab her to the heart. But it may be
blessed to herself, for she's inclined to be rather high sometimes.
It's time she was learning a little humeelity."

"If you do, you'll disgrace me. People will say it was because she
would not look at me that I went and betrayed the girl's meeting her
lover, out of pure spite. Her uncle was there, besides, so it is no
concern of ours. And again, I do not want her."

"Of course not. But to think she would go walking away with you before
everybody, and laughing at you in her sleeve, to keep tryst with
another man! My blood just biles to think of it. I'd like to nip her
ears for her. But see if I don't give her a bit of my mind ere all's
done."

"If you do, mother----"

"Now, don't be clenchin' your fists at me, you unnatural boy. Just
your father over again. And a dour, cantankerous, wrongheaded gowk he
always was. He'd go out in the world and let them just trample on him,
and then he'd come home to his poor sufferin' wife, and play the
roaring lion. But he'd play another tune now, I warrant, if he could
get me back again. He'd be glad enough to have me, now he has to do
without me. And so with you, Peter, when you see me laid out stiff in
my coffin, ye'll be wishin' ye had used me better. Ah, my bonny man,
ye'll be wishin', when it's too late, ye had behaved different to your
fond old mother!" which was pathetic, and caused the speaker to wipe
her eyes. The effect on her son was different.

"I wish you would let the old man alone," he said. "It would sound
better. Nobody knows anything about him here, and need not, if you
will but hold your tongue. Some day you will forget yourself; there
will be a washing of our family linen held in public, and nobody will
think the more of either you or me. As for the young lady, unless you
will promise to say nothing either to her or her mother, we pack up
everything tonight, and back we go to Canada to-morrow morning."




                            CHAPTER XXIII.

                            "POOR SUSAN!"


The subject of the foregoing discussion stole quickly and quietly up
to her room, unconscious of the angry passions she had unwittingly
aroused, intending to remain there till the people returned from
church, when she would meet her mother surrounded by strangers, and so
avoid the bad quarter of an hour which her conscience told her she
ought to expect. She had scarcely removed her hat, however, when the
door opened and her mother appeared, wearing a smile in which curious
impatience mingled with complacent certainty. The worthy lady had very
little doubt as to what she was going to be told, and was already
congratulating herself on her good management and good luck combined.

"Good morning, mamma. How anxious you must have been! Did you think I
was lost? But, to be sure, uncle Joseph's being in the same
predicament would keep your mind at ease."

Margaret had run forward to embrace her mother effusively, and was
speaking with unusual vivacity. There was so much to tell and so much
to leave untold, without hesitancy, which might betray that aught was
being kept back. She did not know how she was to manage, and like
other timid things when they find there is no escape, she rushed at
the danger as if she could encounter and overbear it. Anything seemed
preferable to expectancy, cowering and waiting to be fallen upon and
devoured.

Her mother submitted to be kissed. It was the morning
routine-observance between her and her girls, but she had not patience
for prolonged embraces on the present occasion.

"Tell me," she said, as soon as she could free herself from the
importunate endearments; "has he proposed?"

"I almost think he has, to judge from his manner; and he looks so
happy."

"You think? You do not know? Come, that is too ridiculous! What did he
say?"

"I do not know what he said."

"You don't? And you call yourself a grown-up girl?... That I should be
mother to such an _ingenue_!... You must be a fool!"

"You do not imagine he would propose in open meeting, do you? I only
infer from her affectionateness to me when we were alone together last
night.... We slept in a fisherman's hut.... But she did not exactly
tell me anything.... And then he was so awfully attentive to her this
morning; ... and they seemed to understand each other so perfectly,
although both were rather quiet, and not particularly good company for
the rest of us."

"Margaret Naylor! Am I to believe my ears? Do you mean to say you
have let that Hillyard girl cut you out?... You grown-up baby! When I
was your age, no girl should have done that to me--whether I wanted
the man or not. It's a disgrace to your womanhood, and your
upbringing--that means me--and your looks, and your spirit--if you had
any; but you have none, or you would not have allowed it. The way that
man stuck to you yesterday, and trotted away with you on that blessed
island!... And you to let another woman cut in and take him away from
you!... And people call you a clever girl! Hm!"

"But what was I to do, mother? I could not go in for him myself. I
could not make him propose to me."

"Why not, pray? Is he not good enough for you? What do you expect? Is
it a President of the United States you hope to captivate?"

"I do not understand. He could not have been persuaded to do anything
so dreadful. And you, I am sure, whatever the surprise of this may
have stupefied you into saying, you would not have me want to be my
own aunt?"

"What do you mean? Whom are you talking about?"

"Uncle Joseph, to be sure. Whom else?"

"Joseph? You must be dreaming."

"I really think, however, he has proposed to Rose Hillyard, and been
accepted."

"Impossible! Joseph marry! I never heard anything so preposterous."

"Nevertheless, you will see now. I am sure he is in love I do not
think he spoke twice to me all the time we were upon the island--only
to Rose, and once or twice, when it was necessary, to Wa--W--to Mr
Wilkie, I ought to say."

Margaret started and grew pale as she spoke, but her mother was too
intent upon the idea of Joseph's entanglement to observe the stumble.

"My dear, he was blighted some years before you were born. There was a
time when I would have laughed at the notion of a blighted man. It
seemed one only fit to exist in a novel. Even the novels, some of
them, used to make fun of a blighted being. There was 'Mr Toots,' I
remember. But in the case of your uncle Joseph, the thing positively
occurred. His affections got a wrench some time very long ago,--I
never heard the particulars,--and he has never got over it to this
day. He might have had any woman in the country for the asking, any
time these twenty years--till lately, at least, when he began to grow
stout and grey, and, one would have thought, had given up all idea of
that sort of thing. There never was as good and soft-hearted a fellow
as Joseph, I do believe. You don't catch many of his fellow-men
playing such games of constancy, I promise you. His heart must have
been shattered. So different from other men's hearts, my dear, as
you'll find out! They seem generally to be made of india-rubber--able
to swell or contract any quantity, but there's no break in them. You
may jump on them, if they will let you; but you will not crush or
bruise them. Joseph is the exception to a universal rule--the best
brother-in-law and friend that ever lived. But you will not persuade
me that he would ask any one to marry him, after the dozen or more
fine women I have seen throw themselves at his head; and he never knew
it, I do believe. The idea of Joseph becoming entangled! There's no
constancy in man, if it turns out that _he_ has succumbed to a woman's
wiles. If what men call their heart has begun to sprout again with
him, it is an unbreakable article for sure.... But I will not believe
it: it would spoil my ideal of a perfect love."

"Have you not noticed, mamma, how much he and Rose have been
together?"

"Now you speak of it, he has certainly taken most unusual notice of
her--for him, that is. But think of the disparity in age!"

"She saved him from drowning, remember."

"That is enough to account for their striking up a fast friendship.
But _she_ is no forlorn damsel, and no pauper, evidently. She may
choose where she likes. Why should she take up with a man old enough
to be her father?"

"I do not think anybody need look on Uncle Joseph as old. There are
very few young fellows to compare with him for activity or strength,
or niceness every way. And he is so well off, besides."

"That maybe it. Poor Joseph! To be saved from the sea only to fall
into the hands of a designing fortune-hunter! But I hope you are
mistaken. It would be too sad; it would be dreadful! And you and Lucy,
my poor children, what a difference it will make in your prospects!
You will have to stand on your merits now, if this should chance to be
true. No longer the heiresses of wealthy Joseph Naylor!"

"That is no reason why Uncle Joseph should not marry. We have lived
very comfortably on what papa left us."

"You do not understand yet. Wait till you go to Ottawa or Toronto. You
will recognise the difference then."

"I do not want to stand on anybody's merits but my own. I think I
shall be fond of Rose, after the first queerness of her being Uncle
Joseph's wife wears off."

"You think so because you do not know the world. I know it, and I can
tell you you are wrong.... If once that woman is married to your
uncle, there will be no standing her.... And I won't!" And Mrs Naylor,
flushing an angry red, turned and left the room. The impending danger
to her own consequence had driven every other idea from her mind, and
she went without one word upon the subject she had come to discuss--to
wit, Peter Wilkie's attentions to her daughter, and how they had been
received.

On the stair she met Joseph coming up as she went down. It required an
effort to pull herself together and meet him as usual, but she
succeeded; or perhaps he was too preoccupied to observe the constraint
of her manner as she wished him good-morning and proceeded on her way.
He turned in his course, and followed her into a parlour, empty like
the other rooms at that hour, owing to the absence of every one at
church.

She sat down in a large chair before the open window, with the shady
gallery outside, and the fanning breeze blowing in from off the sea.
He drew up the nearest seat and placed himself beside her, looking at
his nails the while, but saying nothing.

She watched him from under her eyelids. It was true, then, she feared,
what Margaret had been telling her, and it made her feel so angry and
vindictive that she would not even help him out of the difficulty of
breaking his news, by beginning the conversation. He sat, and she sat,
but they did not speak. Those nails of his must have had uncommon
attractions, or his thoughts had wandered away into pleasant fields,
and he had forgotten that speech was expected of him.

She shuffled her feet beneath her gown and waited, growing more and
more impatient. The front of her dress was agitated by the drumming of
her slipper-toes, which would not keep still, yet proved an inadequate
vent for the impatience which devoured her. It grew intolerable, at
last, to have him beaming there upon his own finger-tips, and saying
never a word. A red spot came in either cheek; and steadying her voice
with a little cough into an uncertain tone, ready alike to grow
plaintive or indignant as occasion should arise, she spoke at last--

"How did you contrive to be left behind yesterday?"

He started. His thoughts came back from their wool-gathering with a
leap. "Very simply. We stayed too long, I suppose, on the other side
of the island. Then the storm came on, and we took shelter in a
fisherman's hut. We sent a man to bid the steamer people wait. When he
reached the landing the steamer was gone."

"That must have been hours after we left. We got home before the storm
overtook us."

"You travelled faster than the storm, then. It was quite early, I
should say, when it came on us; though I cannot name the hour, having
forgot my watch."

"Had nobody a watch? There were four of you."

"I do not know. The fact is, I was interested in other things."

"Such as--for instance----"

"Well, I was---- But really, Susan, I cannot speak of it in this
cold-blooded way. The truth is, I--I have asked Rose Hillyard to marry
me."

Mrs Naylor sat bolt-upright in her chair, and turned to look at him,
with the red spot burning in either cheek. She lifted her hands, but
whether she intended to clasp them or to do something else, was not
apparent. His unabashed assurance seemed to petrify her, for though
her lips were parted she did not speak.

"And she has been so kind as to say yes.... Wish me joy, dear Susan,
of my happiness. It is more than I can believe to be possible." Before
she could protest, he had taken her hands in his and shaken them, and
was imprinting a kiss upon the flushed place on her cheek.

"Let go, Joseph! You will suffocate me. This is more than---- This is
something---- You must be out of your senses."

"Very nearly, Susan. I am the happiest man alive!"

"She is not half your age."

"She is twenty-five."

"And you are forty-seven. May and December! How can you possibly get
on together?"

"Where love is, Susan, what else matters?"

"At your age, Joseph, you should have more sense than yield to such
raptures. You must know you are talking nonsense."

"Come! you know better than that. It is your commonplace worldliness
that is nonsense; and you know it. You were once a bride yourself."

"I was young then, Joseph. We get sense--or we should--as we grow
older."

"Rose is young. Why may she not have fresh true feeling, just as you
had yourself?"

"But has she? Does she go into raptures as you do, I wonder?"

"One would not like a girl to display her feelings too openly before
marriage. You would call it boldness."

"Has she any feeling to display? Can we expect her to have that kind
of feeling for a man who might be her father?"

"My dear Susan, time will show. I bring love to the union enough for
both, and it will be strange if I do not make her happy. If you knew
the story of my youth--which you do not, and it is not needful that
you should--but you have known my later life; how I have been alone
while others have been making themselves tender ties and households.
Do you think it can be anything but dreary to feel that you have no
one to call your own--that you can shelter your whole family under
your hat-brim?"

"What of your nieces? What of poor Caleb's children?"

"You know I am fond of them, Susan. I do not think you will accuse me
of being a neglectful uncle or brother-in-law."

"And yet you are going to cast us off, and put this stranger in our
places."

"Not in your places. Why should it make any difference between us? The
girls like her."

"That only shows their innocence and ignorance of the world, poor
things."

"I do not see it, Susan. If it is their prospects you mean, they are
independent already; but you may rest assured they will both come in
for a slice, when my belongings come to be divided."

"There! It only wanted that!" cried the sister-in-law, seizing the
opportunity to let off steam in a burst of indignation. "It only
wanted insult to heap upon the injury. You must fling your
testamentary intentions in my teeth, as if I were a mercenary person,
in case I should not feel crushed and humbled sufficiently under your
latest whim! Have I failed to keep up the family respectability and
position as I should? I am growing too old, I suppose, to be the Mrs
Naylor of Jones's Landing. Somebody younger must be found to lord it
over the people, and turn their heads with follies and expensive
notions they cannot afford; and I am to be the neglected dowager
living in retirement with my fatherless girls.... But she shall never
have it all her own way, Joseph Naylor, if _I_ can help it; and if she
has, it will be still worse for _you!_" And so saying, Susan got up
and flung out of the room, retiring to her chamber, where a full hour
elapsed before her heat subsided, and she was able to see how foolish
and unreasonable, not to say imprudent, she had been.

Joseph, as was natural, saw it at once, but he was too happy to be
easily annoyed. He rose as she did, stepped out on the gallery, and so
away, merely whispering to himself, half aloud--

"Poor Susan! It must be a disappointment, and hard to bear. But she is
not half as bad and worldly as she pretends. She will be ashamed and
sorry enough when next we meet. My cue is to forget this little
tantrum altogether."




                            CHAPTER XXIV.

                    "THEY MET, 'TWAS IN A CROWD."


It was long before Gilbert Roe could go to sleep, and the occupants of
adjoining chambers had abundant opportunity to sympathise with him. He
could not rest peacefully in his bed, and was driven to get up and
pace his room after his neighbours had retired. He thought he would
smoke, but could not find a light, so groped his way down passages and
staircases, where only a lamp was left burning here and there,
stumbling over boots at bedroom-doors, and arousing echoes in the
slumbering house, to ask for matches from the night-watchman.
Returned to his room he could not sit and smoke, but must go out upon
the gallery, marching up and down through the night-watches, till
every sleeper lay awake counting his footfalls and wishing him a
cripple. Towards morning he succeeded in growing drowsy, and turned
in, and this time slept till it was late. Maida joined him at the
breakfast-table, wishing him good morning with an easy intimacy of
proprietorship, which provoked him for some reason which did not
appear. However, her company was a relief after the weary solitude of
his midnight vigil, and in spite of himself he relaxed and grew
sociable.

"Come to church, Gilbert?" she said, when breakfast was over; and he,
having nothing better to do, consented. They walked leisurely along
the sands, as did also a good many of the younger company, who
objected to being mewed up in an omnibus.

"Let us step out a little," said Gilbert, "and join those folks in
front."

"It is too warm for stepping out much," she answered. "We have a long
walk before us. If we hurry we will be flushed and crumpled, and not
fit to be seen, when we go into church. And it is a close little place
at the best."

"Never mind. We can stop outside when we get there; but let's be
cheerful in the meantime. I see Miss Deane in that crowd on in front.
Come, let's join them."

"Oh yes! and that little Fanny Payson you were so set on dancing with
last night," Maida answered, a little crossly. "You'll have to take to
surf-bathing if you want to get in with that crowd. I think them real
frivolous, myself, and mighty conceited and stuck-up. My father might
have been a senator too, by now, if he had lived. He ran for Congress
the year I was born; and if he did not get sent there, it was none of
his fault."

"Never mind, Maida; you may go to Congress yourself yet, when
the woman's suffrage law passes. But you must take to wearing
glasses"--she had dropped using her goggles, I must observe, since
Gilbert's appearance--"to show that you have intellect. Intellect,
short-sight, and high culture, all run together, like a three-abreast
Russian team. If it wasn't for their short-sightedness they would drop
the high culture altogether, for they would see it don't pay in this
country. We have only a few professors and scientists all told, you
see. Three or four dozen women could marry them all, and the rest of
the men don't care to be kept humble all the time, by living with
wives who know more than themselves. That's why so many spectacled
women go lecturing. It's because nobody wants to marry them."

"To hear you talk, Gilbert, one would say you were just dreadful. You
do not really mean, I'm sure, that you believe a woman makes a better
wife for being ignorant or a fool. What companionship can there be
between an intelligent man and an empty-headed doll? And perhaps you
are not aware, but it is a fact, that the most successful female
lecturers are married women; and very poorly off their families and
invalid husbands would be, if they could not earn money that way."

"Maybe, Maida; I do not know from personal knowledge. I do not attend
many lectures, and I never heard a female lecture in my life; but if
you think the average man don't like what you call a doll--which, I
suppose, means a nice, soft, pretty little thing, who believes she is
not clever, and lets other women trample on her, as regards science
and things--you never were more mistaken in your life. Lots of smart
men find them the best company in the world; and--well--I know for a
fact that a woman may be no end of smart, and the very best of
company, though she don't read poetry, and knows nothing about the
'ologies.'"

"Natural intelligence, you mean, without any advantages of education.
To be sure, you find that in many a farmhouse--the kind of woman who
scrapes and saves to send all her sons to college, and sees one of
them elected President of the United States, and has her likeness in
all the illustrated papers. But if she had had culture, think what
such a woman would have become!"

"She would have become a female lecturer. The men would have been
afraid of her. She would never have been married, never had a son, and
never got her likeness into the magazines as mother of a President.
When men marry, they hope, at least, to be boss at home: and few have
the conceit to tackle a female steam-engine, expecting to be able to
break her in to quiet paces."

"But in cities you want culture to keep up your place in the
community. A poorly educated woman must be a drag on her husband's
social advancement."

"Not a bit of it. Our first families in Chicago and elsewhere, in this
country, and in every other, are noways remarkable for culture.
Sometimes it's money raises them, sometimes it's because their fathers
were of first families before them, or their friends. Culture may help
now and then--it's a distinction in its way, just like beauty or
talent; but there must be money, you bet! You country folks talk a
heap of nonsense about the help culture is, to rising in the world; so
do the newspapers, though they should know better. They think they
have it themselves, you see, so they crack it up for their own sakes."

"Oh, Gilbert! I am sorry to hear you speak like that. You used to
think very differently."

"Because I did not know any better, and I believed what I read in
print. We're not a highly cultured lot in the cities, I can tell
you--we successful folks, I mean. How could we be? It takes all we
can do to keep ourselves ahead of our neighbours. If we were to divide
ourselves between business and politics, or business and culture, we
would have to take a back seat in the community. It is not so much
special talent that is wanted, for getting on, as entireness. A man
must pour his whole self into the one groove, if he is to make a hit.
The whole of a very ordinary fellow is more, you see, and therefore
surer to win, than part of one of your superior people dabbling in
half-a-dozen different pursuits. Remember that, when you come to many,
Maida; and if you want to stand high, choose a man of one idea, and
that one his business."

"I know better than that, Gilbert," Maida answered, looking up in his
eyes with a fond but rather watery smile. She felt wounded by the
advice, but she took comfort, in that he was by her side while he
spoke, and could not mean it. It was only a man's thoughtless
speech--his rough way of being playful. For had he not kept faithful
through ten long years--long after she herself had ceased to expect or
hope? Had he not come back to her? and was not his presence the
strongest refutation of his worldly and cynical words?

And now, having gained, unconsciously to Maida, upon the party whose
appearance had started their discussion, she found they were abreast.
Gilbert drew towards them, leaving her somewhat apart, as if he would
join them.

"Good morning, Miss Deane," he said to Lettice, who was next him.

"Good morning, Mr Roe," she answered very coldly, passing behind
Walter Petty immediately after, and becoming engrossed in conversation
with Lucy Naylor, who walked on his other side.

Gilbert bit his lip, and Maida could not forbear a smile, to see with
the corner of her eye--for she would not turn her head--his chilling
reception by those he had been so eager to overtake, as if in
preference to her own company. They were all in close discussion now,
and completely ignored his presence. The distance widened between him
and them, while Maida walked straight forward; and not being minded to
walk alone, he was compelled, with something of a crestfallen air, to
return to her side.

Maida was not ill-natured. She betrayed no sign of having perceived
his discomfiture, and exerted herself to talk in a livelier way than
her wont, till he should recover from his mortification. She felt that
she was generous in doing this, and the neglect of the others seemed
to bind him to her by a rivet the more; so that her spirits rose, and
completely shook off the depression which his seeming weariness of her
company had been bringing on. He felt grateful in his turn that she
should so well cover his retreat, and enable him to bear up under the
snub he had been subjected to; the consequence being that they reached
Blue Fish Creek on terms of demonstrative good-fellowship, sang from
one hymn-book in church, and walked home by the sands again in cordial
intimacy.

"Jest look at them two interestin' young things!" Mrs Denwiddie
observed to her neighbour, as she pointed them out from the omnibus
window. "Ain't they fond, now! It makes me feel better to look at
them. It's kind of hard, you see, for us worldly-minded Americans,
sometimes, to believe about Adam and Eve and their innocent ongoings
mentioned in Scripter. There's nothing makes me so 'feared of turning
into one of them sceptics the ministers are so down on, as that
history; when I see the way young men and gals get on together, with
never a thought but dollars and cents and sich. 'There ain't one of
them as 'ud eat an apple as he knows'll disagree with him, jest to
please his Betsy, nowadays,' I thought. But there!--you see an
instance of what faithful love'll do. Jest look at them on the sands
there, wanderin' along! They might be babies gatherin' shells, with
their little spades in their hands."

"Do you mean the Montpelier schoolma'am?" the friend replied. "'Pears
to me always like as she was jest vinegar--with her blue glasses and
her knitting. I see she has left the glasses at home to-day--guess
it's to get a better look at her young man. Wonder what he thinks of
her? His taste must be pecooliar."

"They're true lovers, them two, believe me, Mrs Strange. If they
ain't, there's none sich. It's more'n ten years since they were
engaged, and he's been away all that time, to make his pile, and she's
been a-waitin' and a-workin' till he could come back to her, and never
a complaint. It's not a week yet, since she told me all about it, and
not a man would she listen to, in all that time, out of pure
faithfulness."

"There's few would try to shake her constancy, I'm thinkin'," said Mrs
Strange; but her companion was too busy talking to heed her, and
continued--

"Think of the young man keepin' her image before his mind's eye all
them years! and the world so full of gals, and temptations of all
kinds."

Lettice Deane, returning home in the same omnibus, sat opposite. She
raised her eyebrows, looking in the speaker's face, her nostrils
quivered, and the corners of her mouth, and then she buried her face
in her handkerchief and laughed silently; or, at least, so thought Mrs
Denwiddie, who returned her look with one of blackest indignation,
calling her, in her own mind, "A sassy brat, and that stuck-up as no
self-respectin' woman would demean herself by taking account of."

And the modern illustrations of Adam and Eve walked cheerfully
homeward along the sands. It was indeed Eden to one of them--an Eden
such as she had never hoped to enter, so bright that she could not
think what she had done to earn it. As for the other, it did not
appear exactly what were his thoughts, but he was cheerful, and
perfectly kind and attentive to his companion.

At dinner, Gilbert and Maida were early in their places. They had
earned an appetite by their long walk, and were duly hungry. Gilbert's
soup was before him, his spoon was lifted half-way to his mouth, when
the voices of a party in high spirits entering the room reached his
ear. The tone of a familiar voice among the others drew his attention,
and he raised his eyes. Senator Deane and his wife headed their party,
advancing up the room; behind came Lettice and Rose Hillyard. Gilbert
started, and the spoon slipped from his fingers and fell back in the
plate with a clatter which resounded through the room.

Rose's eye was drawn in the direction, and she saw him. She grew pale
to the lips and faltered, with a stop and a half-turn, as though she
would leave the room; then her colour flooded back and mounted to her
brow, her lips grew hard and set, and with a flash of the eye she
turned away her head and walked proudly forward to her place; taking
care that her back should be turned to the object which had disturbed
her.

Gilbert's blood had rushed into his face when their eyes met, but he
grew pale when she turned away, and he did not very speedily recover
himself. His soup was taken away untasted, and he refreshed himself
with ice-water instead.

Maida was filled with tender solicitude, and he would have been
overwhelmed with her inquiries and suggestions, if he had been
attending to what she said; but it scarcely seemed as if he were. "Was
it a qualm? Was he faint? Did he feel better now? Perhaps his heart
was weak, and he had over-exerted himself in the sun. She would never
forgive herself for taking him so long a walk. Would he not try some
wine?" which last was an ill-advised question, seeing they were then
in the State of Maine, where strong drink is not partaken of in
public. Not that an innkeeper's guests must go without--far from it;
but they must imbibe their stimulants _sub rosa_, though the
concealment is merely of a conventional kind.

Gilbert ate very little dinner, and poor Maida never taxed her skill
to interest and enliven, with less success than during that meal.
Her companion attempted to eat one thing and another, and he drank
ice-water, but he had become deaf as the adder which refuses to hear
the voice of the charmer. He parted from her at the dining-room door,
saying he would go in search of brandy, as he really felt ill; and
Maida ended the Sunday which had begun so brightly, in solicitude and
wretchedness. She might have had as much sympathy as she pleased from
her elderly friend, but the unending Denwiddie babble was more than
she could endure. It was easier to be alone and nurse her anxiety.
There was a foreboding on her spirit which she could not define, a
clouding over of the future and its dawning hopes, which she felt but
could not explain. Nothing had happened, so far as she knew, but she
felt a frost in the air, which had been so warm and bland, and it was
nipping the blossoms in her poor fool's paradise.




                             CHAPTER XXV.

                          ROSE AND THE RING.


When Rose was left alone with Margaret in the fisherman's hut, she sat
down upon a bench before the fire and gazed into the embers, falling
into a reverie in which ideas not all pleasurable chased each other as
fitfully as the leaping flames which licked the new-laid log, as if
searching for a spot on which they might fasten and take hold. Her
companion sat by and wondered at her silence. She had been so gay a
little before, while the men were still with them, and now her lips
were tightly closed, and there came an angry frown upon her brow. That
changed into a look of triumph and disdain, which faded in its turn
into one almost soft and pitiful; and that in time gave place to one
of sadness, and she sighed, and her features fell into the desponding
look of one who bids adieu to hope. She moved impatiently, as if to
shake off brooding thoughts which were settling down to oppress and
stifle her--as some stricken animal might struggle to beat back the
greedy kites swooping down to tear their prey, ere death had prepared
the feast. She roused herself with an effort, and turned to speak.

"You have had a good time, Margaret, have you not?"

"Perhaps I might say the same to you, Rose. You were very long of
returning from your stroll. But I will not deny that I am glad we
missed the boat."

"You might tell a blind man that, my dear. The rest of us can see it.
I admire your taste. He is a good fellow, I am sure, and handsome; and
devoted too, if signs tell anything."

"We have known each other all our lives--at least, since I was quite a
little girl. It must be five years that we have known one another
now."

"A long time."

"But you will promise me, Rose dear, not to say anything to anybody
when we get back? Nobody knows that he came here. Still, Uncle Joseph
is here too--my guardian as well as my uncle, you know--and you are
here, another girl to keep me in countenance, so there is nothing Mrs
Grundy can disapprove. If he and you had not joined us, I should not
have missed the steamer, you may be sure; or if I had--but that is no
matter.

                          *   *   *   *   *

"Mamma is very fond of him, you must know--or she used to be. But she
is afraid of our becoming engaged, and she has been bothering, ever
since we came to Clam Beach.... Uncle Joseph is safe, I am sure,
though he will not acknowledge that he approves. I know he will not
cause trouble. So it all rests with you, dear. Promise me. You will
not make mischief? A careless word might do it, you see. But you will
forget his being here? It is Jake's boat, you know, we are to go home
in tomorrow morning.... He is a fisherman, you know, who fortunately
was here when the storm overtook us."

"I know, dear. We won't spoil sport, I promise you; and we will help
you all we can--all _I_ can, I ought to say. What right have I to
promise for your uncle? I am talking nonsense. What help can I--I
declare my mind is astray--I must be growing sleepy. Let us see how we
are to dispose ourselves for the night. They are to call us at
daylight, you know, and it must be late."

Margaret had shot an intelligent glance at Rose when that "we" slipped
out unawares. Her lips parted in a smile at the endeavour to correct
it. She understood it all. Rose changed colour, though she said
nothing more; but both were unwontedly affectionate when they said
good night, and composed themselves to sleep.

The early morning saw the party afloat again on the bay, under all the
sail their boat would carry, making straight for Lippenstock, and in
the best of spirits. Even Peter Wilkie was gay; there was breakfast in
prospect, and a bath, at Lippenstock. As for the others, the present
was enough, and they did not waste thought upon the future: cutting
smoothly through the glassy tide which babbled at their prow, fanned
by cool airs, and seated where it was best to be, exchanging short
sentences in undertones, with long and pleasant gaps of silence in
between. If any brow betrayed a line of discontent, it was Blount's.
Things had not ended altogether as he had hoped or wished. When he had
hired Jake and his boat, he had thought that perhaps he should meet
Margaret wandering by herself, that he might persuade her to an
elopement, and sail away; and this was all which had come of it. They
were sailing, indeed, but the "away" was only for Margaret, while he,
"poor devil," as he told himself with deep compassion, must stay
behind at Lippenstock. However, there would be other chances, more
excursions and merrymakings at which he might surreptitiously assist,
and some time win his point. She was worth it, as he told himself,
lying gazing up in her face, while her eyes roved idly across the
dancing water; and even if it should come to her mother's ears that he
had been on the island that night, the news would aid his hopes,
rather than hinder. It would incite her to worry the girl worse than
ever, and Margaret was not of the kind to be worried for long. There
was the look in her nostril of one who could take the bit in her teeth
and bolt, if fretted too far by injudicious reining.

Rose and Joseph sat behind the other two, Rose calmly, even
impassively perhaps, accepting the assiduous little cares of which it
seemed as if Joseph could not lavish enough. At last he took her hand,
lying nerveless on her lap, and began to examine it.

"Take off your glove, dearest," he whispered; "I want to measure your
finger. How can I feel secure of this treasure I so little deserve,
till I have fettered it with a link? When I see my ring upon your
hand, I shall feel better assured that we are indeed engaged."

There came a line of faint contraction between her eyebrows, which was
scarcely a frown. It may have been mere impatience, or perhaps it was
dread or remorse.

"Not now," she said abruptly, withdrawing her hand and looking away to
the harbour, which was wearing near. "My glove is tight; my hands feel
hot and swollen this morning. Another time," and drew a quick short
breath which seemed half a sob. Then turning round to him, as though
she feared he might feel vexed, she added, with a doubtful smile,
"There's time enough, you know. We shall be at the wharf before I
could draw it on again;" and then, hurried and constrained, plunged
into voluble expression of such commonplaces as occurred to her.

Joseph felt chilled, though he told himself there was no ground for
feeling so. It seemed as if the first thin cloud had come between him
and the sun, the sun so lately risen, in whose beams he had been
warming his poor starved heart. He had little to answer to the
commonplaces; they ran themselves out ere long, and both were lapsing
into silence when they reached the shore.

The party of four which drove from Lippenstock was not a very
talkative one; in fact, if the truth were told, all were more or less
sleepy. The hour was still on the early side of noon; but when the day
begins between three o'clock and four, for persons whose waking hour
is seven--when those persons, instead of breaking their fast when they
get up, spend hours in the keen morning air and on the water before
breakfast, a heaviness supervenes, and the system of the individual
makes it late in the day, however early be the time which the clock
may indicate. Wilkie, as was not unnatural, began to feel the
expedition something of a bore. He had not been admired so much by the
ladies, or consulted by the men, as to compensate for irregular meals
or hours, and indifferent repose on the open shore. Margaret had
parted from Walter, and for her the pleasure was over--something to
remember and think about, but all of the past. Rose was pensive and
very still, though it did not appear from her behaviour of what nature
were her thoughts. Joseph was yet under the influence of that chilling
sensation which had fallen on him in the boat--a creeping melancholy
which stole on him in spite of every consideration which good sense
could suggest, the reaction perhaps from his transports of the night
before. He found himself sinking into despondent broodings, from which
every now and then he would awaken with a start, and tip up his horses
with an unnecessary flick of the whip. How much these dumb servants
have to bear from the wayward moods of their masters, and how many an
unmerited cut descends upon their patient sides!

Rose spent the remainder of the morning in her room, sitting listless
and despondent where she had sunk on entering it. There was no eye
present before whom she must hang out the veils and disguises of
conventional life. Her head hung forward on her breast, her hands lay
folded on her lap. The light had faded from her eyes, her features
were drawn and set, and she looked as unlike a promised bride, a woman
who, of her own free will, has accepted an offer of marriage, as it
was possible to imagine.

The man was all she could desire, she told herself. The disparity in
their years did not once present itself to her mind. She felt very
friendly to him, liked him, respected him; but she could not love.
"Could she ever love any one?"--that was the miserable thought which
rose before her mind; and she was no inexperienced maid whose heart
still sleeps, to fool herself into the belief that such liking as hers
was the mysterious visitant she had read about in books, and awaited
to descend and stir the waters of her being. It was duty, not love,
which she was taking to her breast. She knew it, and looked forward to
her life in the greyness of the coming years with an overflowing sense
of pity. But she did not falter or think of drawing back. No; she
would go on with it, and do her duty, and no one should ever know. But
it was pitiful, all the same; though it must be--for she would have it
so. Here in her solitary chamber there needed no disguise; and she
looked hopelessly around her, wondering if there could be any escape,
or if this weary part she was undertaking to play would last for long.
It might last for fifty years, she thought, looking down at her hands.
How shapely and strong they looked--so firm, and with so full a tide
of vigorous life tingling in every pulse! And the ring--she remembered
the morning's episode in the boat. It was not there yet; the jeweller
had not begun to make it. How it would scorch, that little hoop of
gold and brilliants, and confine and shackle her! There was respite
for the present, but it would not be for long--and she scarcely
desired that it should be.

The gong sounded sooner than she could have believed. She must go down
and face the world again, and play her part; but there was consolation
even in this. It showed how quickly time could wear away. The years,
be they ever so grey, would run their course with the same even and
imperceptible current, and there would be an end at last. She rose to
resume the armour of conventional life. She bathed her temples,
smoothed her hair before the glass, and arrayed herself as usual;
and when the next gong sounded, she was once more her ordinary
self--bright, proud, and confident, without a sign of care, or
seemingly a wish left unfulfilled.

The Deanes had heard of her return, and were awaiting her in the
drawing-room to go down to dinner. Lettice and the rest bantered her
on her escapade.

"Staying out o' nights, Miss Rose," the Senator cried, jocosely. "And
without a latch-key! What next?"

The next, for her, was to meet Gilbert Roe's eyes looking straight
into her own. It was like the sudden onslaught of an ambushed foe, on
a band marching in careless order. They form square if they can, and
stand to their arms. It was well for her she had so recently looked to
her armour. The shock to her nerves was severe, but her spirit rose in
defiance. She recovered, without betraying herself before the crowded
room, and was more than usually gay all through dinner. It was a
relief, however, when the repast was ended, and she could saunter with
Lettice along the sands away from curious eyes, and feel at ease.

"What a shock it must have been to you, Rose! I meant to have given
you warning, but you came down so late, and the old folks were so
hungry and impatient, that there was no chance.... However, you bore
up splendidly--and now, it is over."

"Yes, I am glad it is over; and glad I did not know beforehand."

"If he is a gentleman, he will go first thing to-morrow morning."

"It is no matter whether he goes or stays."

"To think of his assurance! He came to me in the parlour, last night
when I was dancing, to ask if you were here."

"Yes?" and there was a tone of softening in Rose's voice as she said
it.

"But you may be sure I gave him no satisfaction."

Rose sighed a little, but not audibly.

"This morning, again, when we were walking to church, what does he do,
do you think, but join me?--which, after the setting down I had given
him last night, was really more than a girl could be expected to
stand."

Rose looked interested now and softened. "And? Well?" she said.

"Well, I just treated him as he deserved; would have nothing to do
with him; got round to the other side of my escort, and ignored him
altogether."

Rose's sigh was audible this time.

"But you need not pity him, Rose, dear; or not much, at any rate. He
is not inconsolable; and, what is better, he has a consoler. And such
a one! You could not imagine an odder belle for the dashing Bertie Roe
we can remember. He is no longer hypercritical as to good looks, I can
tell you."

"Who is it?"

"Whom would you suppose? You know the washed-out little Yankee
schoolma'am with the blue goggles? That's her!"

"You must be mistaken."

"So I was sure myself, at first. But no. I came home from church in
the omnibus, and an old thing sat opposite me, who takes a most
motherly interest in the pair--a friend of the schoolma'am. You should
have heard her talk about them! It was just too altogether rich and
comical. She says the sweet young things have been faithfully attached
for the last ten years. To think of Bertie's constancy, you know! And
they are going to be married. And in the meantime they spend their
time gathering shells and grubbing in the sand together, for she
mentioned their having little spades."

"They are most welcome," cried Rose, impatiently. "Do not let us
bother about them any more." There was an angry colour in her cheek,
and fire in her eye, and the sound of her voice grated harshly.

Lettice began to wonder if her story had been judicious, or
well-timed. She was Rose's stanch friend and partisan, willing to do
or think whatever Rose might like best. It was in espousing Rose's
side that she felt hostile to Gilbert; but she began to doubt, now, if
what she had been telling appeared to Rose as droll as to herself. And
yet every one said that Rose had such a sense of humour!

There was silence between the friends. They no longer sauntered, but
stepped out quickly, Rose hurrying the pace with strides of varying
length, till Lettice had difficulty in keeping up with her. Each fibre
of her frame was strung into fierce activity. She even snatched the
fan, hanging idly from her waist, as if its dangling were a
provocation. She opened and closed it rudely once or twice, till some
of the slender ribs gave way and got entangled; then, with an
impatient gesture, caught it by both ends and broke the thing across,
and flung it from her. And then she stopped, with the empty chain
between her fingers, and turned to her companion with a short, dry
laugh.

"You will say I am in one of my tempers, Lettie, dear. You are good to
bear with me.... You are out of breath, too. Come, let's walk slower.
I have something to tell you."

"Something nice, Rose? What is it, dearest?"

"Pray, not that tender sympathetic tone, Lettice, 'an you love me,' as
they say in the theatre, or you will drive me wild. What is there to
condole about?... Nothing that I can see. If people who are strangers
to me--whom I have said a hundred times I will have none of--want to
marry, what is it to me?"

"Nothing, dear, nothing," Lettice answered soothingly. "Nothing
whatever to you."

"It is less than nothing; for I am going to be married myself--at
least I am engaged. Wish me joy, dear. You are the first to be told."

"You are? I knew you would be, from the first. You liked him the first
day you saw him. Indeed I wish you happiness. I am quite sure you will
be happy, dear." And they embraced; or Lettice did, at least. Rose
submitted rather than joined in the caress, and there was a look of
deep self-pity in her face, as if she doubted about the happiness
which her friend foretold. Her eyes moistened, and then, with a start
which was half a sob, she recovered herself, and put her arm through
her friend's, and turned homewards.

"And how did it happen, dear? Tell me all about it."

"The usual way, dear; though people do say these things are never done
twice alike. You have some experience, yourself, about it, I fancy;
though you are so good to the poor fellows, that you never betray
them, or divulge their disappointment."

"It is bad enough for them to be refused, without being laughed at
into the bargain.... But tell me about the accepting, at least. I have
no experience of that. Is it not hard to say yes, and not feel the
least bit ashamed of one's self?"

"One does not remember one's own part in the tragedy so well. One
grows bewildered at such a time. I am not sure that one knows exactly
what one says or does. But the gentleman seems to understand. That is
the main point."

"And what did _he_ say then?... I declare, Rose, you are telling me
nothing!"

"He said scarcely anything. I did not think a man could say so little,
to mean so much. It was the way he did it--the way he was so
still--the sound of his voice--his touch. He meant it all, Lettie, so
deeply. It was in that he was so strong. One seemed to feel it in the
air about him. It was overwhelming. And oh, dear, I feel so small and
worthless beside the earnestness of that man's love! I feel humbled, I
am so little worthy of love like his."

"The proof that you are worthy, is his having given it to you.... I
declare!" The last exclamation had escaped her involuntarily. Her
roving eyes had alighted on the figures of Gilbert Roe and Maida
Springer together upon the sands at a distance.

Rose lifted her eyes from the ground, which they had sought while she
was making her confidences, and turned them in the direction to which
Lettice was looking. She saw, and the view communicated a shock, which
thrilled through all her frame. Again her colour rose, and her teeth
were set, and she grasped the arm of her friend. The pathetic drooping
of her eyelids had vanished, and the lights beneath them flashed like
living coals. She said nothing, but she quickened her steps--they had
turned, some time before, when her mood had changed from fiery to
pathetic--and now they were back within the shadow of the hotel,
extending itself to the eastward and the south as day declined.

Upon the gallery, along beyond the entrance, she saw Joseph Naylor,
with his feet on the balusters and his chair tilted back, a newspaper
before him and a cigar between his teeth, enjoying the tranquil
afternoon. "I shall go in now, Lettice, dear; but do not let me drag
you indoors so early. There is something I wanted to mention to Mr
Naylor, and there he is, above and disengaged."

Lettice strolled away and soon found other company. Rose hurried
forward alone, her eyes still flashing and her cheek aflame. There was
no one on the gallery but Naylor, no one on the ground below looking
up or taking heed; the moment was as private as though they had been
again on Fessenden's Island.

"I fear I vexed you this morning in the boat," she said, coming upon
him unexpectedly where he sat.

He looked up from his paper, let it fall, and sprang to his feet,
throwing his cigar away. "Impossible, my dearest, even if you were to
try. You have made me the very happiest man alive."

"But I was cross, though I did not mean it, and refused to take off my
glove. It is off now. There!" and she held out her hand. "I have been
looking for an opportunity to make it up. I was sleepy and out of
sorts, I think."

"No wonder, with no bed to sleep in last night. But do not dream of
apologising. You shall be cross with me whenever it so shall please
you, and not a word to be said in amends when you are minded to
relent."

"You will spoil me; it is not safe to be too worshipful with women.
There is the finger you were good enough to want to measure."




                            CHAPTER XXVI.

                             THE MOTHERS.


Joseph was a happy man that evening. He was going to testify for the
first time the pride and glory within him, by presenting a _cadeau_ to
his promised bride. How should he contrive that it might be rich and
rare enough to express his worship, and be worthy of the object? Could
he have fetched down a star--one of those which last night had beamed
so kindly on their espousal--that might perhaps have been enough; but
less than a star out of heaven seemed all inadequate. The writing-room
of the hotel was too open and profane a place for him to sit in, while
he indited his order to Tiffany the jeweller, for such a purpose. He
made them carry store of stationery to his room. And then about the
post. Did no mail go out to-night? The clerk reminded him rebukingly
that it was Sunday. They never sent to the Junction on Sunday nights,
and no one in serious-minded New England would wish them to do it.
"Ten dollars for a messenger to go at once," was Joseph's sole reply,
as he followed the stationery to his room, to be overtaken before he
had gone many steps by the porter and the bell-boy, both eager to
break the Sabbath at the price he had named.

Senator Deane, lounging by the clerk's desk, turned to Mr Sefton with
a remarkably knowing look. "Canada Pacific. You bet! Something up.
Telegraph clerk away for the day. Something important."

Sapphires, diamonds, and precious stones danced before the mind's eye
of Joseph Naylor. How pale and small and poor they seemed to him! How
could enough of them to testify his love, be collected on so trivial
an object as a finger-ring? "Spare no expense," he wrote, offering an
unusual price, and expressing his willingness to double it if needful.
"Only let it be the best." The ring from Cleopatra's finger would have
been too poor. And so the order was sent, and Tiffany of New York,
having assured himself of the writer's sufficiency, sent a clerk with
designs to wait on so lavish-minded a client.

The clerk arrived in due time, was closeted in long consultation, and
on leaving could not but mention to the clerk of the house the
princely order he had taken. The house-clerk listened with pride. It
was a credit to Clam Beach; and in fancy he saw scores of fashionable
damsels arriving with heaps of luggage, all hoping to be objects of a
like munificence. He mentioned the circumstance, in confidence, to
each male guest who came to him for cigar-lights; the males, as was to
be expected, repeated it to the females, and soon there was not a soul
in the house who had not heard the news. It was the common talk with
every one but Joseph. He, good man, never doubted the closeness of his
secret. He had not breathed a word, but to his sister-in-law, and she
would not circulate the report. She had been behaving to him like an
injured woman ever since his telling her; but she had not lost hope,
he suspected, promising herself, on the contrary, that it would end in
nothing; and therefore would not help to assure it by spreading the
news.

Those were happy days for Joseph. What plunging in the early bracing
surf! What morning walks upon the sands! What shady lounges in the
afternoon! And then the cheerful evenings in the parlours, or the
quiet of the galleries on starlit nights! He was with her continually,
drinking in sweet influence from her presence, and striving to attune
himself to her changeful moods.

Yes; her moods were certainly becoming very changeful--liable to
abrupt transitions from a stillness which seemed almost despondent,
and so different from anything he had seen in her before their
engagement, to a gaiety which at times grew feverish and even forced.
She had grown restless, too, of late, unable or unwilling to remain
long in one place, or engaged in one pursuit. Suddenly, in the hottest
of the afternoon, she would start up and rouse her drowsy intimates to
play lawn-tennis; and ere the game was half played out, she would
declare herself sick of it, and beg some bystander to take her place.

Joseph looked on in tender sympathy. It was what was to be expected,
he told himself, and would soon wear off. The free young life was
chafing at first beneath the yoke she had herself assumed--the filly,
unbroke to harness, was galled by the collar; but soon she would
settle down to steady running. He must humour her for the present. And
what delight there was in doing it! And she was always kind to him,
and showed that she appreciated his thoughtfulness and forbearance by
many a grateful look and little speech. He only wished that he had
more to bear and to do for her sake; he was so richly rewarded when
the humour changed, and her mood became remorseful. Then, as if she
could not sufficiently express herself to him, she would relieve her
feelings by caresses and endearments to his nieces. She was fast
friends with them now, especially with Margaret, even to the length of
exciting a little pique in Lettice Deane.

And Margaret had need of sympathy and backing, and all the friendship
she could secure. Her mother "was going on just dreadful," as she
expressed it with more force than elegance to her sister Lucy, who,
however, observed a judicious neutrality, agreeing so far with the
maternal desire to settle Margaret in Toronto, as being a much jollier
place for herself to live in than Jones's Landing.

Mrs Naylor's perturbation of spirit on receiving her brother's
intelligence lasted two full days, during which there seemed nothing
else worth thinking about. The world itself seemed coming to an end,
and what did anything matter? After that, it began to occur to her
that there were other interests in life--her own, for instance. If
Joseph was going to bring home a wife to Jones's Landing, the place
would be insupportable. She must remove to Ottawa or Toronto; and that
she might do her duty there in bringing out Lucy properly--so she
phrased it to herself in summoning her moral forces to her
assistance--it was indispensable that Margaret should have an
established position. With that, it began to strike her that Wilkie no
longer hovered near them, and that Ann Petty was become the recipient
of the attentions which last week had been bestowed on Margaret. His
mother, even, it almost seemed, had begun to hold aloof; and yet the
supposition was too preposterous. That a half-bred old thing like
that, should think to take up and lay down at pleasure, her--Mrs
Naylor of Jones's Landing! What were things coming to? The creature
must have heard of Joseph's fatuous engagement--the mercenary, horrid,
vulgar old woman! And she was vulgar. Mrs Naylor saw it clearly enough
now, though last week she had looked quite kindly on her social
solecisms as being so racy and original. But at least she was not so
crushed and humbled yet that "the Wilkie woman" might trample on her
with impunity. The creature should have a lesson, if Mrs Naylor could
give her one, and be taught her place. To think that a Naylor--a
daughter of hers--should be trifled with and all but compromised by
a--a what was she to call him?--a clerk in a public office--something
not much better than a schoolmaster--merely because she, the mother,
had kindly taken some notice of him! That nice quiet young Petty must
be brought on, if only to show the futility of such an idea.
Encouragement was all he wanted, and Margaret should give him that, or
she would know why. She did not blame the girl now for being
impervious to the other--indeed, his mother's impertinence had made
her glad of it--but she would insist on her being civil to Petty.
There must be no more nonsense. As for the old woman, she must have it
out with her, and let her know her place.

An opportunity arose in the heat of the afternoon, when some
irrepressibles of the younger set played lawn-tennis, and such of the
elders as were not asleep looked on. The shade at that hour was
confined to a limited space, and thither the lady spectators carried
their camp-stools, and pressed one another more closely than the state
of the weather made quite agreeable. Mrs Wilkie was the last to place
herself, and it happened that she took ground at Mrs Naylor's side,
who had planned her place nicely, to be in shadow, and yet be the last
of her row, so as to be free at least on one side.

"Mrs Wilkie?" she said, turning in surprise and displeasure, which she
made no attempt to conceal. "Would you not be more comfortable farther
back? It is less crowded, and the shadow is broader."

"I'll do," Mrs Wilkie answered determinedly, unfurling an umbrella,
which interfered considerably with Mrs Naylor's view. "If people would
sit closer, there would be room enough. I see no reason for leading
people to sit behind, and those of no poseetion at all taking room for
two."

"But your umbrella intercepts any little air there is."

"I need it to keep off the sun."

"I declare I shall suffocate! Pray take it down."

"I won't! Why should I? Sit behind there; or go round to the front of
the house. You'll get it all to yourself."

"Really--Mrs Wilkie--but what else can one expect?" and she sighed
with contemptuous resignation.

Mrs Wilkie bridled, with a little snort, moved her stool an inch or
two nearer, and held the umbrella in provoking proximity to Mrs
Naylor's eye.

"These promiscuous gatherings are dreadful," moaned Mrs Naylor. "This
is the reward one may expect for not taking care whom we allow to
slide into our intimacy." Then, in a very superior tone, she added, "I
must beg of you to put down that umbrella."

"You may beg till you're tired, ma'am; my umbrelly is going to stay as
it is. To hear some people, out of little, country, back-door
settlements! Ye would not think that it was a shanty among the stumps,
they lived in at home. The pint of an umbrelly needn't trouble them so
much. Does she think people are to be put about by sich as she? Her
and her daughter setting up to trifle with gentlemen of intelleck and
poseetion, forsooth! Yes, ma'am, ye may look! and be as mad as ye
like. It's shame ye should be thinking of yourself and your girls--two
sassy, underhand, designing brats!"

"My good woman, what can you possibly know about me and my daughters?
Were you ever in your life under the same roof with gentlefolks,
before you came to Clam Beach?"

Mrs Wilkie grew hot with indignation to hear herself addressed as a
"good woman." It is a mystery to the male mind why this should be so,
but it is undeniable that when one lady is minded to put the last
indignity upon another, she speaks of her as a "woman." The only
analogous trait--and we commend it to those with a turn for natural
history--appears in coloured circles, where, as the most crushing
retort in a scolding-match, the disputants are wont to apostrophise
each other as "you black nigger." But this is digression.

Mrs Wilkie grew hot and indignant at being called a woman. It confused
and silenced her. The thread of her ideas was broken, and she was not
equal to a prompt rejoinder. But she was not going to give in on that
account--being, indeed, more angry than before. It was to avenge a
slight to her son that she had started on the war-path, and now the
insult to herself added fuel to her wrath. She pressed her lips
tightly together, and moved closer to Mrs Naylor, as the readiest way
of being provoking.

"Where are you crushing to?" cried the other. "Would you force me into
Mrs Petty's lap?" and then, after a pause, "unmannerly woman!" This
time the word failed of its effect. "Woman" used as a missile is no
better than a bomb-shell or a torpedo. It goes off but once. It passed
unheeded, and Mrs Wilkie rejoined--

"You're great upon the manners to-day. Ye'll be making manners to Mrs
Petty, as ye made them to me wance, to try if ye can inveigle her son
into the clutches of your little-worth daughter?"

"What do you mean?" cried the other, angrily.

"Just what I say. But ye may save yourself the trouble. The girl's
well able to fish on her own account. She has a beau of her own on the
sly. What do ye think of that? I thought I'd make ye wince, for all
your airs and pretensions! She had a young man waiting for her on the
island. And never said a word to ye about it, I'm thinking? And then,
to have the assurance to take Mr Wilkie away stravaiging with her,
like a toy dog, before the eyes of all the company! Ye may well start
and look affronted."

Mrs Naylor did start, but the assault was so outrageous that she could
not but show fight.

"Your son was disappointed, I presume, that he could not have Miss
Naylor's undivided attention; and so, when he comes home, he
circulates idle tattles to her disadvantage. Is that conduct becoming
a gentleman? I should say it was an act of the kind of person whom
gentlemen call a cad."

Peter Wilkie, who had heard his mother's voice wax louder, looked
round to where they sat. The angry looks of both ladies told him all.
He hastened towards them, and if anything more had been needed to
incriminate his poor old mother, her guilty and frightened looks at
his approach would have sufficed. She pressed her hand to her side and
rolled her eyes.

"Your palpitations, mother?" he said. "You have been exerting yourself
in the heat. Come up-stairs to your room and lie down." He gave her
his arm, and led her away looking like a bold child detected in a
misdemeanour. She did not appear again in public till the cool of the
evening, when she presented a penitent and crestfallen aspect, very
different from her warlike demeanour on the tennis-ground.

Mrs Naylor's spirit sank almost as rapidly as her foe's. Now that the
stir of battle was at an end, she could sit and make up her list of
killed and wounded. Whether the enemy had taken flight or been
withdrawn from the contest, this was a grievous blow which she had
dealt at parting. She had been pluming herself on her skilful
management of Margaret's affairs; and it now appeared that she had
managed nothing, and the objectionable attachment was like to be too
much for her. But the girl should not have her way, if she could help
it. She would keep a sharper eye on her than ever. It was that
pernicious young Blount's going away which had thrown her off her
guard. But her eyes were opened now, and she would watch; and
meanwhile she would rate Margaret soundly, and bring her to a sense of
the turpitude of her behaviour.

She did so, and Margaret had to expiate in much weariness of spirit
her happy little outbreak on Fessenden's Island.




                            CHAPTER XXVII.

                        AN OBDURATE DAUGHTER.


Margaret had a bad quarter of an hour that afternoon, when the
lawn-tennis was over. She felt no misgiving as she went up-stairs. The
danger had been got over, she thought, on Sunday morning, when her
mother started off in full career upon the other scent. What a happy
circumstance was Uncle Joseph's engagement! She positively loved Rosa
now for having accepted him. And Rose herself was so dear a girl, the
very nicest aunt whom Joseph could have found her; binding him closer
to them, if that were possible, instead of estranging him as another
might have done. It was therefore an altogether unexpected shock when
her mother, following her into her room, closed and fastened the door,
and in a voice which shook with anger, demanded of her what she meant.

"Mean, mother dear? I do not understand you."

"You know perfectly what I mean, you double, deceitful girl!"

Margaret understood now. The tempest, delayed for a while, was upon
her. She hung her head, and bent like a willow before the blast.

"You may well cower," her mother cried, pacing up and down. Her spirit
boiled, to think that she had been so duped--she, the wise one, the
manager--and she could neither sit nor stand still, in her vehement
indignation.

"That I should be mother of a girl whose name can be mentioned
as I have heard you spoken of this day! Shameless, deceitful,
unwomanly--oh!" Words failed her as she stood with clenched hands and
eyes of wrath, which might have turned the other to stone, had she
dared look up and meet them.

"Say that it is not true! Tell me that woman has lied!--that there was
no man with you on the island but your uncle and her detestable son!

"You do not answer me? Speak! Let me hear that there is not a word of
truth in her horrid insinuations. I will even say that I am not sorry
you would have none of such a woman's son;" and here her voice veered
round into the minor key. "I shall not press you to think of _him_.
His mother is no better than a common scold. Do you hear me, Margaret?

"You will not speak? Is it that you cannot deny the scandalous things
she has been saying?--that you could plan a surreptitious meeting,
upon a lonely island, with a man?

"What will people say? It could have been but a chance that your uncle
was there to save appearances. Have you no thought for your character?
Is every scurrilous beldame to bandy your name about?--and have the
right to do it? Have you no womanly pride? and will you drag your
innocent young sister in the mire with you?--and your too trusting
mother? What have we done that you should expose us to public scorn?

"Ah me! that I should have lived for this! How could you do it? To
dig your mother's grave before her eyes! Say that you did not mean
it!--that it was thoughtlessness!--that you listened to the voice of a
tempter!--that you will not do it again! He is a serpent, Margaret.

"You do not answer me? Ah! my poor heart! How it throbs!" and she
pressed her side, and sank into a chair. "You will kill me, Margaret,
with shame and grief. A mother cannot survive such undutifulness. My
blood will cry at you from the ground! What peace can you ever hope to
know, when you have killed your mother?" and here her handkerchief
came into use. She covered her face and sobbed.

Margaret was greatly moved. Her eyes were full. She durst not speak,
even if she would; she must have broken down had she attempted it. She
was distressed to see her mother shedding tears. To be threatened
with her early death was terrible. She would do anything to calm
her--anything else, at least, whatever it might cost herself. But she
had given her promise to Walter--poor Walter! whom her mother used to
be so fond of. How could she take it again? It was no longer hers. She
could only stand in despair and shame, and see her mother weep herself
back into composure.

Mrs Naylor's composure returned all the sooner, that nothing seemed
likely to come of her having yielded to her feelings. She pulled the
handkerchief from her reddened eyes, and with a concluding sob which
was partly a sniff of impatience, put it back in her pocket.

"I declare, Margaret," she cried, "you are harder than flint! One
might as well cry at a slate roof as you. It just runs off without
softening you in the least. You are obdurate. You have no feeling, and
no heart. The momentary indulgence of a headstrong whim is all you
think of. Consequences to your family, or even yourself, you never
dream of considering. But you shall not ruin yourself, however much
you may desire it, even if I have to lock you up. You will please to
understand that you are to remain by me from this time on, and not to
leave me without permission. You have made me ill enough with your
undutifulness to enable me to tell people quite honestly that I am
poorly, and need your care. Now, understand! If you leave my side
without my sending you, I shall follow and bring you back before the
assembled company; and I fancy, although you are impervious to higher
considerations, you will not wish to be the laughing-stock of the
hotel. If you leave me, I shall come and fetch you back, and there
will be a scene, I promise you.

"Now do not stand there biting your lips in dumb rebellion; I am not
done yet. I do not insist on your encouraging Mr Wilkie; in fact,
after the setting down I have given his mother, I do not suppose he
will venture to intrude on us. But mind what you are about with young
Mr Petty. I will not have him repulsed or trifled with. It was pitiful
to see how forlornly he crept about the steamboat on our return from
the island, after your outrageous behaviour in leaving him all alone.
If he should be willing to overlook the slight, I insist on your
behaving properly to him for the future. With his talents and his
interest, he will be Attorney-General one day; so mind what you are
about."

Margaret felt too well sat upon to venture a reply. She had dared say
nothing while her mother held forth at large, and now that she had
talked herself out of breath, she feared to tempt her to break out
anew; but like others who have been silenced without being convinced,
she only wanted time and opportunity to return to her old paths.
Though sat upon, she was neither broken nor crushed. It is a state of
things which in the present day is not unfrequent. Rulers having grown
to take things easily, allow the subject to have his head, until he
goes too far. Then they put on authority with a spurt, find it irksome
to themselves, and take it off again too soon. It is only systematic
repression which need hope to prevail, and the arm which applies that,
must never grow weary or relax.

Margaret sat disconsolately at her mother's elbow that evening, and
felt like a martyr, while her fancies flew away in pursuit of Walter
Blount. "Poor fellow! he was thinking of her, no doubt--walking the
streets of Lippenstock, and feeling so lonely. How dreadful this
separation must be to him! But she would be true. She could never love
another. She would not try. She would never marry any one else,
however they might try to force her. No; she would pine--she was sure
she would--grow pale and thin; and nobody would mind her after that.
By-and-by she would grow old, and have poor health; and she would
still be single, with nothing to think about but her own faithfulness,
and how happy she might have been if her misguided friends would have
allowed it. And then her mother would be sorry, when it was too late;
but she would forgive her, and tend her declining years to the last.
What a beautiful touching martyr life it would all make! but so
terribly dull." She pictured to herself a desolate hearth, with not a
creature to keep her company but a stupid cat upon a footstool
blinking at the fire, and herself in spectacles and a cap, knitting or
making clothes for the poor, beneficent to everybody, but sadly moped
herself--and all for Walter! She grew consoled in thinking about it.
It was as good as a play--at least a dull one. The others were
beginning to dance, now; but she would not dance, though her mother
had given her leave when Walter Petty came to ask her. She had a
headache, she said; and now she knew she must refuse every one else
that evening. What of that? It was making a sort of commencement of
the life she saw in store for her in the future. Poor girl!

A mood so doleful does not last, however, when we are young and
healthy. It grew tantalising to Margaret to see the others enjoying
themselves, and made her feel neglected; and she welcomed Rosa when
Joseph brought her to sit beside his family, and accustom Mrs Naylor
to the prospect of a sister-in-law. The jeweller's clerk having
divulged that he had ordered a magnificent ring for a lady, it was
useless to affect reserve. He accepted the people's congratulations
calmly, as his due; and his sister-in-law, making a virtue of
necessity, endeavoured to do so likewise. Mrs Deane was in the little
knot by Mrs Naylor's sofa--good-natured people who did not believe in
her ailments, but had no objection to humouring her, and found the
fixed centre of an invalid's couch convenient in that fortuitous
concourse of atoms. Mrs Naylor engrossed herself with Mrs Deane,
Rose's chaperon, that her feeling towards Rose herself might be less
apparent. It was oppressive to go on talking pleasantly to one whom
she would have liked to address in quite other terms, had it been
permissible. Wherefore Rose fell out of the conversation and turned to
Margaret, with whom she had more in common.

"How are you here, Margaret? You have neither sung, played, nor
danced. What is the matter?"

"Mamma is poorly. She needs some one by to fetch her smelling-bottle
and keep her company when other people go away." She said it with much
sobriety and demureness of manner, but the act of saying appeared to
dissolve the little which remained of her self-restraint. She bent
forward and took Rose's hand, adding in an undertone, "She knows. She
has been told about the island. She is coming between us. Wants to
break off everything. But she can't! I will not give him up. I will
have nothing to say to any one else. Oh Rose! what am I to do? I
cannot live if I do not see him sometimes. What shall I do?"

Rose's eyes were roving far away, as were her thoughts; she was
looking over Margaret's head, as Margaret leant forward and whispered.
By a distant doorway stood a group of men, and her eyes turned
dreamily and of themselves in that direction. The group parted to let
two ladies enter, an elder and a younger one. The latter addressed a
gentleman in passing, and carried him away between herself and her
friend from his fellow-loungers. Rose coloured and started, then,
meeting Margaret's look of surprise, she controlled herself--

"Forgive me, Margaret. My thoughts were wool-gathering; I scarcely
caught your words."

Margaret repeated her words without surprise. She had observed how
absent-minded Rose had grown, her varying moods, her starts and
flushings, and sudden growings pale; but then she was engaged to Uncle
Joseph, and doubtless these were symptoms of the delightful malady she
laboured under herself, though she hoped that she concealed her own
little tumults of the spirit more successfully.

Rose was all attention and eager interest now--quite vehemently
interested, it really seemed.

"Your happiness for life is at stake, Margaret. I will not stand by
and see you robbed of the man of your choice. And he is so nice!
Joseph thinks all the world of him, I know. I see Joseph coming this
way. We must devise something for you. My own idea is that you should
get married at once. It will be easier to reconcile your mother
afterwards. But here he is."

Joseph sat down beside his affianced, and she was so eager to speak to
him that he was delighted. He too had observed her fits of absence,
and had attributed them to the same cause as Margaret; but he wondered
that they did not begin to subside as the idea of her engagement grew
familiar. She was eager enough now. How pleasant it was! And it was in
Margaret she was interesting herself, which was "nice" in her.

Mrs Naylor observed the eagerness, and was disgusted. It was
positively indelicate, she thought, for a girl not yet married to make
such open advances before a roomful of people. "Poor Joseph! What a
fool he was! And how he would suffer for it by-and-by! A bold, forward
girl!"

Joseph and Rose went on talking, regardless of that same Susan and
anything she might think. Joseph was averse to interfering; but Rose
talked him over, which, as this was the first time she had asked him
to do her a favour, was not difficult. And then, his views on many
subjects were different now from what they had been not long before.
True love had grown more precious in his eyes, and poor Susan's wisdom
perhaps less so, since she had expressed her disapproval of his
matrimonial scheme.

"Well, Margaret," he said, sitting down between her and Rose, with a
hand laid upon the hands of each, "we have made up our minds to help
you if we can; but I think you should try and get away quietly, and
avoid fuss. I will try and smooth matters with your mother after you
are gone. So try and manage it quietly."




                           CHAPTER XXVIII.

                          THEY HAVE IT OUT.


The next three or four days produced nothing remarkable. Margaret
remained in close attendance on her mother, who did her best to make
her feel like a naughty child. Her only solace was Rose's sympathy;
but notwithstanding it, she felt at times most dreadfully wicked, and
always depressed and contrite. Only the thought of Walter's loneliness
at Lippenstock kept her true; and she did contrive to send him little
notes, and to receive through Rosa notes in return, notwithstanding
the sharp eye which her mother kept upon her movements.

Rose herself continued feverish and uncertain enough to occasion
surprise to all her friends. She, so light-hearted and brave, so
bright and clever--that she should appear in the character of
tremulous and wistful maid, on the fulfilment of what had seemed her
dearest wish! She was as kind and intimate with Joseph as ever; and he
told himself that he had nothing to complain of, that he must remember
their difference in age, and that with time they would grow nearer to
one another. But still he felt a barrier between them--a reserve which
all his ardour failed to surmount--an unresponsive silence when his
raptures strove to fit themselves to words, which chilled him in spite
of his assurances to himself that all was well. In desultory
conversation she would be as bright as ever; but as he strove to lead
up to converse more close, he found himself checked he knew not how;
for she did not repulse, she only failed to respond. Her favourite
topic to converse on was Margaret's attachment: on that she would warm
even to enthusiasm, and run on at any length, till he almost felt it
in his heart to grow jealous of his favourite niece.

Lettice Deane was the only one who had a clue to Rose's strangeness.
She felt sorry for her and greatly surprised, blaming Roe,
notwithstanding her declaration that he was nothing to her; and vowed
that his conduct in hanging on at the Beach, was ungentlemanlike, and
altogether abominable.

Roe himself seemed as feverish and ill at ease as the lady. He took
little interest in the society of the other men, and seemed to submit
to the company of Maida rather than court it. Maida felt that he was
growing moody on her hands, and that their intimacy was not
progressing. "Yet why did he stay on?" she asked herself. "There was
no one else in the house for whom he seemed to care." She must learn
to be more devoted and winning, she thought, and get over this
constraint on his part, which she felt was growing up between them;
but she did not see very clearly how she was to set about it. He
detested forward women and bold women--he often said so--and was
severely critical when they sat together on the galleries looking down
on the young people upon the sands, who, after the manner of their
kind, had a way of assorting themselves in couples as they took their
evening strolls.

It was arranged that on a certain day there should be a "clam-bake" on
the sands at Blue Fish Creek. It was to be an affair on a gigantic
scale. The keepers of half-a-dozen establishments along the coast had
got it up. Bushels innumerable of clams were to be roasted around a
huge bonfire; an ox was to be roasted whole; and the seaside visitors,
cloyed with innkeepers' fare and indoor luxury, were for once to dine
uncomfortably on the sands, upon slices of half-raw beef and platefuls
of scorched shell-fish. As a slice of lemon gives savour to insipid
veal, so a rough and indigestible banquet in the open air revives a
relish in jaded guests for the daily superfluity of everything, which
hotel dinners provide. There was to be a dance in the town hall
afterwards, and the company would drive home in the dark. All Clam
Beach was to go, as a matter of course; even the valetudinarian Mrs
Naylor resolved to venture. Margaret took care that Walter should
know, and--for why indulge in useless mystery?--they were to make
their push for freedom on that return journey.

The affair came off as designed. The weather was propitious, the
guests hungry, in high spirits, and more numerous even than had been
expected. They seated themselves in parties on the sands. The Naylors
and Deanes naturally sat together, along with the Pettys and
Wilkies--Ann Petty beside Peter Wilkie, and Walter Petty next
Margaret; Ann feeling a little ashamed and altogether proud, at
having, as she thought, taken away the other's young man; while
Walter, poor lad, confronted Peter in triumph. His fortunes, he felt,
were mending. The two mothers cast glances of wrathful scorn at each
other between the legs of the black waiters running assiduously round
within the ring. It was the only amusement open to them at their time
of life, in the intervals between plying knife and fork.

Margaret, looking over the people's heads, descried far away the manly
form she most desired to see. Her plot was going to work, but
meanwhile she must take care to lull suspicion in her mother's mind.
The way to do that was being civil to her companion. She exerted
herself and made the poor lad really happy--feeling ashamed and
burdened the while, at her appalling treachery, and really sorry for
the young fellow, who was so kind and nice, and who admired her so
openly.

At length the repast was ended. Everybody had eaten as many clams as
seemed expedient. The company rose up and sauntered away, leaving the
waiters free to clear off the relics of the feast. Joseph took Rose's
arm and drifted apart from the rest as quietly as he could contrive.
It was not to eat shell-fish in public that he had consented to dine
uncomfortably on a sandheap. Rose would have been content to be less
exclusively private, and looked round to see if she could not beckon
Margaret to join them; but Margaret, between Walter Petty and her
mother, was walking another way, so she accepted the inevitable with a
good grace, and strove to interest herself in her companion. A few
wind-bent trees maintained a struggling existence not far off upon a
slope of sun-parched turf coming down upon the shore, with morsels of
grateful shade; and thither they bent their steps.

"I am glad _that_ part of the enjoyment is through," Joseph was
saying. "It gives one cramps all over, that sitting on the ground all
crumpled up, and eating things. But apparently there must be eating,
if it is a party of pleasure."

"Please, sir, there is a parcel for you at the kitchen tent--sent on
as you ordered. The man says you must sign a receipt." It was a waiter
who spoke, puffing and fanning his shining black face, and grinning
with all his teeth, while he held his hand convenient for the expected
tip.

"Ha! Come, has it?" and Joseph smiled in return, slipping the dollars
in the ready palm, and dismissing the messenger well pleased.

"Let me settle you comfortably beneath yon tree, dearest; and then
will you excuse me till I run after the fellow? I shall not be a
minute gone. You will wait for me there, will you not?"

"Go back at once; I can do that much for myself, and will wait there
as you say."

And so they parted, Joseph making all haste in one direction, while
Rose walked leisurely forward in the other. She had almost reached the
trees, her sunshade open before her, her eyes upon the sand.

"At last!" and a figure stood between her and the light. "I have been
waiting, Rose, for a chance like this."

Rose started at the voice. A thrill ran through her, and the sunshade
fell aside, as though the arm which held it were benumbed. Immediately
in front of her stood Gilbert Roe. The flaming red and white chased
one another across her face, but her eye looked steadily in his.

"Sir!" she cried, with indignant emphasis; but she said no more, her
lips closed tightly, and her eyebrows straightened in a frown.

"They tell me you are going to be married, Rose? You must hear me this
once. I am resolved to have it out with you."

She threw back her head, and her nostrils quivered in pride. The angry
blood suffused her temples now; there was no paleness and no sign of
fear. "Allow me to pass," she answered, haughtily.

"Not till you hear me, Rose. I mean to save you from yourself."

"What right have you to interfere with me?"

"The strongest; the right of one who loves you."

"You have _no_ right! The law denies it. It gives me freedom. You
shall not interfere."

"Calm yourself, Rose. I cannot live without you. And more, you never
will be happy but with me."

"Bah! you are too long of finding it out. I am free, and I shall keep
my liberty as far as you are concerned. I have tried you, and know you
to my cost. It is over now. The law has cried quits between us."

"It cannot, Rose! Think of the old time in Canada!--the evenings when
we sang together, and talked in the porch--the walks between the
corn-fields--the afternoons in the orchard--and the promises we made.
Can you ever forget them?"

"How dare you remind me of them? Have you no decent shame? You might
wish the ground to open and let you through, rather than hear those
old days named, and be reminded how you have outraged a trusting
girl!"

"I have been true to my vows, Rose. I make no merit of it; I could not
have been otherwise. It was my glory and delight to fulfil them."

"And you did it admirably! certainly. It was in fulfilment of them, I
suppose, that you made fierce love to that silly Horatia Simpkins,
under my very nose, and before the eyes of her own husband? If it had
even been a handsome woman, or one not absolutely a fool, the slight
might have been less unpardonable. But with her!"

"What else could I have done?--the way you went on with her
husband--that conceited ass Rupert. Would you have had me stand by,
like a gawk, with my thumb in my mouth, assenting to your outrageous
flirtation, which nearly drove his poor little silly wife out of her
wits with jealousy? She is not as clever, perhaps, as you are, but at
least she is fond of her husband!"

Rose coughed impatiently and stamped her foot. The adversary must be
admitted to have scored one by that thrust.

"Is a woman to give up the amusements of social life--the little
conventional pleasantnesses of society--because she happens to have
lent a too trusting ear, and yielded to the man who wanted to marry
her? Does she grow plain and old and stupid from the day she becomes a
wife? Is she no more to find pleasure in being liked and admired? Life
is not over when she comes back from church: she is still as human as
she was before--wants a little of the diversions she has learnt to
like, and needs a continuance of the devotion her suitor taught her
to expect. You are hideously jealous, Gilbert. You should have been
born a Turk, with a harem built out in the back-yard, beside the
chicken-house, to lock up your wife in."

It was the first time she had used his name. Gilbert noted it and took
courage.

"You know you wanted me to be jealous when you took up with that
ninny--and you wanted to tease his wife. You succeeded. She thought
you had stolen her husband's affection--or what represents it, in
him--and she was not going to submit quietly to the robbery. She
thought to make reprisals, and so laid siege to your husband in
return. I am not sure but she got the revenge she wanted. You cannot
deny that you were absurdly jealous."

"Absurdly? Yes; laugh at me! I deserve it for allowing you to address
me. You consider me a fool. You have said as much before, and you said
other things as well, which were even worse. You insulted me with
suspicion, and used expressions as if I were improper. You know you
did! Bertie Roe!... You never loved me really, I do believe--not as
you made me expect you would--not as a girl should be loved, who gives
up her life and everything to be married to a man. You behaved like a
barbarian! Deny it if you dare!"

"I do deny it, Rose. Could I stand by and see you play the fool with a
contemptible duffer, before the eyes of all Chicago?--see people in
ball-rooms and theatres follow you with their eyes, nudge each other,
and exchange glances, and shrug, as if to say, 'another young wife
taking the turn downhill'?"

"You are insulting!--but I might have expected it. 'Cruelty and
desertion' were the words in the decree."

"I dare you to lay your hand upon your heart and say that I was cruel.
I merely remonstrated--and then you scolded.... You know you did,
Rose. You made home unbearable. I had to leave the house."

"You outraged my feelings. Was I to accept your insinuations of
improper conduct as a polite compliment, or an everyday commonplace of
domestic conversation?... You did not strike me, I admit--the man in
you would restrain you from that; but you did worse!--the things you
said."

"Could I see people taking away your character by a shrug without
giving you warning? Could I tell you about it, as something amusing
and to your credit?"

"It was yourself who goaded me on to do whatever I did. And then to
insult and desert me!"

"I did not desert you. I merely took rooms down town, leaving you in
sole possession of the house until you should come to your senses....
You did not believe that I had deserted you; but you wanted to make me
beg pardon and come back as if I had been to blame."

"And so you _were_ to blame! The Court has decided that, and granted
me my divorce."

"And has your divorce, then, made you happy? Would you have filed your
petition, if you had expected to have it granted? You thought I would
have come and prayed you to withdraw it. I let you take your course.
Was I wrong?"

"You knew you had no defence--had no case to plead--that I was right.
You let judgment go by default."

"Did you imagine that I would plead?--have all our little
altercations, which would have sounded so pitiful in Court, raked out
and exposed before a crew of newspaper reporters, to be read and
chuckled over by the people going home in the tram-cars? Did you
imagine that I would attempt to keep you bound, if you wanted to break
loose from the marriage tie? I would not have you, if I could, against
your will."

"You are very magnanimous, and I--of course I am the
opposite--everything bad, and frivolous, and foolish. I wonder you
should have troubled yourself to address against her will so poor a
creature."

"I have been waiting here all these days, Rose, in hopes of getting
speech of you. You are not bad, or frivolous, or foolish. You are the
only woman I have ever cared for, or ever shall. We have been--not
very wise, shall I call it?--headstrong and obstinate, and neither
would give in; and both, if I may venture to say it, have been
miserable in consequence. Forget and forgive, Rose. Let's try again,
begin the game anew, and profit by sad experience. It is for that I
have been waiting here--to prevent this marriage of yours, if the
people say true, which will make both you and me miserable for ever."

"You are kind; but do you not exaggerate? My marriage at least will
not leave you inconsolable. You have secured the consoler already.
I wish you joy of her. May she make you as happy as you deserve,
and----" But here, to her own astonishment--for Rose had felt proud of
her bravery and calmness throughout the interview--there came a spasm
in her throat, which choked her utterance. The corners of her mouth
began to droop, and her eyes sought the ground.

"Do you mean Maida Springer? This is worse than Horatia Simpkins! I am
sure I have not flirted with Maida. Come, if you like, and ask her;
she is sitting under that tree. She is an acquaintance of very old
standing; that is all. She taught my uncle's children long ago, when I
was a lad. We saw each other constantly when I was home from Harvard
at the vacation. But there is nothing between us--never was. Come, ask
her yourself. She is sitting behind this nearest tree: she will be the
first to wish us joy."

He took Rose's hand to lead her to the spot, and Rose had moved a step
or two before she had recovered self-command enough to resist. The
tree was very close. Whoever sat behind it must have overheard the
conversation, for both had been too intent to keep their voices low.
Rose shrank from meeting the listener. She stopped short, and looked
timidly where the eavesdropper was said to be.

There seemed little which need make her feel uneasy. A woman's
figure--or was it only a bundle of summer clothing? so limp and
collapsed it seemed--lay crouched and huddled together against the
bole. The hat was pushed aside, the head bowed between the knees, and
two slender hands spread out before it to exclude the light. The hair
had come unfastened, and fell in wisps down to the ground, swaying and
quivering in the sobbing tremor which shook the woman's frame.

Rose drew away her hand. "It is too late to talk, Bertie. We have
chosen our roads in life, and we must keep them. But we will think
more kindly of one another now. I am engaged, as you know. I did it
freely, and I must keep my word. I will not spoil the life of
another--of a man who is as fond of me as this one, and so good and
true. We will forgive one another--will we not?--and learn from sad
experience more forbearance in our future lots. There he is coming. I
shall go and meet him. Goodbye. We must not meet again."

She went, leaving Gilbert elated at his success, but dissatisfied with
its incompleteness, and a little doubtful how he ought to return to
Maida Springer. They had been reclining rather aimlessly behind the
tree, when he looked up and saw Rose almost upon them, and alone. It
seemed to be now or never, if he was to have speech with her. He
bounded to his feet without a word to his companion, and her own ears
must soon have told her why. It felt decidedly awkward to return to
Maida; yet what was he to do? He could not follow Rose without
imperilling such way as he had made back to her favour, by inducing
perhaps an ugly scene with Naylor; and having brought Maida there, he
must fetch her back to her friends. It was an uncomfortable task, but
it had to be performed. He hardened his soul, expecting to hear
something unpleasant, composed his features, and turned round to the
tree.

He might have spared his anxiety. The tree was deserted. No one was
near. Far up the slope the flutter of a white gown and streaming blue
veil might be discerned between the trees, in swift retreat, and
Gilbert found that Maida had saved him the unpleasantness of an
explanation.




                            CHAPTER XXIX.

                         "IT IS ALL A MESS!"


It fell hard upon Rose to have to meet Joseph again so immediately
after the passage she had gone through with Gilbert Roe--to pass, with
scarce a pause in which to brace herself together, from the lover of
her youth into the presence of the man to whom she had chosen to
transfer her regard. She had fooled herself in her pique into the
belief that she had trodden down and stamped out the last spark of
kindness for the husband who had been, as she told herself, so hard
and cruel and insulting--the man who could let her untie their
marriage bond, without showing a sign or offering a word of
remonstrance. He was nothing to her now--she had been saying it within
herself ever since their separation--or if anything, only her
aversion. She had been persuading herself that she was an injured
woman, and that it was righteous resentment which she had been nursing
against the unfeeling tyrant who had blighted her early wifehood. She
had resolved that she would never speak to him again, nor even name
him; that she would pluck out the very memory of her first and foolish
love--have done with him for ever, and begin anew. (As if our past,
the foundation of our present, could ever be obliterated!)

When he forced himself upon her so unexpectedly, the anger smouldering
through her year of unmolested separation, the regret and
disappointment grown sour in concealment and suppression, and turned
by silence and defeated pride into what had seemed an inextinguishable
hatred, had burst into a flame of fiercest indignation. It had burst
into flame, but how pitifully soon it had burnt low! It had been but a
fire of straw, blazing up for a moment and sinking as quickly as it
rose; leaving nothing behind, nothing but the emptiness of separation.
The grievances and wrongs and barriers piled up so high between them,
where were they gone to? Vanished utterly away. There had been a
leaping flame and a whirling puff of smoke, and the ground was clear
between them--clear save for the ashes of happiness destroyed for
ever! And there she stood, naked and exposed before her own eyes and
his, stripped of her false pretexts, a vain and headstrong fool, who
in very wantonness had made bonfire of their wedded happiness!

And yet her indignation had seemed so just, her wrongs so deep and
unforgivable! How speedily her wrath had oozed away before a few
words! words not of contrition, scarce even of reproach, but only
common-sense, and spoken by the old dear voice! Where were the bitter
memories now? How could she be so false to herself? Where was her
pride?--that stanch support against which she had been wont to set her
back, ready to outface the world? It had bent and broken, like a
worthless reed, before a few words of the man against whom she had
invoked its aid. "Bertie!" She had resolved to obliterate the memory
of that name; and yet it had passed her lips, and the old caressing
sweetness of the sound was in her ears, and would not go away.

It was not half an hour since the mere sight of him had hardened her
with hate, and made her feel strong, if yet unhappy. Now, she was weak
as water. If she had stayed, she would have given way and yielded--she
could not tell to what--but to anything the old sweet strong influence
in that voice had chosen to command her. But she had escaped, and she
was still free, and she would keep her liberty, whatever it might cost
her peace. At least she thought so.

What would they say, those sympathising friends who had come to her in
her conflict, with their well-meant phrases of support, and told her
she had done so wisely, and shown so brave a spirit? What would they
say to see her lower the lance and go back again to the bondage of her
tyrant? How could she face their pity at her weakness? And then there
were the others, who had disapproved of her conduct--had advised her
to submit, yield something, and make it up; and when she would not,
had turned away from knowing her. They would call her repentant, and
perhaps would turn again to countenance her reformation! That would be
more intolerable even than the pitying surprise of her stancher
friends. No; she must follow out the road she had entered on. There
could be no returning upon the lost steps. And she had so nearly
yielded. It startled her to find she was so weak. She must build a
barrier between the old life and the new, which could neither be
surmounted nor thrown down.

Joseph was close upon her now. He had not been very long away, but he
did not seem in her eyes exactly as he had seemed before. It was not
half an hour that he had been gone, yet he looked more ordinary than
she had supposed him. The redundancy of waistcoat, or rather of waist,
offended her sense of symmetry as it had not done before; and if he
had been just a little taller! Bertie was six-feet-one, and gracefully
slim, and chestnut-haired, while the other's locks were darkening, as
the leaves grow dark before the autumn tints begin to light them up
with the rustiness that comes before decay. It was the difference
between thirty and forty-seven. What a fool she was to notice such
things, and at such a time, when the very contrary was what she would
have wished to notice! She told herself so with vehemence, and bit her
lip, as if that would make her mind it better; but she went on
noticing all the same. When the eye has been turned for a little on
the sun, what a poor, dim, purblind thing does the light of a candle
afterwards appear!

Joseph came on with swinging elastic strides, impatient to be with
her, irradiated with a joyful pride, and beaming on her with smiles of
confidence irrepressible.

"If he would only have been tranquil!" she thought. This exuberance
seemed so utterly out of place. It was a discord in the bland and
half-parental warmth which, she told herself, would have been correct
in view of their disparity of age. "It was bad taste. There was even
an element of ridicule in a venerable Cupid of forty-seven exerting
himself to gambol before her like one of those boy Loves with wings
the artists picture. She had not thought so half an hour ago, but we
live and change so quickly at times. He was too solid for that sort of
thing, and she felt sorry to see him attempt it, for she really
respected and liked him."

"You grew tired of waiting, Rose?"

"Why would he call her by her name just then?" she asked herself,
forgetting that he had been doing so habitually for a week past, and
that she had encouraged him to do it.

"And came to meet me? Forgive me, dearest. I could not help it. Your
own disinclination to be kept waiting, must plead for my impatience to
get my little parcel, that I might present it. I made the hotel people
promise to send it after us, if it should arrive this forenoon. It has
come, but the express man would not part with it till I had signed the
receipt. Then the rascal went to refresh himself, and I had quite a
hunt to find him. However, it is all right now. Shall we turn back and
get under the shadow of the trees?"

"As you like," Rose answered, a little dully.

Joseph tore off the wrappings of his parcel as they walked along,
laying bare the little ring-case. He opened it, and the merry little
stones within, catching the sunbeams, cast them back in a dazzling
gleam beyond his expectation.

Rose saw and shuddered. The glancing ray seemed to pierce her with a
cold sharp pang, like the thrust of steel. It was the token of her
engagement; and that, of a sudden, and without her being aware of an
alteration in her mind, had grown distasteful.

"And now, my dearest, will you let me fit it in its place. It is not
worthy your acceptance; but then, what is? Still it is pretty, is it
not? And seeing that you were kind enough to accept myself, you will
let me slip on my ring. It is an earnest of the other you have
promised to let me give you."

"Not now, Mr----dear Joseph, I mean." How unreadily his name came to
her lips! and half an hour since she had used it freely--had even
liked to use it in a very friendly way, as leading up to the more
intimate connection which was to be established between them. What a
rift between the now and then!

"Do you not like it, dear?" Joseph asked, in a disappointed tone. "I
said it was not worthy either of your acceptance or of my love; but
still, I confess I thought it pretty, and I hoped you would have worn
it."

"Oh, as to that--yes, by all means. It is a lovely ring, the very
handsomest I ever saw. Any one might feel proud to wear it on its own
merits; but you know how whimsical we women are. It is a whim which I
have taken, that I will not put on a ring to-day."

"Let me persuade you out of it, dearest. Let me overbear the whim." He
took her hand in his, drew off the glove, and reverently pressed his
lips upon the fingers, while she stood looking listlessly and sadly in
his face. He took the engagement-finger and attempted to slip on the
ring without more ado; but at the touch of it Rose started and drew
away her hand with a shrinking cry, while Joseph strove to retain it,
and still attempted to slip on the ring.

"It must not be, at least not yet a while, Joseph. I have something
which I must tell you, that will make a difference between us. It
would be unfair to you not to tell you in time, what may influence
your feelings with regard to an engagement between us. And meanwhile,
I give you back your promise, that you may be free to do as you will,
after you have heard me."

"You shall not give it back, Rose. I will not accept it. And more, I
hold _you_ to your promise still. Nothing which you can tell me will
induce me to give you back yours."

"Not if you heard dreadful things against me?"

"I would not believe them. I know you too well for that. What do you
take me for?"

"I take you for a noble-minded man. It is that which troubles me. I am
not worth your caring for."

"You are my own, a part of my very self."

"You would not say so if you knew--that I have been married
before!--if you were told that I am a divorced woman!"

"I would not believe them."

"But it is true."

"What a villain the man must have been!--what a fool!--to cast away
the flower he was unworthy to have worn! But, my poor darling, if this
is so, you have the deeper need of my protecting care."

"But it was I who divorced--him!"

"You have been cruelly used, then. Ah, what you must have suffered! It
shall be all the more my care to make you forget your unhappiness.
Forget it you shall. Let's say no more about it."

"But I must. You do not know how poor a thing you have anchored your
heart to--how fickle and headstrong and vain a creature I have been! I
petitioned for a divorce from my husband."

"And you got it. Is not that a proof that you were in the right?--when
the law granted your demand? What you must have come through! But it
shall be mine to make you forget."

"He--filed no rejoinder, as they call it He let the law take its
course."

"He did not, because he could not. The law has relieved you from an
unworthy mate. Forget it, my poor darling. Forget _him_. We have the
future before us. Forget all the past."

"He refused to plead; but I am not so sure that he could not have
pleaded successfully if he had chosen to do it. My petition was an
outrage to him."

"Do not think it. A woman is not driven to take such a step without
sufficient grounds."

"That is what the judge said; but--ah me!--I do not know."

"What has called up these morbid fancies in your mind, Rose? You were
cheerful an hour ago."

"He--has spoken to me. When you were gone he came to me--and things
seem different now. I am not so sure that I was right, as I used to
be."

"The sneaking villain! Who is he? Where is he? To come molesting the
woman he has wronged, so soon as my back was turned! Kicking is too
good for such a hound. Where is he?"

"You must not ask. What would people say of me, if you and he were to
meet?... But I am upset; my head is splitting. I do not know what I am
saying, or what I do. I will go back to the village inn and lie down."

"We can drive back to Clam Beach. No one will miss us. Come."

"I want to be alone, and think. Do not come with me. Yonder is Lettice
Deane; bring me to her, and then let me leave you."

Lettice was following her own amusement in her own way. She was
holding a kind of auction of her smiles as she walked upon the sands
between Mr Sefton and Peter Wilkie, who vied with each other to
engross her attention, flashing speeches across her, to her infinite
diversion, in their efforts to extinguish one another. It was amusing,
but she cared nothing for either, and was mischievously ready to
disgust them both alike, by yielding to Rose's petition for her
company back to the village.

"Is your head _very_ bad, Rose, dear?" she asked, full of sympathy, as
soon as they were alone. "It must be, to take you away from him so
soon after his present. Or is it a sort of necessary discipline?--in
case of his growing too confident on the head of it? Let me see it.
Everybody knows that the express man was sent after you here. What!
you have not put it on yet? I declare, I think you are rigorous. You
owed him the satisfaction of seeing you wear it, I think, seeing how
much it cost."

"I have not got it. I could not accept it to-day. I have been trying
to have an explanation and tell him everything. He--the other--dropped
upon me suddenly when I was alone and not expecting him, and we
talked--and, oh Lettice! I am in a maze. What am I to do? It seems to
be I won't and I will with me, all the time. I can't do both, and I
won't do either. I am distracted, Lettice. I must go to bed and try to
think."

"Who-o-o----!" Lettice could not whistle as some girls can; but that
long-drawn masculine expression of--of everything at once--of the fat
having fallen in the fire, with general loss, trouble, and confusion,
seemed the only adequate and appropriate one for the occasion, and she
framed her lips and voice to the nearest equivalent.

"And what will you do, dear?" she said, after a considerable pause.

"Don't bother me with questions, Lettie. I do not know in the very
least. I shall go to bed, and try to sleep, and to forget everything.
If one could only forget for always! How good it would be! I am in a
mess. And all from having my way, and getting everything I thought I
wanted. It is all a mess! an irretrievable muddle. Whatever I may do,
it will be sure to be wrong. Oh Lettie! take warning in time; and
don't let your little tempers run away with you, as mine have done
with me."




                             CHAPTER XXX.

                          A CLOSE OBSERVER.


When Rose and Lettice went their way, the three cavaliers found their
occupation gone. They stood an instant looking after the retreating
fair, then turned to face one another; but there was no satisfaction
in view of the witnesses of their discomfiture--each felt small,
rather, and perhaps a little ridiculous. The only plaster for their
grazed self-love was absence from the witnesses; and accordingly each
turned on his heel, going off in quest of some new interest, and
diverging as widely from the other two as was possible.

Joseph strolled despondently back toward the stunted grove, to which
twice already he had bent his steps, but had not reached. He had borne
up bravely enough under Rose's disclosure at the moment. In the thick
of the fight one generally does bear up. The excitement of combat
stirs the blood, and blows fall scarcely heeded on him who struggles
hard to have his way. It is when the battle is over, that the wounds
begin to smart, when the stricken have leisure to feel them. And
Joseph was wounded sore. It crushed him to think that anything could
be said in derogation of the peerless one whom he had found to fit
into' the long-vacant shrine, where the beloved of his youth had sat,
and whose memory, still hovering there, had made it a holy place.
There seemed impiety in associating the new avatar of his love with
the ribald vulgarities of the divorce court, in dragging the blossom
of his worship through its noisome mire. Yet was she the less precious
because her lines had fallen haplessly? Does a jewel lose worth for
having fallen in the kennel? He told himself this, and repeated it
over and over. He vowed that her need of sympathy and support, was a
claim the more upon his honour, and that the claim should be
satisfied; but still it was painful to think that the name of his wife
to be, had been bandied from mouth to mouth as one of the motley crew
who shock chaste ears with their clamour to be relieved from
obligations which if was their own free choice to undertake. It dimmed
the bright promise of that future in which he had been basking so
unsuspiciously, but it should not appal him. He would steadfastly look
forward to all being well; his own faith and hope would of themselves
contribute to a happy consummation; and for Rose, how much she must
have suffered!--how much she needed him!

He had reached the grove at last. His feet were on the turf, and he
was strolling upwards through the trees, buried in deep and not too
sweet reflections.

"Alone, Joseph?" There was much in the tone to irritate. It contained
a suggestion of pity, combined with the "I thought as much," or "I
told you so," with which intimate friends are wont to rub up our
little sorenesses, and make them smart. It was his sister-in-law who
spoke--Susan--who already had expressed her disapproval of his
intended change in life, and who could not be expected to regret any
little unsmoothness in the current of his love. She had risen from a
corner of shade in which she had been encouraging the faltering
advances of Walter Petty to closer intimacy with her girl Margaret.
The two seemed fairly well tackled in conversation, now, and she felt
free to devote a little attention to Joseph and his concerns. She took
his arm, and accommodated her pace to his for a little turn, ignoring
the sudden tightening of his features into an impatient frown.

"'The course of true love,' &c.--you know the rest, Joseph. Where
there is disparity, one must be prepared for little _contretemps_. One
cannot expect young girls to accommodate themselves at once to the
steady jog-trot of their seniors. They would not be so attractive, I
daresay, if one could. She certainly----"

"What are you talking about, Susan?"

"You do not know, eh? Or rather you think I do not know? I have seen
everything--more than you have yourself. I was sitting up here in the
shade, when you were called away a while ago."

"Yes, I was called away. It was annoying, I confess; but I got back
when I had completed my little matter of business. I see nothing in
that which calls for your condolence."

"Of course not, dear Joseph. It was far too cleverly arranged for
that. She certainly is clever--an accomplished actress. I only hope it
may answer, and that you may not find her out to be too clever by
half. A good many people have seen as well as me. It was very well
done--quite dramatic, in fact; or rather, pantomimic--for they were
far too judicious to raise their voices and be overheard."

"Enough, Susan. I detest insinuations. Who are they whose private
affairs you have been watching and prying into? Do you know that you
have been accusing yourself of eavesdropping, mitigated only by your
inability to hear what was said? It is scarcely the pursuit I should
have expected a ladylike person to take up."

"You are rude, Joseph; but I forgive you. One must not expect people
to accept disenchantment with an equable mind."

"You speak riddles. I am in no mood for guessing them."

"Just what I say. You are upset, Joseph, and I am truly sorry."

"I am not upset. I am perfectly well and happy, Susan. It is you who
are absurd. You have your girls' hands to dispose of. It is occupation
enough for any woman. See you do it wisely; and leave me to bestow my
own in peace. I decline your interference."

"You are blind, Joseph. There are a score of people in this wood.
Every one of them must have seen. It is only you, the one who ought to
know, who have not, and do not know. I insist on telling you. You may
not like it, but it is my duty."

"Always a duty--when a woman wants to be provoking."

"I forgive the gibe. The young person you have chosen to devote
yourself to, has a lover."

"Certainly. The lady you stigmatise as a person has me; and I mean to
marry her."

"You and another. Ha! you did not know that! I can read it in your
face. Your back was scarcely turned, when out there bounced from
behind a tree--a man!--that tall slim young fellow you must have
noticed at the Beach any time this last week. He has been devoting
himself to that little spare woman with the blue veil whom nobody
seems to mind. People said they were engaged, and wondered at one with
his good looks bestowing himself so cheaply. Well, as I was saying,
out he bounced upon Miss--what's her name?--Miss Hillyard; and I can
tell you their interview was an animated one. How the colour of both
came and went! There must a great deal have taken place between them.
How he gesticulated! She was comparatively calm. He is an ardent
fellow, I can tell you, Joseph. Better have an eye on him."

Joseph did not know exactly what to say. He felt himself disloyal in
listening; but still he was interested, and if he waited to hear more,
he fancied he should be better able to defend Rose.

"The lady he had left--her with the blue veil--seemed to take her
squire's sudden desertion in very bad part. She started and looked
shocked at his departure, then bent forward where she sat, and looked,
and listened. They were within a few yards of her, and she must have
heard all that passed. The disillusion must have been terrible. I saw
her head bow lower and lower, as though all fortitude were deserting
her; and soon she seemed utterly crushed. She buried her head in her
lap, and clasped her hands above it--a most pitiable spectacle.

"But that was not the worst. He certainly must be a man without pity
or a spark of feeling. He actually had the cruelty to lead the other a
little to one side, where she could have a view of the discarded
rival. Was it not barbarous? This was too much for the other. It stung
her into something like proper self-respect. As soon as the other
turned away--and I will do the Hillyard girl the justice to say that
she betrayed no sign of gratification at her rival's confusion--she
jumped to her feet with a little cry, tied on her hat, and ran away up
the hill, as if to hide herself among the trees. Then Miss Rose seemed
suddenly to remember about you. She dismissed her admirer with the
peremptory assurance of an old hand, who knows exactly what she means
to do, and strolled calmly across the sands to meet you coming back to
her. She must have managed very well. I saw her leaning on your arm as
friendly as possible--a clever girl, but a sad handful, I should
imagine, for the man whose doubtful fortune it may be to get her for a
wife."

"And now you have done, Susan, with your romance? Let me congratulate
you on your talent for 'putting that and that together,' and producing
a coherent fiction from true premisses, which might do credit to the
author of the 'Arabian Nights.'"

"And pray, if the premisses are true, and nothing of my own is added,
how can you venture to suppose that my inferences are astray? You are
infatuated, Joseph Naylor."

"My good creature, the young lady has told me of this interview with
the tall young man which you have described so graphically. It must
indeed have been exciting and full of emotion, but you have entirely
failed to catch its true import; and, as far as I can see, there is no
reason why you should understand it, either you or any of the twenty
other eavesdroppers you mention, who have been gratuitously
interesting themselves in what does not concern them. Miss Hillyard is
suffering from violent headache in consequence of what occurred, and
has returned to the village to lie down. On second thoughts, I believe
I shall follow her, and try if she will not let me drive her back to
the Beach at once. That will be better than encountering the twenty
pairs of curious eyes during the evening, who will want to watch her
every movement, and piece a romance out of every time she looks at her
watch. Goodbye, Susan. Accept thanks for kind intentions on my
account; but do, pray, be more charitable in future. Good-bye,
Margaret. I am going back at once, and shall be asleep when you get
home. Kiss me good-night, child."

Margaret rose to pay the dutiful salute. Joseph kissed her on the
cheek, and finding his lips so conveniently near her ear, he
whispered--

"Walter's buggy will be the first in the line. He will be waiting. Get
down before the others. Jump in; and God bless you!"

Margaret changed colour violently. Her mother, looking on, was
surprised to see an embrace from an old uncle, produce signs of
emotion. "It must be because of the young man sitting by," she thought
sapiently, and drew happy auguries from the circumstance. Those close
observers are so often astray!

When Joseph reached the inn at Blue Fish Creek, he sent up a little
note to Rose, asking if she would not rather come home now in quiet,
than wait through the racket of the evening, to be followed by a
riotous journey after dark with the rest in their overflowing high
spirits. Rose consented, and they drove home forthwith.

How different were Joseph's feelings now, from what they had been in
the morning! Then, everything was bathed in sunshine and hope. The
bare supposition that aught could go amiss did not once cross his
mind. Now, he could not say what had befallen him, but a cloud had
come down and enveloped him, and blotted out the future, and every
certainty from his view, chilling his hopes and even his desires as
with an untimely frost. The ring lay forgotten in his pocket. It did
not occur to him to offer it again. If he had, the probability is that
it would have been accepted, though perhaps without the enthusiasm
which would have made the acceptance of value in his eyes.

Another phase of feeling had arisen in Rose's mind since her walk with
Lettice. Her friend had betrayed a presentiment, that now Gilbert had
had speech of her, he would win her back; and Rose revolted at the
idea of figuring before her friends as a repentant naughty child. No;
she had made her choice, and she would show that she could hold to it.
She might not be happy in the future, but at least she could be
steadfast. And truly, the man beside her as she drove, so truthful and
so good, deserved all the duty and devotion she could devote to him.
If she did not love as once she might have loved, at least he should
never know it. She would be but the more dutiful on that account; she
would even--what seemed the hardest thing of all to her headstrong
nature--even obey him.

She was very near to him then, if Joseph had but known; but he did
not. The old doubleness between his wife of long ago, and this heir to
her place in his regard, had arisen anew within him, and it was still
the older god who held the shrine. He felt regretfully tender and
considerate to his companion by his side, but the enthusiasm of the
morning was wanting.

They spoke little to one another as they travelled along. Rose was
pale and had a splitting headache, and Joseph was consideration
itself. He forbore to disturb her, assisted her to alight when they
arrived at Clam Beach, and expressed a hope that she would be better
in the morning, when they parted and she went up-stairs.




                            CHAPTER XXXI.

                         THE LADY PRINCIPAL.


The Principal of the Female College of Montpelier sat in her
room--office, call it, or study--her seat of authority, absorbed in
business. Her table was littered with papers; the waste-paper basket
overflowed with them. There was ink before her, a pen in her hand. Her
cap sat crooked on her head; her whitened hair was rumpled. The too
active cerebration within had no doubt disturbed the external trimness
of her dome of thought, as phrenologists used to tell us that it
worked ridges and hollows in the bones of the skull. She was deep in
thought. Her grey, intellectual features were tightened in the effort,
and her eye roved vacantly in space in search of those choice forms
which had long made her style the model of literary expression in
Montpelier.

She had spent the morning in compounding a syllabus, or a
compendium--matters in the manufacture of which she was unrivalled.
Now she was considering her address on female self-culture, shortly to
be delivered before the Institute of Emancipated Woman, with a list of
the hundred books which should form the inseparable companions of
every female aspirant to Breadth of View. Her eye wandered to the
terrestrial globe at her elbow--a symbol of her learned office, handed
down from her predecessors in more simple-minded times; and she
reviewed the distinguished literary reputations in remote places and
times--the less vulgarly popular or comprehensible, the better for her
purpose.

Ha! there was the Nile--Egypt--Manetho! A most respectable name
Manetho, and not too much said about him. The only difficulty was,
were his works extant? She was not sure, and her encyclopaedia was too
old an edition to make it worth while looking up. Her eye moved
eastward: India? _eureka!_ The Rig Veda,--Max Mueller and the 'Asiatic
Review'! She had read all about it in Littel's 'Living Age,' the
pirate's treasure-house.

The Rig Veda should head her list. She had not read it, to be sure;
but neither had those whom she addressed, and they would not be able
to read it, if they were to try--in the original, at least, and she
intended to pour scorn upon the use of translations; but it looked
well at the head of a list, showed comprehensiveness in the lecturer,
and ensured respect from the omniscient critic of the 'Montpelier
Review.'

The 'Zend-Avesta' made a handsome second; but as she did not desire to
smother her audience under the load of erudition, she considerately
offered it as an alternative to the Rig Veda. "A Saga" came next--she
did not specify which. Her familiarity with Scandinavian literature
was not intimate enough to particularise; but as not one of her
audience would know anything about it, that made little difference.
Being minded that nothing she said should savour of the too familiar,
she gave Klopstock the first place in her German list rather than
Goethe; and for the same reason Marlowe led off her English
dramatists, with Shakespeare far down among the ruck. Then there were
Hegel and Haekel, with permission to add the 'Critique of Pure Reason'
for those who relished intellectual nut-cracking. There was to have
been a name or two from every tribe and tongue in Europe; but in her
ignorance she could think of no Russian but Turguenief; and when she
came to the Lapps, Finns, Liths, and Basques, they had no literary
representative whom she had ever heard of. After that she took up a
publisher's list and filled up the remaining sixty places at random.
What did it matter? People would read what they liked or understood.
If they did not understand, it could not influence them one way or
other. She knew as well as you or I do, reader, that wheat is not
grown on pure sand; that loams, clays, moulds, each produce a
vegetation limited by their capacity; that everything will not grow
everywhere, and that, if it could, it would not be worth much. But
while the public laboured under the fad of comprehensiveness, she
recognised that she, its servant, must be comprehensive too, or her
employer would pay her off and get some one else who was up to its
standard. No one person could read, or, if they could, would care to
read, a tenth part of the literature upon her list; but that she
considered the one useful element in what she was about. It introduced
a moral influence. It would keep her audience humble--an end not
always easy to achieve where that audience is feminine, and more
richly endowed with aspiration than with solid learning--and show them
how much there still was which they did not know, notwithstanding
their acquirements.

There came a timid knock at the door, and a second, which the
Principal heard; and laying down her pen she sat bolt-upright and
said, "Come in."

It was Maida Springer who entered.

At the sight of her subordinate looking crushed and wan, the
Principal's aspect softened. Her impatience of interruption gave place
to those motherly instincts which nestled sweet and fresh about her
heart, though usually sheltered and concealed from an uncongenial
world under the dry husk of her superior-woman-hood.

"You--Maida?... I had almost given up hope of seeing you again. But
have you been sick? You do not look much benefited by your stay at the
shore--rather the other way."

Maida looked down. "I am well, Miss Rolph. I arrived by the
night-train. I suppose that accounts for my--for my want of looks,"
and she sighed; but more for the want of looks, than for herself.

"Did my letter miscarry? It is nearly a fortnight since I wrote."

Maida coloured. "I got it, Miss Rolph, and I am come to thank you. I
know I should have written at once; but--I meant to come instead.
Indeed I started, but--when----" Her voice died away. She looked down
more than she had done before, and her colour deepened.

"What was it, my dear? What prevented your coming?"

Maida lifted her head, drew a long breath, and raised her eyes to Miss
Rolph's face. Then the impossibility of uttering what there was to
tell arose before her. She bowed her head till the hat-brim and the
wisp of blue veil came down between her eyes and those of the
Principal. She strained down her arms before her, locked the fingers
of both hands together, and was speechless.

Miss Rolph was scarcely pleased that her kindly meant interest should
be put aside; but she was not the woman to obtrude unwelcome sympathy.
She stiffened back to business, and observed with manifest coldness of
voice--

"Your neglect may prove prejudicial to your interests, I fear; though
perhaps not. It would have been great advancement for you, and quite a
distinguished position, if you had been able to give the course on
political economy and sociology. You would have been the first woman
in this State to enter that important field. You would have made a
name, and become a leader in our sex's emancipation. On the other
hand, I admit that I felt a misgiving as to whether your character was
yet sufficiently formed for the post. The long ages of woman's
subordination have communicated a weakness of moral fibre to the
individual of today, which it requires maturity of years, experience,
and study, to overcome. I have feared at times that I detected some
remains of the old-fashioned missishness in your character, not yet
subdued. A year or two longer in your present duties may be
advantageous. I have arranged with Dr Langenwoert from Boston to
lecture three times a-week next term. After that--who knows?--but it
depends on yourself. The Committee believes, as you are aware, that
female education should be confided to women alone. You have been
appointed a professorial assistant _pro tem_. to Dr Langenwoert. Avail
yourself of your opportunities. Study his methods; and who knows but
you may succeed him?"

"Oh, Miss Rolph, how good you are! Forgive my seeming
thanklessness,--but, indeed--oh, Miss Rolph!"

Maida came forward and took the Principal's hand. Her voice was too
tremulous to be trusted; her eyes were brimming full. She had entered
that room feeling so lonely, desolate, and without a friend; and here,
in her professional chief, with whom her intercourse had been limited
to what related to her duties, was a woman who cared for her, bestowed
consideration, and was kind. She could have kissed the hand--she would
fain have kissed the lips which had spoken to her kindly; but Miss
Rolph was so very superior a woman, so above and beyond female
weakness!--and what was that which she had said just now about
_missish?_

Miss Rolph wheeled round on her pivoted chair, and looked with her
clear, cool eyes in the other's face.

"Maida Springer, you are in trouble! Tell me what it is. Am not I a
woman? Confide in me. I know you have no mother. I would try to advise
you as she might have done, though perhaps I am not quite old enough
for that."

She might have spared the last observation, being fifty-five, while
Maida was but thirty; but, good lady, though undeniably superior, she
was still a woman.

Maida's eyes overflowed. This was kindness unexpected.

"Take a chair, my dear. Draw up close to me, and tell me all." And
when Maida drew close, she laid a hand upon her shoulder, and one
soothingly upon the fingers wringing themselves into knots in
perturbed irresolution.

"I would--I would! But how? I cannot speak of it!"

"When people have done no wrong, there is nothing they need fear to
tell--to a friend. Injuries and mistakes often seem lessened when we
can bring ourselves to speak about them. A burden shared presses with
but half the weight it did before. Confide in me, Maida, Unburden your
trouble."

Maida's tears flowed freely. She made no effort to restrain them. They
softened the dry crust of misery which encased her spirit. Her head
inclined to her consoler. So did her heart in tender gratitude. She
caressed the soothing hand, but still the pent-up words refused to
come. Miss Rolph waited in silence, but found at length that she must
assist if the explanation was to be made.

"You said, Maida, that you intended to come instead of answering my
letter--that you started?"

"I did. I was at Narwhal Junction waiting for the train, when I met a
very old friend on the platform--going to Clam Beach, just as I was
coming away. I could not resist going back with my old friend, it was
so long since we had met. And after that, the matter of the sociology
class escaped my memory."

"Very strange. Is Clam Beach a scene of such rackety dissipation that
people forget their private affairs? I had inferred from your
descriptions that it was quite retired--a place to rest in."

"My friend and I had not met for years. The meeting engrossed me."

Miss Rolph glanced in Maida's face, one sharp short glance, like an
inquisitive bird, and with the flicker of a smile which did not spread
beyond the corner of her mouth, inquired--

"And did--she?--your friend, take as engrossing an interest in you, my
dear? Such friendships are rare, as well as precious."

"I did not say 'she,' Miss Rolph. It was a gentleman."

"I imagined as much, my dear; but you were so hampered by your noun of
epicene gender, that I thought it best to be rid of it."

Maida blushed. "Oh, Miss Rolph! What will you think of me?--of my
fitness as a pioneer in Woman's cause?"

"Think, my dear? That you are a woman like the rest of us. This was a
feature in your nature that seemed missing. The absence of a universal
weakness does not necessarily argue strength. It may arise from
insensibility, and merely show an incomplete nature. I think better of
you, perhaps. Go on."

"I had known him long ago. My first situation, when I began to teach,
was in his uncle's house. He was a student at Harvard, but spent his
vacations at home with us. His cousins were mere children; his uncle
and aunt had their own affairs; I was his sole companion. He taught
me much. It was a happy time. We were both young, fresh and hopeful,
and--well---- He is the only young man I ever saw much of. He expected
to make his fortune right away, and we---- But I cannot speak of
it....

"That was ten years ago. We corresponded--for the first year or so.
After that we lost sight of one another. I came to Montpelier; he--was
making his fortune. He recognised me on the platform at Narwhal
Junction. I was so pleased to find that he remembered me. He asked if
I was married, and he told me that he was not. He went back with me to
Clam Beach--or so I thought. Perhaps I ought to put it the other way,
and say that it was I who went with him; but at any rate we went
together, and we were together there all the time. He knew nobody but
myself, and he did not care to make acquaintances, it seemed; and he
stayed on, though at first he had spoken of leaving in two days.
And so it appeared to me--is there not some excuse for me, Miss
Rolph?--that we were taking up our intimacy just where we had laid it
down before."

"Ah!" said Miss Rolph. The bird-like look of the philosophic
investigator had left her features now, and she was listening with
genuine interest. She had still a heart, away down deep below her
theories and professional fads, and there was perennial interest for
her in a kindness between man and woman; which may have been unworthy
of her position, but was as salt to preserve her nature sound and
wholesome.

"What is his name, my dear? One follows a story so much better for
knowing the names."

"Roe--Gilbert Roe. Has it not a pleasant sound?"

Miss Rolph's eyelids quivered in a momentary start. Then she looked
down into her lap, compressing her lips, and making as if she would
show no sign till all was told.

"He stayed on more than a week. He is there now, I daresay. He was
with me constantly--sat beside me at table. People said it was a sure
case, and congratulated me; and I--well--what else could I think? I
believed them. Looking back now, with my insight cleared by what came
after, I am bound to own that he said nothing in all that time. When I
tried to hark back to the community of feeling that had subsisted
between us long ago, he disregarded and passed it by. I am not
accusing him of behaving badly, remember. It is my own foolish
credulity alone which I have to blame; and oh, Miss Rolph, what
humiliation it has brought on me! It hunted me away home here. I dared
not, for shame, go back to Clam Beach, even to bring away my things."

"I do not follow."

"We went one day--it was yesterday, but it seems like years since, for
the gulf of misery I have waded across since then. There was a
clam-bake at Blue Fish Creek, and we were there. Everybody was there.
We were sitting apart in a shady place, waiting till the heat would
temper down. He was smoking or reading the paper, I forget which. All
of a sudden he jumped up and left me. I looked round. He was
addressing a lady who seemed unwilling to hear him. She tried to pass
on without noticing him. She had taken no notice of him at the Beach,
though they had been living under the same roof for a week. He
persisted in accosting her, and angry words passed between them. She
said she was free of him. He would not admit it."

"Who was the lady?"

"A Miss Hillyard of Chicago or somewhere. I am not acquainted with
her."

"That is my niece! The Gilbert Roe you speak of must be her husband."

"Husband? Ah! that may explain the cruelty of what he did next. And it
was cruel and humiliating to me! And there need have been no occasion
for it, if he had told me at the first that he was married. She
taunted him with my friendship. I heard her. And he--was it manly of
him?--he actually proposed to bring her to me, to ask if there was
anything between us more than old acquaintanceship!" Maida's voice
rose into a cry as she said it. She clenched her hands; and cheeks,
brow, neck, grew scarlet, and then she buried her face in her
handkerchief and sobbed.

"It must be Rose, my niece, and her husband. I would believe anything
that could be told me of them. There never were two such ill-regulated
young things brought together, I do believe--so fond, so foolish, so
obstinate and wayward. There never was such a fiasco as their married
life has proved. Both handsome, both clever, both well off, and each,
I believe, most truly attached to the other; yet neither would forbear
to gratify a whim, neither would submit to be crossed in the smallest
trifle by the other. They squabbled away for not much over a year, and
then the Divorce Court came in and parted them. A pair of unruly
children! It was whipped they should have been, and made promise to
kiss and be friends. Instead of that, they are divorced and
discredited for life, and nothing good need be expected ever to happen
to either of them any more. These ill-considered changes in our
customs are deplorable. It is good to rescue the downtrodden from
oppression, but only evil can come of confounding liberty with
licence."

"Perhaps you may be mistaken," Maida answered, looking up and drying
her eyes. It consoled her to hear her affronters soundly scolded, even
in their absence. "Hillyard is no such uncommon name. This lady passed
for unmarried at the hotel, and they say she is engaged to be married
to a gentleman from Canada. Yes, by the by, it was to remonstrate
about that, that Mr Roe spoke to her."

"So the Divorce Court, even, does not end their squabbles! Whom was
she said to be engaged to?"

"A Mr Naylor--a real nice gentleman, and devoted to her. Every one was
talking about the beautiful presents of jewellery he had ordered her
from New York."

"Naylor? What is he like?"

"He is real nice, I should say, by his looks, and very rich. He has
some nieces with him, well dressed and real aristocratic. Belong to
the first families, I guess, and quite thick with all the first people
at the Beach. No culture to speak of, but high-strung--very!"

"How old is this Mr Naylor, should you suppose? and what is he like?
Is he a tall man, now, for instance?"

"He is not tall--no. Thick-set, almost stout; a heap shorter than
Gil----Mr Roe. Middle-aged. His hair is beginning to turn. Not old,
though certainly not young, but with a nice kindly face, and real
cheerful. I hope she will stick to him. It would be real distressing
if she were to jilt him, and I don't see what call a divorced husband
can have to interfere. What were divorces made for, if not to keep bad
husbands from bothering?"

Miss Rolph had been moving uneasily in her chair. She stood up now,
looking agitated but very firm.

"I believe I know this Mr Naylor. The engagement must be broken off
without an hour's delay. The idea is horrible!... I thought I had done
with this awful girl. When she left her husband, and refused to listen
to right principle and common decency, I washed my hands of her. But
this---- It is an unimaginable horror! When does the next train leave
for Clam Beach, I wonder? How do you go?"

"You cannot go to-night You will not be able to connect," Maida
answered in some disgust. The idea of Naylor's coming in and securing
the lady, and leaving Roe forlorn, which she had begun to conjure up,
was distinctly consoling. She did not like to think of the energetic
Miss Rolph intervening to upset the pleasing possibility.

Miss Rolph spread out a map. "There is Lippenstock, a station where
all trains stop, close by. I can book for there, and drive over in the
evening."

Maida sighed. "If you go, Miss Rolph, would you kindly mention to Mrs
Denwiddie that I am here? You know her, I daresay; you seem to know
every one at the Beach. Say I got a telegram--say anything. She is
sure to be thinking something dreadful about my going away so
sudden-like--without a word, or taking away my things."

Miss Rolph, in her agitation, looked round on Maida. She could not
help smiling, notwithstanding her anxiety. The world is filled with
such a tangle of conflicting interests, and each of us has room in his
little brain only for the few which connect with himself.

"I do not know the lady, my dear; but I shall mention at the office
that you were suddenly called home. I will settle your bill, and bid
them pack up and forward your things."




                            CHAPTER XXXII.

                "YOU MAY TRUST ME TO HOLD MY TONGUE!"


The dance at Blue Fish Creek was a success of its kind--the kind which
might be expected. It was held in the "town hall," a sort of loft
above the station of the village fire-engine, the one large room of
the place; used on Sundays as a church by some sect which had not
attained to a meeting-house of its own, as a singing-school on winter
nights when the younger villagers grew tired of remaining at home, and
as general place of gathering where the people met to discuss politics
or to be entertained by itinerant players.

The hall was crowded and very hot. Three fiddles supplied the
squeaking music of catgut in agony, while the young and active
disported themselves amid clouds of dust of their own raising. The
dances were complicated and strange, being of the kind in which an
earlier generation loved to take exercise; but the motley crowd was
happy--poussetted, chassied, and performed feats which I can neither
name nor spell, with a will.

Margaret Naylor had had a great deal of young Petty's company, and was
rather weary of him. From the moment when her uncle had bidden her
farewell, her attention to the young man's conversation had begun to
wander. Exert himself as he might, he failed to interest her, and he
grew depressed himself in consequence. In the hall he persuaded her to
dance once, but she refused point-blank when he ventured to ask her
again. He felt dispirited, and soon withdrew from the festive throng,
going out into the night, which had fallen dark and starless, and
wandering round within hearing of the fiddles and the stamping feet,
like a Peri shut out of Paradise--detesting the sounds of mirth in
which he had no share, but unable to drag himself away. Even tobacco,
that silent comforter of the miserable, failed to soothe him, and he
hung around the entrance of the hall, to which he had no desire to
return.

It was growing late. The stablemen had put the horses to the vehicles
for the home-going, and ranged them in double row to await the
breaking up of the gathering; but still the fiddlers plied the cruel
bow upon the screeching catgut, and still the steady tramp of the
dancers went on as briskly as ever. Petty lighted a fresh cigar, and
told himself that his time of waiting had nearly expired. As the
thought formed itself, a figure passed him coming down from the hall.
It was muffled, so far as the lightness of summer attire would admit.
Something was drawn over the head which made it unrecognisable as it
passed quickly from under the dim lamp on the stairs into the darkness
without. It stood for an instant accustoming itself to the gloom. He
could see it turn about as if looking for an expected object. There
was an omnibus provided with a lantern in the line of vehicles, which
weakly illumined a little circle around it, and lent a few feeble
indications as to more distant objects. The figure looked around
again, and then, in a tremulous voice raised little above a whisper,
it uttered the one word "Walter!"

Walter Petty's heart bounded into his throat, and beat tumultuously,
like a startled bird, against his ribs. This was an altogether
unexpected turn. She--there was no question as to who she was, when
once that dear voice sounded--she called him by his name! It was her
first time to do it, and he had not dared to hope she ever would. The
cigar was tossed into the gutter in a twinkling, and he was at her
side, too deeply moved to trust himself to speak.

That was unnecessary. Her own excitement compelled her to take the
word.

"Oh quick, Walter! If mamma should miss me, and come out in search!
What a commotion! Hurry! quick!... The buggy in front?--is it not?...
You have everything ready of course? Oh hurry!"

Petty was puzzled What was she up to? Yet it did not matter what. It
was right, or she would not do it. And if there was danger, he would
be at her side. She flew to the front of the line, he striding, almost
running, beside her. She was in the buggy in an instant. He followed.
The reins were in his hands. The stable-boy let go the horse's head.
They were away.

Away, but whither? Home, of course. Where else could she desire to go?
Yet why so much mystery? such anxiety to escape, and steal away? It
must be that detestable Wilkie, who had been so intrusive at
Fessenden's Island. She had been staving him off for a week back, he
thought he had observed. Now her mother was forcing him on her, and
she had run away. What a fine spirited girl! Yet why did all the
mothers run after that cad Wilkie? He was not a gentleman even, and
yet Walter's own mother had been encouraging his attentions to his
sister Ann. A pretty brother-in-law to bring into a family! And to
think the fellow should presume to have two strings to his bow! And
such strings! It made this jolly clatter of hoofs and wheels, this
careering headlong through the night, even more delightful, if that
were possible, to think of the other man left behind and biting his
nails in disappointment.

"Quicker, Walter! quicker! Are we safely away, do you think? Can they
overtake us?" How close she nestled to his side! How strong and
protecting he felt! How heroic, as he peered out in the darkness,
between the ears of his horse, to see if all were clear! The horse
could see the way and take the turns, Walter could not. His driving
was an act of faith; he could but sit and peer, and feel the horse's
mouth, and be alert against a stumble or anything which might befall.
Not seeing, he could not guide. It was late, fortunately, and there
were no other travellers on the road. The night air blew past them
fresh and exhilarating, and the soft pressure of his companion
nestling to his side was an unspeakable delight. She seemed
agitated--unduly, as it appeared to him; but then a woman is a tender
thing, he thought, and how tender and solicitous he would be of this
one, if she gave him the right! He could feel her tremble, and she
spoke short ejaculatory sentences from time to time; not as if she
wanted him to answer--and what was there he could say?--but merely to
relieve her high-wrought feelings.

"I did not think I could have done it, Walter. Only for you I could
have broke away. I feel quite wicked. But surely even mamma has no
right to come in between you and me; and now she certainly must not."

Walter Petty agreed with the conclusion, but was at a loss to divine
the premisses through which it was arrived at. However, they were
going down a steep hill, his faculties were on the stretch as they
jolted down in the darkness, and he had to support the horse,
momentarily in danger of a stumble or upset upon the loose stones
which encumbered the way. He did not answer, and Margaret was growing
accustomed to the situation and recovering her composure.

They passed a wayside tavern whose windows still showed light,
standing at a crossing where four ways met. Margaret recognised it,
and the next moment observing that they turned to the right, she
exclaimed--

"Walter! That is Mollekin's; you should have turned to the left for
Narwhal Junction. If you keep on as we are going, we shall be at Clam
Beach in fifteen minutes."

"Or ten, dear Margaret," Walter answered.

Margaret bounded up in her seat and drew away. Had Walter not clutched
at her gown in time, she must have fallen out.

"Mr Petty! How come _you_ to be here? What trap--what trick is this?"

"You brought me yourself, Miss Naylor. I have complied with your
wishes as far as I have known how. You called me. You seemed to want
my service. I was proud to be of use."

"You? I was to have met---- I did not call you, Mr Petty. How could
you suppose it? I am not intimate with you. We are common
acquaintances. That is all. What right had you to intrude? You have
done me an irreparable injury. I should not have expected this of
you."

"You came out of the hall in haste, Miss Naylor. You spoke to me. You
said 'Walter.' I obeyed. I supposed you wanted to get home."

"You----" Margaret did not finish the sentence. Why should she betray
herself? she thought. He seemed to have no suspicion as to her
intentions. Why should she enlighten him? As he had frustrated her
design, her best course was to leave him in his delusion. It would
prevent gossip in the hotel. She would acquiesce in his supposition,
seeing that her scheme to get away was balked for the present. "I did
not know you in the dark, Mr Petty; I thought you were some one else.
But it is all right. I have been driven nearly crazy by those jarring
fiddles, and the dust and heat. Thanks for your kind readiness to
oblige. I am dizzy with headache. I shall go to my room at once, and
be asleep before the rest get home."

There was a clatter of hoofs behind them. Margaret drew her wraps over
her head, and cowered low in her seat. Was she pursued? Was she
overtaken? A little in front shone the lights of the hotel. How
welcome they were now! A horseman dashed past at full gallop. He leapt
down at the hotel door, and when the buggy drew up, Walter Blount was
there to receive Margaret on alighting.

"You took away my buggy, Mr Petty," he observed, when that gentleman's
countenance came within the circle of light streaming from the hotel
door. "However, you have brought it safely here. Accept my thanks. I
will relieve you now." Then turning to Margaret, "Now, dearest! in
again!" He followed her, and to Petty's astonishment, the pair were
gone.

Joseph Naylor, lounging on the gallery hard by, had seen the passage.
He came forward and laid his hand on Petty's arm, as, standing
stock-still in his bewilderment, he peered into the darkness after the
vanished buggy.

"A strange part you seem to have played in those young folk's
comedy--a tantalising part, and laughable, if people knew about it.
But we will not tell them, will we? They have been long engaged. Mamma
was adverse, perhaps unreasonable. But she will come round. We won't
interfere, to spoil sport. Will we, Petty?"

Walter looked round rather ruefully. "You may trust to my holding my
tongue, Mr Naylor. My own part in it has not been so distinguished
that I need wish it known."

The runaways were on the road to Lippenstock. Walter Blount had spent
the evening in the hall ready to follow Margaret as she went out. He
had missed her, and waited on, till the party broke up not long after.
Then he had found that his buggy was gone, and not seeing the lady,
surmised she might be in it--might have got in to await him, and
allowed the horse to bolt. He had difficulty in procuring a horse to
follow, but in the end succeeded in bribing the man to take a leader
out of one of the omnibuses, under a storm of reproaches from the
outraged passengers, and had galloped to the Beach in hopes of
overtaking and reclaiming his missing "rig"; and he had succeeded,
recovering both outfit and passenger.

"Oh, Walter! what luck!" cried Margaret. "I thought that ridiculous Mr
Petty had spoiled everything. His name is Walter, it seems; and when I
called you, he answered. He should have known I would not call him by
his name. We must hurry, though. Everybody will know, now, as soon as
they get home. I see we are on the road to Lippenstock."

"Yes. Why should we risk meeting them, even in the dark? But I do not
think young Petty will say anything. He seems a decent fellow who
would not do a shabby thing; and he is not likely to tell an adventure
in which he plays so ridiculous a part. To carry away a lady for
another man!"




                           CHAPTER XXXIII.

                   SUSAN IS EQUAL TO THE EMERGENCY.


Mrs Naylor was late of coming down-stairs next morning, but she took
no special notice of Margaret's not having come to inquire for her,
further than to prepare herself with a taunt at undutiful children
against the moment when they should meet. Her empty chair at dinner,
however, told that something was amiss; and Lucy could give no
information, further than that Margaret had not slept at Clam Beach
the previous night.

"Not slept? What do you mean? Have you been keeping this from me all
these hours? Why did you not tell me at once?"

"Because you make such a fuss, mamma. It was as much as my peace for
all day was worth to disturb you."

"You take it coolly. You must know where she is?"

"No indeed, mamma. She was under your own wing when I saw her last.
You sat on one side of her, and Mr Petty on the other. If she has
broken away at last from such close _surveillance_, it is not very
surprising."

"Has your sister run away, my dear?" asked Mrs Wilkie across the table
of Lucy. Then, turning her eyes defiantly on the mother, with whom,
since their last set-to, she could scarcely be said to be on speaking
terms, she added, "I gave you warning, ma'am, about certain on-goings;
and ye were scarcely ceevil to me on the head of it. Who's right now?
I'd like to know."

"Whist, mother!" said her son, pulling at her gown under the table.
"Let people settle their own hash."

"They would have mixed my son up in their hash, and done for him, if
they could. I'll show them I see through them and their pretensions,
now when they're fand out, and know what a little-worth crew they
are."

Joseph Naylor overheard, and could not restrain a smile, which excited
the indignation of his sister-in-law almost beyond control.

"I remember your polite expressions, ma'am," she said; "but there are
distinctions which make a difference. The gentleman you then chose to
speak of disrespectfully, coupling his name with Miss Naylor's in a
most unwarrantable manner, is fifth son of a deputy-lieutenant and
Custos Rotulorum in Memicombshire, England. You have not been used to
meet gentlemen of his station, and had better not refer to them.
Ignorance becomes ridiculous when it forces itself into notice."

"The fifth son of a tirlie-wirlie, is he, ma'am? I think little of
that. I'd have ye know that my son has a tirlie-wirlie of his own, if
it's a cairidge ye mean. The fifth son of people with a cairidge isn't
much. He'd have to ride outside on the dickie beside the driver, I'm
thinking."

Mrs Naylor was dumb. It is useless to retort on people who do not, or
who will not, understand.

At that moment a telegram was brought to Joseph. He tore it open, read
it, and handed it to his sister-in-law.

"This is from Margaret," he whispered. "Control yourself, and do not
give the people room to snigger at your expense."

The telegram was dated Gorham, New Hampshire. It ran: "Married at
eleven this morning. Margaret Blount."

Mrs Naylor read, and but for the sudden flushing of her features,
controlled herself from any outward betrayal of displeasure. It is the
one unmixed good which comes of living in public, that people are
compelled to suppress their manifestations of feeling; and, driven by
stress of circumstances to seem calm, the more speedily become so
really. Reason, unimpeded by emotion, which is nourished on its own
manifestations, comes sooner to the rescue, and shows how few
miscarriages are worth the distress we are apt to give ourselves over
them. In pretending before observers to make light of a
disappointment, we involuntarily give heed to our own words, and come
to think less of it than otherwise we should have done. Mrs Naylor's
mind, instead of dwelling on her provocation, was forced to conceal
the wound from the impertinently curious, and thereby dividing itself
upon two views of the subject--the grievance and its concealment--was
less disturbed by either.

The first idea which came distinct to the surface, through her mental
perturbation, was an appreciation of her own good sense; and her good
fortune, in having boasted, immediately before having received this
news, of her son-in-law's high connections. Now that the young man was
indissolubly knotted to her family, and she must make the most of him,
the Custos Rotulorum, with his ancestral hall in Memicombshire, was
the sheet-anchor of his claim to consequence. If it was an ideal
claim, instead of the grossly real one she had desired for her
daughter's husband, it was infinitely finer in kind; and she prepared
to take it up, and brandish it vigorously, to cow and overpower
impressible minds, and suppress colonial pretension.

She began to feel quite imperial, after a little trying, and when
dinner was over, had come to feel that a Custos Rotulorum made an
infinitely finer father-in-law for her girl than all the judges in the
Dominion rolled into one could have done. When the ladies gathered
up-stairs, therefore, she played her best card, under the
circumstances, with quite a good heart; she showed them her telegram,
and claimed their congratulations. She talked effusively of "an old
attachment"--"two romantic children, who could not bring themselves to
profane the interchange of their holy vows, with the garish
vulgarities of orange-blossoms and Brussels lace, bride's-maids,
breakfast, and speechifying, but had resolved to go away by themselves
and be married in peace." "She had been persuaded to keep their secret
and say nothing." "They were away on their wedding tour, now; but she
was still under promise to reveal no more." "They might have gone to
California or to visit the Custos Rotulorum," she would not say which,
but she let it be inferred that it was England and the ancestral hall,
to which their happy steps were bent.

The ladies thus unexpectedly called on for congratulations paid them
at once--they could not help themselves; but they paid them perhaps a
little grudgingly, feeling injured at having been balked of the
preliminary tattle. Had it been sympathy and condolence which Mrs
Naylor claimed, they could have opened their hearts much more freely.
They could have mingled a tear or two quite comfortably with hers, and
felt deeply interested in the new sensation; but that two young people
should go away and get married, without telling anybody, and then that
it should turn out a right, proper, and desirable union, was treating
them very badly, in the dearth just then of pleasurable excitement.

Joseph Naylor was the only person who fully enjoyed the scene, as he
walked upon the gallery with Rose, and looked in through the open
windows. What a remarkable woman was this sister-in-law of his, to be
sure! and how little he had been aware of those reserves of strength
and quickness which she was now displaying to such good purpose!
Accustomed in the family circle to have her way, and to overbear
opposition with petulance, peevishness, indignation, or convenient ill
health, as best suited, it had not occurred to him that for once she
could act like a sensible woman and bravely accept the inevitable. He
had dreaded an explosion, a scene, perhaps a fainting-fit and general
commotion, when in helpless trepidation he had handed her that
telegram; and here she was, with a smiling face, claiming felicitation
on the overthrow of her plans and wishes, and actually taking credit
for a result which had worked itself out in defiance of her
opposition.

"There is not an acrobat in Barnum's circus," he said, "who could have
turned a somersault as neatly. I could not have believed our Susan
capable of so sudden a change of front. A woman of her talent and
resource is hid away and completely lost in a small place like Jones's
Landing."

Rose agreed with him, and was vastly interested in the whole affair.
She dwelt on it, recurred to the different points and stages,
discussed, analysed, and combed out every detail separately to its
greatest length. It gratified Joseph that she should concern herself
so warmly in his family affairs, but he would have been glad if her
interest had been sooner satisfied. She contrived that the
conversation should not progress, as it naturally would have done,
from Margaret's love-passages to their own. Even the night on
Fessenden's Island was not able, as Joseph had felt confident that it
would be, to withdraw her thoughts from the runaways to their own
tender affairs. When he endeavoured to transfer the interest, she
returned with renewed curiosity to ask where Margaret and Blount first
met, and from that digressed still further, to demand full particulars
of his circumstances, birth, and parentage. She was as charmingly
companionable as she always had been; Joseph loved and adored as he
always did; but he could not draw her on to the closer and more
personal topic on which he yearned to hold converse.

That topic--their engagement--was one to which this afternoon she had
an insuperable, and, as she told herself, an unreasonable repugnance
to reopen at the present moment. Come it must, eventually, and she
would welcome it; but not to-day. A shadow was upon her, the shadow of
Bertie Roe, an influence to which she was resolved that she would not
yield, but which yet had power to cast an unattractiveness and dimness
over all beside. She had broken with that man for ever, had she not?
but she had spoken with him, in dismissing him, and the converse of
all the world beside had lost its relish. She felt, but would not own
it. Had she not announced openly her new engagement? and was she, like
some poor-spirited slave, to break it off and go back, because her old
tyrant had chosen to lift his finger? What would her friends, the
world, the free-thinking and strong-minded who had applauded her
spirit, say to see her go back to bondage and resume her chains? She
chafed to think of it, and tried to lash herself into new anger
against her husband. And she had felt so strong in her resolve, all
through the bygone week! To think that a few words, and a little
pleading, should have weakened her like this! She was growing unworthy
of her former self. How dim and indistinct her wrongs had grown since
yesterday, when that sweet insidious voice had taken on itself to
explain them away! Why had she listened?... And until yesterday, the
sight of the woman he was always walking with had made her strong; but
that crouching figure under the tree, seen yesterday, who could fear
that? How feel jealous of aught so forlorn? There was a little triumph
in it, that Bertie should have been brought so low; but she missed the
tonic and strengthening influence which had been thus dispelled. She
was resolved to resist, to have done with Bertie Roe; but there was a
strange diffidence of the strength within her, which she would not
acknowledge to herself, but still was aware of, foreboding general
collapse.

Trying to keep up this waning strength, she worked hard at being
interested in Joseph and his family, especially in the family; that
was the easier subject of the two, and it avoided comparisons,
dangerous at this moment--comparison of years, of stature and physical
endowment, which told against him.

And so Joseph and Rose worked out this day in ostensible amity and
intimacy, but with an inward doubt burrowing and working like hidden
currents in spring beneath the ice, eating it away, and honeycombing
the solid mass, which still looks huge and immovable as ever; and will
continue so to seem, till comes the end, and with a crash the massive
structure crumbles and melts and disappears.




                            CHAPTER XXXIV.

                        MISS ROLPH IS SEVERE.


It was growing late at night. The proprietor and his clerk had
concluded the labours of the day, and were arranging with the
house-steward the bill of fare for the morrow. The male guests were
up-stairs in the parlours with the ladies, or else had secluded
themselves to play poker in private rooms, in accordance with the
rigorous house-rule against gambling. Gilbert Roe alone paced the
lower corridor, smoking cigar after cigar, which failed to soothe
him--restless and woebegone, waiting on for he knew not what, unable
to tear himself from the dreariest quarters in which he had ever
sojourned.

He was not popular with the men. He took no interest in their
amusements, having other cares at this time, and they voted him
unsociable and of no account. Since Maida's disappearance, the few
lady guests with whom he was acquainted had asked him where she was;
and on his declaring that he did not know, they had turned away with a
frightened and suspicious glance, as though they suspected him of
having made away with her. He wandered about the house like another
Cain, suspected, dreaded, and shunned, as though there were a mark of
warning and of evil on his brow; but he would not go away while Rose
remained an inmate of the house. He had an impression that there was
an influence within her doing battle on his behalf--he had detected
her furtive glances more than once wandering towards him, and averted
again ere he could meet them, and he would not go away; but the
waiting was inexpressibly dreary in the meantime.

The rumble of wheels was heard outside; a vehicle stopped before the
door. The porter, drowsing in his corner, started to his feet and ran
down to carry in baggage, and the landlord followed to inspect the
untimely arrival. It was a tall spare lady, dressed in black, who
walked straight to the desk and registered herself, "Principal Rolph,
Female College, Montpelier;" then asked to have Miss Springer's bill
made out, that she might settle it, and desired that lady's effects to
be packed up and forwarded.

Having finished her business with the clerk, she turned to follow the
bell-boy to her appointed chamber, and met Roe straight in the eye, as
he wearily paced the tiles, counting the minutes in their lagging
flight, till his hour should arrive for turning in.

"Bertie Roe! Ha! you may well look guilty and ashamed to face me. You
did not expect to see me here, I reckon."

He held out his hand to her, though his look on meeting was scarcely
one of welcome.

"We will dispense with hand-shaking, all things considered. We can
neither of us be very pleased to see the other; but you need not pass
on. I mean to speak my mind to you before I let you go."

"Speak on, Miss Rolph. It is natural you should feel strongly against
me. I will not even tell you that it was not my fault. That would seem
like casting reflections where I promised and still wish to defend."

"That sounds proper enough; but I have more against you than you
think--another instance of your misconduct. What possesses you, Bertie
Roe, to go prowling and ravening about the world like this?--blighting
the lives and devastating the affections of trusting women? Why do you
do it? What pleasure can you feel in crushing a girl's self-respect,
and making her feel shameless and a fool?"

"She does not feel one bit like a fool, Miss Rolph; and her
self-respect is not crushed at all. Far from wishing to crush her, I
am ready to humble myself, and take the blame of what I did not bring
about, and, heaven knows, had no wish should happen."

"Then you did not wish Maida Springer to run away as she did? If she
had stayed, would you have proposed to marry her? You took a curious
way to show your intentions."

"Maida Springer! What have I to do with _her?_ And what have _you_ to
do with Maida Springer?"

"She is a particular friend of mine. I have a high opinion of Maida
Springer, and I think you have behaved to her like a ruffian."

"We are old friends. I have always wished her well, and she wishes me
well, I am sure. An unkind word has never passed between us, and we
have been constantly together for--let me see--all the time I have
been staying here."

"I know that; and when a single man devotes himself in that open way
to an unmarried woman, what does it mean, if not marriage? Was it
honourable of you, Bertie Roe, to behave like that?"

"I do not consider myself a single man, Miss Rolph. I never
shall--unless--unless--which God forbid!"

"Did you tell her you did not consider yourself single?"

"How could I, Miss Rolph? Do you think a man is made of wood and
leather?"

"Then you left her to believe that you were single, Bertie Roe; and
you should be ashamed of yourself. You told her--I have it from
herself--that you were not married."

"Neither am I, Miss Rolph. The Divorce Court has annulled my
marriage."

"You have behaved dishonourably, Bertie; and with callous cruelty
besides, from what she told me, in betraying her weakness as you did,
to the other. It was not a manly act, let me tell you. I expected
better things of you."

"How could I know, or even suspect? Do you take me for so conceited an
ass that I must needs suppose every woman I converse with is in love
with me?"

"That will not do, Bertie. You are not such a stripling as not to know
that girls expect to marry, that society forbids them to make the
advance, and that if a man pays them undivided and conspicuous
attention, they are entitled to believe that he means something."

"I never thought of that, Miss Rolph. If you will believe me, there is
but one woman in the world I can ever feel towards in that way."

"And a pretty way you took to show your love!--deserted her--judgment
by default--'cruelty and desertion'!"

"What could I do? She would not listen to reason. I could not let her
name be dragged through the law reports in company with those of all
the worst people in the State. No; you must acknowledge, Miss Rolph,
that I showed forbearance and consideration there, at least. What
would the charming little tempers we both remember have looked like,
after being carded out and hackled by a pair of foul-mouthed lawyers?
They would have made her a laughing-stock to the whole country. I know
I was right in letting judgment go by default, though it went sorely
against my grain to do it."

"And now you see the consequence. She is engaged to marry another
man."

"But you will not let her, Miss Rolph? You will insist on her giving
me another chance. I am confident she will never be fond of any one
else as she was fond of me, and still is in her heart, if she would
listen to its promptings."

"That you may bicker together incessantly, and quarrel anew?--like a
pair of spoilt children, to be a scandal to decent people?"

"Ah! that is over, you may rely, Miss Rolph. I venture to assert that
we have both suffered too deeply in our separation ever to let the
bond, if it should be renewed, fret us again. Such patience as we
shall have with one another, will be a sight to see. You will help us
to make it up, Miss Rolph? Your advice goes a long way with her."

"I fear not. I have tried ere now, and had my interference declined
with thanks. I cannot attempt to make it up between you and her. In
fact I had resolved to wash my hands of her altogether; but for other
reasons, this new engagement of hers must be broken off, though I
shall not approach _her_ on the subject--in the first instance, at
least. I shall go to the gentleman."

"Only break it off, dear Miss Rolph, and you have my lifelong
gratitude--and hers too, though it seems a bold assertion; but I have
seen signs of relenting, and I believe it is pride, and the fear of
being laughed at, which chiefly keep up the estrangement."

"We shall see, Bertie; but you do not deserve it," said Miss Rolph,
attempting to keep up the rigour of her first words, though the
friendliness of her nod and smile at parting belied the pretence.




                            CHAPTER XXXV.

                              MILLICENT.


Next morning, Joseph Naylor was disturbed in the act of shaving by the
intelligence that a lady desired to see him, and that she was waiting
his coming down-stairs in one of the parlours.

"A lady? Who is it? What does she want?" he inquired of the black boy
who brought the message.

"Principal of the Female College at Montpelier, sah."

"Never heard of the institution. Some one drumming up for pupils, I
suppose. My nieces are rather old to put to school. They would not go
if I tried to put them. Why does she not apply to their mother? Susan
never did allow me to interfere about the schools--or anything else,
for that matter, when she could manage without me."

He finished his dressing quickly, however, and hastened down-stairs.

In the parlour stood a tall, grey woman, clad in black, awaiting him.
He advanced with a low bow and a look of inquiry. The lady looked
earnestly in his face, coming forward to meet him with extended hand.

"You do not know me, Joseph?"

Joseph stared in surprise at so intimate a form of address; yet there
was a tone in the voice which seemed not unfamiliar, though he could
not connect it in his memory with any particular time, place, or
person.

"I am changed, of course,"--it was still the lady who spoke,--"but so
are you. Try if you cannot recall. It is five-and-twenty years since
we last met."

"You have the advantage, ma'am."

"My name is Millicent Rolph. You know me now?"

"You? Do you mean that you are Lina's sister?"

"I am, Joseph--your sister-in-law. You cannot have forgotten our last
meeting at the old home in New Orleans?"

"I can never forget the last time I met Millicent Rolph; but I trace
no resemblance between you and her. She was a woman of thirty,
dark-haired, large, handsome; you--do not resemble her."

"She was thirty twenty-five years ago, and you were twenty-two. The
years have left their mark upon us both. I cannot but be changed. I
have come through the troubles of a lifetime. There was the war, and
mother's death, and the ruin of our affairs in New Orleans; and there
have been trials and much hard work since then, to change me into the
spare, elderly, white-haired woman you see now. You are changed too,
though life has dealt less harshly, I should judge. Yet I recognised
you at once, though I had prayed that I might not--that you might
prove to be another man, bearing by accident the name of my
brother-in-law.... We were such friends once, Joseph, in the long ago.
Sitting under the shade of the magnolias in the dear old garden, with
Lina between us----"

"Have done, Millicent! I confess now that it is you. I recognise your
voice. But do not stir up old memories. They haunted me like ghosts
for more than twenty years. It is only recently that I have been able
to lay them.... Let them lie. You weighed me down with misery enough
when last we met. Do not refer to it. I had rather we had not met now.
It is like reopening a grave, even to hear you speak. It brings back
all I would forget--all I have been cheating myself into believing
that I had buried and got rid of at last."

"I can understand the feeling."

"What can I do to serve you? Tell me; but let us part at once. I will
do anything, but I cannot stand here listening. Your voice is heavy
with memories like forebodings; my heart sinks at the very sound.
Speak, and let me leave you. What do you want?"

"I want nothing, Joseph--nothing for myself. It is for your own sake I
am come, and it tears my heart to say the things I have to tell you."

"You said something like that when you acted so cruelly before, you
and your mother; but you did not spare me."

"I am come to warn you, Joseph, against this marriage you propose to
make."

"You are? Have you not injured me enough in my affections already? Are
five-and-twenty years of widowhood not enough to have inflicted on one
who never knowingly offended you? What wrong have I done you, that you
should persecute me like this?"

"Joseph, I always loved you like a sister. It crushes me to be made
the herald of your disappointments; but I have no choice."

"I will not listen to you. You shall not put me from Rose as you did
from Lina. Let me pass."

"You cannot marry Rose. You must stop and hear me;" and she planted
herself between him and the door.

"Then I must escape by the window; and there she is, standing at the
farther end of the gallery. How spirited and sweet she looks--how like
our Lina!... Millicent, you will pity, and not come in between? Look,
she sees us! She starts. She is coming to us with that pretty shyness
which seems half defiance. One would think she knew you well,
Millicent?"

"She does, Joseph. Listen to her when we meet; it will save a world of
painful explanation."

Rose came forward, not very quickly, though pride forbade her
faltering. She held her head erect, and her colour was heightened; but
her eyes were far from steady, and for all her endeavours to outface
the situation, betrayed an inclination to seek the ground.

"You here, Aunt Millicent? I did not know that you and Mr Naylor were
acquainted."

"_Aunt_ Millicent? Are you two related, then?" gasped Joseph, his
nether jaw falling.

"She is your own daughter, Joseph Naylor! It was to tell you so that I
sought you out--to preserve you from the hideous mistake you were
about to make. But oh! it breaks my heart that I should be your
messenger of evil tidings again."

Joseph leant against the window-jamb, looking very pale, and uttering
a sigh so deep that it sounded like a moan.

"Do you mean that she is Lina's child?" he said, after a pause.

"Yes; and yours."

"I never was told that I had a child. You might have told me that,
when you told the rest."

"Would it have been easier, think you, to bear the loss of Lina, if
you had been told that we were keeping you from your child? If we had
told you of her birth, perhaps you might have claimed her. Lina must
have learnt everything. She would have died of shame and remorse."

"When was the child born?"

"The day the news reached us of her father's loss at sea; her birth
was hastened by the news. The mother nearly died. She fell out of one
fainting-fit into another, till exhausted nature could endure no more.
For days her life hung trembling in the balance, and then the sight of
the baby turned the scale. There was something to live for--something
that seemed part of you. We took them North. The baby throve, and for
her sake poor Lina took heart and tried to live."

"And you deprived the child even of its father's name?"

"Hillyard adopted her. Lina had no other family. She lived five years
only after that marriage."

"Why did you not restore her to me when her mother died?"

"We could not, Joseph: the world is so big. Where were we to look for
you? You came no more to New Orleans. By-and-by the war drove us
North, and reduced us to poverty. Mother died. I went to live with
Hillyard and bring up the child. He was devoted to her. They were
everything to one another. It would have been cruelty to interfere."

"You seem to have had pity for every one but me, Millicent. Could this
Hillyard's rights in the child compare with mine?"

"You had gone out of our lives, Joseph. We knew--that is, I
knew--little about your family, except that they lived somewhere up in
Canada. That was too far away for us, living in New Orleans, to take
much interest in. Afterwards, when I lived with Hillyard in Canada,
near Sarnia, I did not remember, or know how to set about inquiring."

"You might have been more considerate, Millicent. You have had a care
for every one but me. I do not deny that you do your duty in
interfering to prevent me from marrying my own daughter; but you
should have begun sooner. To find an intended wife changed into a
daughter is--is--is a shock!"

"You will bear it, Joseph, like the man you are. In any case, you
could not have married this headstrong girl: she is another man's
wife."

Rose flushed, but said nothing. She and her Aunt Millicent had been
accustomed to each other's contradictious speeches all through life.
It was Joseph who came to the rescue of his new-found daughter.

"You should not speak so, Millicent, of your sister's child. You may
not hold with divorces in general, but you should keep quiet in this
case. If the law of her country declares her single, there is no
gainsaying it."

"That is just where the impediment stands, Joseph; for I have taken a
lawyer's advice. She is a single woman in the United States, and a
married one in British territory. She was married at Sarnia in Canada.
She is Bertie Roe's wife wherever British law prevails, seeing that
she was granted her divorce on grounds which a British court will not
allow. See the scrape your daughter is in! and use a father's
authority to send her back to her husband."

Rose tried to grow angry. She turned upon her aunt with a frown, to
repudiate the proposal and declare she would never go back. But the
words failed her; a strange, sweet weakness stole through every limb.
She felt conquered without knowing how, or desiring to know why. She
covered her face and burst into tears.

Millicent saw her opportunity. While father and daughter were still
struggling with themselves to regain composure, she sent for Roe,
presented him to his father-in-law, and explained the legal position
of his relation to his wife.

The wife kept her face concealed in her handkerchief, but she relented
so far as to let Bertie take her hand. To all expostulation she
declared that she could not do more. "Was she to make herself the
laughing-stock of the house? She was on American ground, where
Millicent herself acknowledged she was free; and she would remain so,
or go right away from everybody, if they teased her any more."

It was concluded at length that they should return to Canada that very
day. Roe, Mrs Naylor, Lucy, and Millicent, accompanied Rose and her
father; and Blount and Margaret were telegraphed to meet them at
Jones's Landing. There, away from the curious eyes of fellow-guests
who had been witnesses, if unconscious ones, of their little comedy,
the party at once fell into their readjusted relations with one
another. Joseph, with a grown-up and married daughter, naturally took
the position of benevolent patriarch and head of the family. He
associated Blount in his business, thereby securing that his niece
should not be carried away into the wilds, and contenting his
sister-in-law Susan, who thereafter maintained in private to Lucy that
she had carried her point after all, notwithstanding the seeming
defeat; as, but for the stand which she had made against Margaret's
living in the woods, it never would have occurred to Joseph to provide
for Blount, and settle the pair beside her at Jones's Landing.

From the moment Rose got into the railway at Narwhal Junction, she
slid contentedly back into Mrs Roe. No one ever again alluded to an
estrangement between the married pair, and Jones's Landing was left in
total ignorance that their married life had ever been other than the
even, trustful, and happy existence which it had now become. The two
seemed never apart, never weary of each other's society, yet never in
each other's way in fulfilling the duties of social life. The only
separation which took place between them was when Gilbert returned to
Chicago to wind up his affairs there, preparatory to settling in
Canada beside his father-in-law. Rose shrank from meeting again the
aiders and abettors who had encouraged her matrimonial escapades, of
which she was now thoroughly ashamed, as well as the friends who had
disapproved of her conduct. Having sealed a peace with her husband,
she was fain to forget that they had ever been divided. Scenes and
persons associated with the estrangement had become alike detestable
to her; she wished never to see or hear of them again. The only
occasion on which she has ever recurred to that miserable year of her
life was when, about twelve months after their establishment at
Jones's Landing, she came unexpectedly upon Bertie writing a letter,
with a case containing jewellery lying open on the desk beside him.

"What a lovely bracelet, Bertie!"

He looked up, colouring and confused, and drew the blotting-paper
across his letter.

"And you are writing! To whom, pray? Sending valuable presents to
ladies, and not a word to your wife. There was a time--when,--but
never mind. Who is it you are writing to?"

"It is--but you never heard the name--Mrs Langenwoert."

"No. Where did you know her?"

"Do you remember the little schoolma'am at Clam Beach?--the last
lady you did me the honour to be jealous of? She is to be married
to-morrow."



                               THE END.



                PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.








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