He smiled. "You are to be congratulated,

Transcriber's Note:

Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original book have

been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

The book frequently omits punctuation before quotes. The punctuation

has been retained as in the original. The length and spacing of

ellipses (...) has also been retained as printed.

There is no Chapter IV.

Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.

[Illustration: _Elizabeth_.]

THE

ORDEAL OF

ELIZABETH

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY

J. F. TAYLOR AND

COMPANY, NEW YORK

THE ORDEAL

OF

ELIZABETH

_Chapter I_

The Van Vorst Homestead stands close to the road-side; a dark,

low-built, gloomy old place. The horse-shoe on the door, testifies to

its age, and the devout superstition of the Van Vorst who built it.

However effectual against witches, the horse-shoe cannot be said to

have brought much luck otherwise. The Van Vorsts who lived there, a

junior branch of the old colonial house, did not prosper in worldly

matters, but sank more and more as time went on, in general respect

and consideration.

There was a break in the deterioration, and apparently a revival of

old glories, when Peter Van Vorst married his cousin, a brilliant

beauty from town, who had refused, as tradition asserts, half the

eligible men of her day, and accepted Peter for what seemed a sudden

and mysterious caprice. The marriage was a nine days' wonder; but

whatever the reasons that prompted her strange choice--whether love,

indifference, or some feeling more complicated and subtle; Elizabeth

Van Vorst made no effort to avert its consequences, but settled down

in silence to a life of monotonous poverty. She did not even try, as

less favored women have done under harder circumstances, to keep in

touch with the world she had given up. She never wrote to her old

friends, never recalled herself, by her presence in town, to her

former admirers. As for the Homestead, it wore, under the inert

indifference of her rule, the same neglected look which had prevailed

for years. The foliage grew in rank profusion about the house till it

shut out not only the sunlight, but all view of the river. Perhaps

Madam Van Vorst, as people called her, disliked the idea of change; or

perhaps she grudged the cost of a day's labor to cut the trees; or it

might be that she liked the gloom and the feeling of confinement, and

had no desire to feast her eyes on the river, after the fashion of the

Neighborhood. It reminded her too much, perhaps, of the outside world.

She was a stately, handsome old lady, and made an imposing appearance

when she came into church on Sunday, in the black silk gown which

rustled with an old-time dignity, and her puffs of snow-white hair

standing out against the rim of her widow's bonnet. Her daughters,

following timidly behind her, seemed to belong to a different sphere;

dull, faded women, in shabby gowns which the village girls would have

disdained. If you spoke to them after church, when the whole

Neighborhood exchanges greetings and discusses the news of the week,

they would answer you shyly, in embarrassed monosyllables. Still, in

some intangible way, you felt the innate breeding, which lurked behind

all the uncouthness of voice and manner.

Their life, under their mother's training, had been one long lesson in

self-effacement; they never even drove to the village without

consulting her, or bought a spool of cotton without her permission.

The stress of poverty, as time went on, grew less stringent at the

Homestead; but with Madam Van Vorst the penury which had been first

the result of necessity, had grown to be second nature. She let the

money accumulate and made no change in their manner of life. Her

daughters had no books, no teachers; no occupation but house-work; no

interest beyond the petty gossip of the country-side.

With Peter, the son, the downward process was more evident and had

taken deeper root. His voice was more uncouth than that of his sisters

and his manner less refined; it was hard to distinguish him if you saw

him in church, from any farmer, ill at ease in his Sunday clothes. He

spent his days at work on the farm, and his evenings, more often than

his mother dreamed of, at the bar in the village. Like his sisters, he

bowed beneath her iron rod and lived in mortal fear of her

displeasure. Yet he had his plans, well defined, and frequently

boasted (at least at the village bar) of what he should do when he

became his own master.

With the sisters a certain inborn delicacy of feeling prevented them

from formulating, even to themselves, those hopes and aspirations

which, nevertheless, lay dormant, needing only a sudden shock to call

them into life. When that shock came, and it was known all over the

Neighborhood that Madam Van Vorst was dead, the news brought a mild

sense of loss, the feeling of a landmark removed; and people hastened

at once to the Homestead with sincere condolences and offers of

assistance to the daughters. Cornelia and Joanna were stunned, but not

entirely with sorrow; rather with the sort of feeling that a prisoner

might experience, who finds himself by a sudden blow, released from a

chain which habit has rendered bearable, and almost second nature, yet

none the less a chain.

It was not till the evening after the funeral that this stifled

feeling found expression. The day had been fraught with a ghastly

excitement that seemed to give for the moment to these poor crushed

beings a fictitious importance. All the Neighborhood had come to the

funeral; some grand relations even had journeyed up from town to do

honor to the woman whom they had ignored in her lifetime; these last

lingered for a solemn meal at the Homestead. The whole affair seemed

to bring the Van Vorst women more in contact with the outside world

than any event since their father's death, many years before. Sitting

that evening, talking it all over, it might have been some festivity

that they were discussing, were it not for their crape-laden gowns,

and the tears they were still shedding half mechanically, though with

no conscious insincerity.

"It was kind of the Schuyler Van Vorsts to come up," said Cornelia,

wistfully. "I thought they had quite forgotten us--they are such fine

people, you know--but they were really very kind, quite as if they

took an interest."

"I'm glad the cake was so good," said the practical Joanna. "I took

special pains with it, for I thought some of them might stay."

"It went off very nicely," said Cornelia, tearfully, "very nicely

indeed. Mrs. Schuyler Van Vorst spoke of the cream being so good."

"She ate a good deal of it, I noticed."

"One thing I was sorry for," said Cornelia, reluctantly. "I saw her

looking at the furniture. You know poor Mamma never would have

anything done to it."

The sisters looked mechanically about the familiar room whose

deficiencies had never been so glaringly apparent. The Homestead

drawing-room had been re-furnished, with strict regard to economy many

years ago, after a fashion too antiquated to be beautiful, and too

modern to be interesting. The chairs and sofa were covered with

horse-hair, and decorated, at intervals, with crochet anti-macassars.

In the centre of the room stood a marble-topped table, upon which were

ranged, at stiff angles, the Pilgrim's Progress, Paradise Lost, and

several books of sermons. There were no other books and no pretty

knick-knacks; but some perennially blooming wax flowers, religiously

preserved beneath a glass case, contrasted with the chill marble of

the mantel-piece. Above them hung one of the few relics of the past--a

hideous sampler worked by a colonial ancestress. The room was much the

worse for wear, the wall-paper was dingy, the carpet faded to an

indefinite hue, some of the chairs were notoriously unsafe, and the

sofa had lacked one foot for years.

"I think," said Cornelia, with sudden energy, as if roused at last to

the truth of a self-evident proposition, "I think it is about time

that the room was done over."

Joanna attempted no denial; but after a moment she remarked

tentatively, as if balancing the claims of beauty against those of

economy; "Some pretty sateen, I suppose, for a covering would not cost

much."

Cornelia shook her head with melancholy decision. "It would be quite

useless to do anything with the furniture," she declared, "if we

didn't first change the carpet and the wall-paper."

Joanna was silent in apparent acquiescence; and Cornelia, after a

moment's hesitation, brought out a still bolder proposition. "I've

been thinking," she said "that we ought to have a piano. Of course I

can't--we can't either of us play," she went on in hurried deprecation

of Joanna's astonished looks, "poor Mamma would never let us take

lessons; but people have them whether they play or not, and--it would

give such a nice, musical look to the room."

Joanna sat lost for a moment in awe over this radical suggestion. "It

would be very expensive," she said, practically "and--there are a

great many things we need more."

But the more imaginative Cornelia refused to be daunted. "What if it

is expensive!" she said boldly "and if we don't actually need it,

that's all the more reason why it would be nice to have it. We've

never spent money on a single thing in all our lives except for just

what was necessary. Couldn't we for once have something that isn't

necessary, that would be only--pleasant?"

Thus Cornelia struck the key-note of resistance to that doctrine of

utility which had enslaved their lives, and Joanna, after the first

shock of surprise, followed willingly in her lead. It was decided that

the piano should be bought at once, and in discussing this and other

changes, time passed rapidly, and they went to bed in a state of duly

suppressed, but undoubted cheerfulness. It was altogether quite the

pleasantest evening that they had spent for many years, though they

would not have admitted this for the world, and sincerely believed

themselves in great affliction. There was another being in the house

who rejoiced in his freedom and meant to make the most of it.

The next morning at breakfast the sisters might have perceived had

they been less engrossed in their own thoughts, that Peter was

meditating some communication, which he found it hard to express. His

words, when he spoke at last, chimed in oddly with his sisters'

wishes. "I never," he said, speaking very deliberately and looking

about him in great disgust, "I never saw a place that needed doing

over so badly as this does."

There was a moment's pause of astonishment; and then Cornelia looked

up in glad surprise. "Why, Peter," she said, "I had no idea that you

would care"--

"Care!" said Peter, importantly. "Of course I care. I've always meant

to have the place fixed up when--well, she couldn't live for ever, you

know" he broke off half apologetically, as he caught the look of mute

protest on his sisters' faces. "It did all very well for her and for

you," he went on, coolly, "but it's not the sort of place I can bring

my wife to." The last words came out with an air of indifference, that

might have befitted the most commonplace announcement.

Upon Peter's hearers, however, they fell like a thunderbolt. It was

several minutes before Cornelia repeated, in a very low voice:

"Your--your _wife_, Peter?"

"Yes, my wife." Peter rose and faced his sisters squarely, his hands

in his pockets. He thrust out his under lip, and his florid Dutch face

wore an expression of mingled defiance, exultation and embarrassment.

"Why, I've been married some time," he said. "You didn't suppose I was

going to stay single all my life, did you?"

"But who--who"--Cornelia's mind, moving with unusual rapidity, had

already passed in review and rejected as improbable all the eligible

young women of the Neighborhood, with none of whom she had ever seen

Peter exchange two words. "Who can it be, Peter?" she concluded,

lamely.

"Is it--any one we know?" chimed in Joanna, hopefully.

Peter looked them full in the face; he had always held his sisters in

some contempt. "You know her well enough," he said, deliberately "or

if you don't--you ought to. She's a young lady who lives near here,

and her name is Malvina Jones."

There was a dead silence. The old Dutch clock on the mantel-piece,

which had kept its place undisturbed through the trials and changes of

several generations, seemed to beat in the stillness loudly and

fiercely, almost as if it shared the consternation of Peter's sisters,

who stared at him aghast. Cornelia was the first to speak. "Malvina

Jones!" she repeated, slowly. "You don't mean the--the girl whose

father keeps the bar?"

Peter flushed angrily. "There's only one Malvina Jones that I know of"

he declared, "and she's my wife and will be the mistress of this

house. And so, if you don't like it, you can leave--that's all I have

to say."

With this conclusive remark Peter betook himself to his usual

avocations, and his sisters were left to resign themselves to the

situation as best they might.

"Malvina Jones!" Joanna repeated, still lost in astonishment.

"One of the village girls!" said Cornelia, bitterly, "a--a

bar-keeper's daughter."

Joanna seemed to hesitate. "That isn't the worst of it," she said at

last. "There are some very nice girls in the village, you know, but

Malvina Jones is not--I'm afraid she really is _not_ a very nice

girl."

Cornelia was silent. She knew enough of the petty gossip of the

village to be aware that Joanna was stating the case mildly. Before

her mental vision there rose a picture of Malvina as she had often

seen her on Sunday, with her glaring red hair, her smart attire and

her look of bold assurance, undisturbed by the disapproving eyes of

the congregation. Then she thought of her mother, the stately old dame

whom they had been so proud of, even while they feared her. She looked

at the breakfast-table, at the quaint, old-fashioned shapes of the

glistening silver and the Dutch willow-ware which had been in the

family since time immemorial; she thought with affection even of the

old horsehair furniture, which must surely be preferable to such

improvements as Malvina might suggest, and she pictured the

bar-keeper's daughter entertaining her friends in the room where Madam

Van Vorst had received with old-world stateliness the visits of the

Neighborhood. To poor Cornelia the family dignity--what little there

was left of it--seemed to be crumbling to ashes.

"I don't think we need to bother now about--about the piano," she

said, and the words died away in a sob.

_Chapter II_

It was a June morning twenty years later, and Elizabeth's hands were

full of June roses.

"Look," she said, holding them out "how beautiful!" She placed them in

a flat china dish and proceeded to arrange them, humming, as she did

so, a gay little tune from some favorite opera of the day. The Misses

Van Vorst, her aunts, who had been talking rather seriously before the

girl entered, broke off in their conversation and brightened as they

watched her.

There had been times in Elizabeth's childhood when the heart of each

sister had been contracted by a secret fear, which they concealed even

from one another, when they had offered up in seclusion fervent

prayers that certain hereditary characteristics might not be revived

in this treasure which fortune had unexpectedly bestowed upon them.

These prayers had been to all appearance more than answered. Elizabeth

did not look like her mother. It was true that the beautiful, wavy

hair, which grew in soft ripples on her forehead, showed in the full

glare of the sunshine or the firelight a trace, a suspicion of the

deep red which in her mother's locks had been unpleasantly vivid; but

with Elizabeth, it was a warm Titian shade which would delight an

artist. In other respects, it was her grandmother whom she resembled,

as very old people in the Neighborhood would sometimes inform you,

wondering to see the beauty and distinction which had perversely

skipped one generation, reproduced in this bar-maid's daughter.

Certainly it was from Madam Van Vorst that the girl inherited the

haughty turn of the head and the instinctive pride of carriage. The

older woman's beauty may have been more perfect. Elizabeth's features

were admittedly far from classical. Her nose tilted slightly, the chin

was too square, the red, pouting lips were perhaps a trifle too full.

But her skin was dazzlingly fair and fresh, and there was a glow of

color and wealth of outline about her which disarmed criticism. The

eyes, under their long lashes, were large and lustrous. Like her hair,

they varied in different lights, or perhaps it was in different moods.

They seemed a clear gray when she was thoughtful, blue when she

smiled, and they grew, in moments of grief or acute emotion,

singularly deep and dark. But such moments had, at this period of her

life, been rare.

To her aunts, as they watched her that morning, she was the visible

embodiment of all those stifled aspirations, to which Peter's marriage

had apparently given a fatal blow. They could think now without

bitterness of that great humiliation, and if they spoke of their

brother's wife, it was with due propriety as "poor Malvina." They owed

her after all, a debt of gratitude, since she was Elizabeth's mother,

who had died most opportunely when Elizabeth was a baby.

The girl had been their sole charge from the first, for Peter

concerned himself little about his motherless child. His death, when

she was still very young, could hardly be considered an unmitigated

affliction. As for Elizabeth, it was chiefly remarkable in being the

occasion of her first black frock, on the strength of which she gave

herself airs towards her less afflicted playmates.

Thus the Misses Van Vorst were free to carry out certain cherished

plans in regard to their niece's future, which they had formed when,

hanging over her cradle, they had fondly traced a resemblance to the

grandmother after whom she had been named, through some odd,

remorseful freak of Peter's. Impelled, as she grew older, by a wistful

consciousness of all that they had missed, they heroically resigned

themselves to part with her for a while that she might enjoy the

advantages of a very select and extremely expensive school in town.

And after five years she returned to them, not over-burdened by much

abstruse knowledge, but with a graceful carriage, a charming

intonation, a considerable stock of accomplishments, and the prettiest

gowns of any girl in the Neighborhood.

Her return was the signal for the changes at the Homestead, which now

made the old house a cheerful place to live in. The sunlight, no

longer excluded by the overgrown foliage, flooded the drawing-room,

and from the long French windows, opening out on the well-kept lawn,

you caught a charming glimpse of the river. The fire-place was

decorated in white and gold, the polished floor was strewn with rugs.

Amid the profusion of modern chairs and tables and bric-à-brac were

old heirlooms which had mouldered in the attic for generations,

un-thought of and despised, till Elizabeth routed them out and placed

them, rather to her aunts' surprise, in a conspicuous position. The

walls were hung with fine engravings, books and magazines were

scattered here and there. Across one corner stood the much-coveted

piano.

The improvement was not confined to the furniture. The Misses Van

Vorst, too, seemed to have progressed and assumed a more modern air,

in harmony with their present surroundings. They were old women now,

and people of the present generation placed carefully the prefix

"Miss" before their Christian names; but in many ways, they were

younger and certainly far happier than they were twenty years before.

It was Elizabeth who had made the change, it was she who had filled

their narrow lives with a wonderful new interest. And yet, it was on

her account that they felt just then the one anxiety which disturbed

their satisfaction in the warmth of her youth and beauty, nay, was

rather intensified because of it.

"We were saying, dear," Miss Cornelia could not help observing after a

moment "just as you came in, that it is a pity the Neighborhood is so

dull. There is so little amusement for a young girl."

"We used to think it quite gay when we were young," said Miss Joanna,

her knitting-needles clicking cheerfully as she talked. "There was

always a lawn-party at the Van Antwerps', and Mrs. Courtenay was at

home every Saturday, and then the fair for the church."

"But Mrs. Courtenay doesn't stay at home any longer," said Miss

Cornelia, dejectedly, "and the Van Antwerps haven't given a thing for

ever so long, and as for the fair--the church has everything it needs

now--steeple, font, everything, so there is no object in having a

fair."

"And so few people to buy if there were," sighed Miss Joanna, becoming

despondent in her turn. "I quite miss it--I used to enjoy making

things for it. Really now, if it were not for knitting socks for Mrs.

Anderton's new babies, I should be quite at a loss for something to

do."

Elizabeth, who had turned and stared from one to the other, as if in

surprise at the introduction of a new subject, here broke in with a

soft little laugh. "Well, auntie, Mrs. Anderton certainly keeps you

busy," she said, consolingly "and as for the fair--why, I don't know

that it would be such wild dissipation." Insensibly at the last words,

her mouth drooped at the corners, the eyes, which an instant before

had sparkled with amusement, grew thoughtful. A slight cloud of

discontent seemed to drift over the buoyant freshness of her mood.

Miss Cornelia observed it and continued to lament. "Well, at least, a

fair would be _something_," she insisted "and then in old times there

used to be dances. If you went out to tea--oftener, my dear--even that

would be a diversion."

The cloud on Elizabeth's face deepened. She bent down with elaborate

care to place the last rose in position. "Oh, I don't know that it

matters much," she said, and there was a sudden hardness in her tone.

"There are no men for a dance, and as for the tea-parties--they don't

amuse me very much. There are always the Andertons, or Johnstons, or

both; and they talk about Mrs. Anderton's babies, of Mrs. Johnston's

rheumatism, or the way the village girls dress; and the Rector asks me

to take a class in Sunday-school, and looks shocked when I refuse;

and--and it is all stupid and tiresome. I--I s--sometimes--I hate this

place, and all the people in it," Elizabeth broke off, with a sound

not unlike a sob.

Her aunts were paralyzed. This outburst of revolt was to them an

entirely new phase in the girl's development. They did not attempt any

response, or rebuke, and Elizabeth, after a moment, went over and

kissed them each remorsefully. "There, don't mind me," she said. "I'm

a horrid, discontented wretch." Then, as if to put an end to the

subject, she added quickly: "I'm going to drive to Bassett Mills. Is

there anything I can do for you?"

Her aunts gladly accepted the change of mood.

"It's a lovely morning for a drive, dear," said Miss Joanna, "and will

do you good. But I wish, if you go, you would stop at the Rectory--the

baby is ill, so the butcher tells me, and I have some beef-tea I'd

like you to take."

Elizabeth's smile again lit up her face into its former brilliance.

"What would you do without the butcher, Aunt Joanna?" she asked.

"He's a perfect mine of information. Did he have any other news this

morning?"

"Only that he had just come from the Van Antwerps'--they are up at

last for the summer."

"Are they," said Elizabeth, carelessly. "Ah, well, they don't make

much difference, one way or the other." She seemed to reflect a

moment, while again her face clouded. "If I go to the Rectory," she

said abruptly, "I suppose I must stop to see Aunt Rebecca. She will

see me pass, and she is always complaining that I neglect her."

The Misses Van Vorst again looked distressed. The aunt of whom

Elizabeth spoke, Malvina's sister-in-law, kept a small dry-goods shop,

much patronized by the Neighborhood, and had risen considerably above

the original position of the family. Yet the older ladies of the

Homestead could never be reminded of her existence without a sharp

recollection of a painful chapter in the family history. Had they

consulted only their wishes, Elizabeth would never have been informed

of the connection. They were just women, however, and admitted the

claims of Elizabeth's only relation on her mother's side, and one who

had a daughter, too, of about the girl's own age.

"Of course, my dear," Miss Cornelia said at last, reluctantly, "we

wouldn't have you neglect your aunt."

"No, poor thing," said Joanna "we wouldn't have you hurt her feelings

for the world. So perhaps you would better stop there, my dear; and

if you do, will you get me some sewing-silk from the store?"

This proved by no means the only commission with which Elizabeth was

burdened when she started, half an hour later; for Miss Joanna had had

time to remember several other things she wanted from the store, to

say nothing of the beef-tea for the Rector's wife, and numerous

messages of advice and sympathy, which the girl was earnestly charged

not to forget. Miss Cornelia had no commissions, and merely asked

Elizabeth to remember, when she came home, every one whom she had

seen, to inquire of the Johnstons, if she met them, how their

grandmother was, and to notice, if she saw the Van Antwerps, if they

had their new carriage, and what Mrs. Bobby had on. At last Elizabeth

drove off, in the old-fashioned pony-chaise, behind the fat white pony

whose age was wrapped in obscurity, and who trod, with the leisurely

indifference of a well-bred carriage-horse, the road which he knew by

heart.

It was a pleasant, shady road, that ran between stone fences, across

which you caught the scent of honey-suckle. Beyond were fine places,

once the pride of the Neighborhood, now for the most part neglected,

or turned into pasturage for cows. The trees interlacing, formed an

arch over-head, through which the sunlight flickered in long, slanting

rays; the air was very still, except for the soft hum of bees, and a

gentle wind that occasionally rustled the foliage and caressed the

petals of the wild-roses, which grew in careless profusion along the

road-side. Here and there, in sheltered nooks, wild violets still

lingered, and the fresh green grass in the fields was thickly strewn

with buttercups and daisies. But for all this beauty of the early

summer Elizabeth seemed to have no eyes. Her brows were knit and her

face clouded, and now and then she gave a vicious pull to the white

pony's reins more as a relief to her own feelings than from any hope

of hastening the movements of that dignified animal.

Her thoughts matched the day as little as her looks. Her mind still

reverted with remorse to the outburst of an hour before. Why had she

displayed that childish petulance, and given audible expression to the

discontent which had smouldered unsuspected for many months? To speak

of it was useless and only distressed her aunts; it was not their

fault if the place was dull. And then she could, as a rule, amuse

herself well enough. There were always drives and walks, the garden

and the flowers, her books and her music, a hundred resources in which

she found unceasing pleasure. There was even to her warm vitality a

delight just then in the mere physical fact of living. And yet the

times were growing more frequent day by day, when all this would fail

her, when she would long passionately for novelty, for excitement, for

something--she hardly knew what. There were desperate moments when it

seemed to her that she would welcome any change whatsoever, when she

thought that even storm and stress might be preferable to dull

monotony.

After all, it was not the dullness of the place which lay at the root

of her discontent. There was another trouble which went far deeper of

which she never spoke; yet it affected her whole attitude towards the

world, and more especially the Neighborhood. She did not feel at home

in the small, charmed circle of those who knew each other so well, not

even with the girls with whom she had played as a child. There had

always been a tacit assumption of superiority on their part, which

Elizabeth instinctively felt and resented. The most disagreeable

episode in her life was a quarrel with one of her playmates, in which

the latter had won the last word by an angry taunt against Elizabeth's

mother, who was "a horrid, common woman, whom no one in the

Neighborhood, would speak to--_her_ mother had said so." Elizabeth,

paralyzed, could think of no retort, but walked home in silence,

shedding bitter tears of rage and mortification. She did not repeat

the remark to her aunts--it was too painful and she somehow suspected

too true; but that night she cried herself to sleep and had consoling

dreams of a time when she should be a great personage, and able to

turn the tables on her tormentors. This was a long time ago; but the

old wound still rankled, and she held herself proudly aloof from her

former playmates. They, on their part pronounced her hard to get on

with, and their mothers made no effort to encourage the intimacy. In

the conservative society of the Neighborhood, Peter's marriage was

still vividly remembered, and could not easily be forgiven. Elizabeth

was pretty and to all appearance, well-bred, but still people thought

of her antecedents and maintained towards her an attitude of doubt.

It was the perception of this fact, the consciousness of having begun

life at a disadvantage, which embittered Elizabeth's thoughts as she

drove through the country lanes that June morning.

The sun was high in the heavens when she reached Bassett Mills, a

nondescript place, neither town nor village, and much over-shadowed by

the glories of Cranston, not ten miles away. "The Mills" is not very

prosperous, but it has its factory, and the mill-stream, dashing

precipitously through its midst, lends some picturesqueness to the

squalid houses on its banks. There was a certain life and movement

this morning about the steep High Street, down which the white pony

took his leisurely way. A stream of factory people passed by to their

noon-day dinner; the street was full of wagons and carriages from the

Neighborhood. Elizabeth saw the Van Antwerp dog-cart standing in front

of the hardware shop, and caught a smile and bow from Mrs. Bobby,

which surprised her by their graciousness. Later on she met the

Courtenays, whom she knew better, but who greeted her more coldly.

Elizabeth's own bow was stiff, and the cloud which Mrs. Bobby's

cordiality had dispelled, again darkened her face.

She went on to the Rectory, but here she found that the baby's illness

had developed into measles, and she could deposit her beef-tea at the

door and take her leave with a clear conscience. Outside she stood in

the hot sun debating if she should or should not stop to see her aunt

and cousin. It was a long time since she had been there, and her aunt

would be sure to assail her with reproaches. Amanda, too, would feel

injured, and look the spiteful things which she never actually said.

But then Elizabeth could usually rise superior to any spitefulness

that Amanda might display. She felt on the whole very kindly towards

her cousin, she liked to show her pretty gowns, and her good-nature

had even stood the test of several bungling attempts on Amanda's part

to imitate them. There were moments when, in the dearth of society,

Elizabeth would turn with a certain affection to this uncongenial

cousin, who at other times jarred upon her greatly.

It was the remembrance of Miss Joanna's commissions that on this

occasion turned the scale in favor of the intended visit. Elizabeth

left the white pony, who would stand an indefinite time, and entered

the small dry-goods shop, where her aunt or Amanda generally presided.

It was empty. Elizabeth hesitated a moment, then she crossed the hall

that led to the living-rooms of the family. Here she paused in

astonishment. From behind the closed door of the parlor came the sound

of a man's voice; a rich, barytone voice singing from Tannhäuser the

song of the Evening Star. Elizabeth waited till it was over; then she

opened the door and went in.

_Chapter III_

The young man who had just sung was still at the piano, softly playing

variations on the same air. She gave him one hurried glance. He was

tall and fair, with blue eyes and a silky blonde moustache, and he

wore a velveteen coat, much the worse for wear, and a turn-down collar

that showed to advantage the fine outlines of his throat and the

graceful poise of his head. These details Elizabeth grasped at once

before her gaze wandered to her aunt and Amanda, who were sitting idle

as she had never before seen them in the morning, with eyes intent on

the young man at the piano. Elizabeth noticed that Amanda had on her

Sunday frock and her hair very much frizzed.

The girl had entered so softly that the three people already in the

room did not at first notice her presence. When they at last did so,

it seemed to cause something of a shock. Her aunt and Amanda stared at

her in silence, and Amanda turned a trifle pale. The young man rose

from the piano and looked at her intently for a moment with his bright

blue eyes; then he re-seated himself and went on playing, but much

more softly, and as if hardly conscious of what he did.

Elizabeth's aunt was the first to recover herself, and upon second

thought it occurred to her that her niece had arrived at an opportune

moment--when she and Amanda had on their best clothes, and were

entertaining company. This reflection tempered the usual austerity of

her greeting. "Why, Elizabeth, is that you? You're quite a stranger.

It isn't often you honor us with your company."

"You know," said Elizabeth, quite used to the formula of reproach and

excuse, with which these visits invariably opened "the white pony has

been lame, and I have driven out very little."

"And you couldn't come on your wheel, I suppose? Nothing short of a

carriage would do for you. I wonder you don't insist on a groom in

top-boots. But well, never mind," Aunt Rebecca went on, feeling that

she had sufficiently maintained her dignity "you're very welcome now,

I'm sure, and you're just in time to hear some music. This is Paul

Halleck, who has been kind enough to sing for us. Mr. Halleck, this is

Amanda's cousin Elizabeth, whom you've heard us speak of." There was

an odd note of grudging satisfaction in her voice as she made the

introduction. Mrs. Jones's feeling towards her niece was a complex

one, characterized on the one hand, by an involuntary sense of

resentment at the elevation of Malvina's girl, on the other, by an

equally involuntary pride in the connection. The latter sensation

predominated when she introduced Elizabeth to a stranger whom she

wished to impress.

Elizabeth's chief feeling was one of annoyance, and it brought an

angry flush to her cheek. Then she caught the look in the young man's

eyes, as he rose and bowed with much deference; and her own eyes fell

and again she blushed, but not with anger.

"I have had the pleasure of seeing Miss Van Vorst before," said Paul

Halleck, "though she has not, of course, noticed me."

"Why, yes, of course," said Elizabeth's aunt, still in high good

humor, "you've seen her when you were out sketching. You see,

Elizabeth, he's a painter as well as a singer; he's quite a genius,

altogether. We find him a great acquisition to our parties here at The

Mills. And to think that he was born here, and lived here part of his

life! You remember the Hallecks that went West when you were a child?

They settled in Chicago, you know. He only came to New York awhile

ago, and thought he'd look up his folks in this place. But there,

Elizabeth, sit down, and perhaps Mr. Halleck will give us another

tune."

Elizabeth silently took the chair the young man placed for her, while

her aunt still talked on volubly. The girl was bewildered by what she

heard. She could not imagine this handsome young singer, with his air

of picturesque Bohemia, as an acquisition to the parties of Bassett

Mills; nor did he seem at home in her aunt's parlor. She glanced about

the commonplace, gaudy little room, every detail of which impressed

itself upon her with a new sense of its crudeness; the plush-covered

furniture, staring wall-paper, the lace anti-macassars, the

photographs of the family, the men in high hats, the women simpering

in their Sunday clothes. It did not seem the fit atmosphere for an

artist. And then, with a sudden, sharp misgiving, Elizabeth looked at

Amanda, and asked herself for a moment if she could be the attraction.

The doubt vanished instantly. Poor Amanda was not pretty at the best

of times, and there was a sullen look on her face just then that made

her appear at her worst. She had a dull, pasty skin and very light

eyes. All the color seemed to be concentrated in her hair, which was a

deep, dark red, all the more striking for the contrast to her pale

face. The gown she wore, of a bright yellow, was peculiarly successful

in bringing out the faded tints of her complexion and the jarring

vividness of her hair.

Amanda at that moment felt to the full the unkindness of fate. She had

not shared for an instant her mother's gratification at Elizabeth's

entrance. It was hard, she thought, that, having arrayed herself in

her best, and struggled long to look beautiful, she should be

completely over-shadowed by Elizabeth in the cool white gown and shady

hat, which had a provoking air of not being her best, but merely her

natural and everyday attire. Amanda had seen, as well as Elizabeth,

the look in Paul's eyes. Was it fair, she asked herself, that she

should share her good things with Elizabeth, who had so many of her

own? And so Amanda sat silent and sullen, while her mother talked on,

and Halleck ran his fingers over the keys, as if he would fain be

playing.

"What shall I sing?" he asked abruptly, in the first pause, and

looking at Elizabeth as if her wishes alone were of any consequence.

"Oh, the Evening Star again," she responded eagerly. "I only heard the

end of it, and it brought up so many delightful memories."

So Halleck sang the song again. A voice, artistically modulated,

filled the little room, which vanished for Elizabeth. She saw pilgrims

filing past in slow procession, Tannhäuser struggling against the

power of the Venusberg, Elizabeth kneeling in her penitent's dress

before the cross. The whole Wagnerian drama unrolled itself before her

eyes while the song lasted. And then, as the last note died away, she

came back to the present with a start, and realized that the young man

who had just afforded her this pleasure was handsomer far than any

Wolfram she had ever seen before.

"Ah, thank you," she said, drawing a long breath. "That is so

beautiful. It is so long since I have heard any music."

"You are fond of it?" said Halleck, eagerly.

"Yes," she responded, earnestly.

"Ah, I saw it--I was sure of it," he declared. "You have the artistic

temperament. I saw it in your face at once."

Elizabeth blushed for the third time that morning, and now with a

distinct sense of pleasure. Amanda, too, flushed a dull red. She was

not quite certain what the artistic temperament might be, but it was

clearly one of those good things of which Elizabeth had an unfair

monopoly.

"You play or sing yourself, of course?" Halleck went on.

"Oh, I play a little," Elizabeth pouted out her full under-lip, in

charming deprecation of her own powers. "I am ashamed, before a real

musician, to say that I play at all."

"I am not a real musician, alas!" said Halleck, "only a dabbler in

music, as I am in art." A thoughtful look came into his blue eyes, and

he went on absently playing fragments from Tannhäuser. "I am glad you

like that," he said, abruptly. "You remember the heroine was called

Elizabeth."

"Yes," said Elizabeth, "I remember." It gave her an odd little thrill

of pleasure to hear him pronounce her name, and yet she wondered if

his remark were not too personal to be in good taste. "But I don't

think I am at all like that Elizabeth," she added, after a moment,

following out his suggestion in spite of this doubt.

"No, perhaps not," said Halleck, regarding her with a calm scrutiny,

in which he seemed to appraise her no longer as a woman, but purely

from an artistic point of view. "You are not exactly that type; you

have more life and color, less spirituality, perhaps; but you are

fair, and your hair would do admirably. You would make a beautiful

picture with your hair unbound, kneeling before the cross."

"I have never had my picture painted," Elizabeth murmured, trying to

imagine herself in a penitent's garb.

"Will you let me try it?"

Elizabeth smiled and assented, deciding that no long acquaintance was

necessary, when it was a question of having her picture painted, in a

costume which she was quite determined should be becoming. She sat

mentally reviewing the resources of her wardrobe, while Halleck struck

sonorous chords on the piano, and asked if she recognized this or that

Wagnerian theme, upon which he proceeded to extemporize. Amanda and

her mother were distinctly left out, and the latter began to repent of

her first satisfaction in her niece's visit. She broke in at last,

brusquely, upon the very midst of the love-music from "Tristan and

Isolde." "Well, I don't think much of this Wagner," she said. "His

music all sounds the same--a lot of queer noises, with no tune to

them. What I like now is 'Home, Sweet Home,' or 'Nancy Lee'--something

real nice and catchy."

"I can play those, too," said Halleck, good-humoredly, and immediately

played the first mentioned air, with variations of his own

improvisation. At the end of it he rose from the piano. "Won't you

play for me now," he said to Elizabeth.

"Oh, no, not after you." Elizabeth shook her head and rose to her

feet, with a sudden recollection of the white pony and her aunt's

dinner-hour. "Some other day," she said, "I'll be very glad to play

for you, but really now I have not the time--or the courage." She

spoke with a pretty, smiling deference, and she held out her hand,

which he took in a long, lingering grasp. There was a soft glow of

color in her cheeks, her eyes were cast down till he could see only

her long lashes. "Thank you so much," she said "for the music." Then

she drew her hand away from his and kissed her aunt and Amanda, with

an unwonted display of affection. She felt an odd sense of excitement,

a wish to be friendly with all the world.

Neither her aunt nor Amanda seemed to share it. They did not try to

detain her, and Halleck, though he looked disappointed, said nothing.

They all three escorted her to the door of the shop, where the white

pony stood patiently enduring the heat and the flies. Elizabeth

lingered over her farewells. She wished to ask her new acquaintance to

come to see her, but disliked doing so before her aunt and cousin. It

was he who finally said, leaning over her as he placed the reins in

her hand: "And--a--how about that picture? May I come to see you about

it?"

Elizabeth's eyes were still hidden as she answered demurely: "I am

sure I--we shall be very glad to see you at the Homestead."

And then she drove off, and the others stood for a moment and looked

after her in silence.

"She--she's pretty--isn't she," said Amanda, suddenly speaking for the

first time since Elizabeth had appeared. Her voice, even to herself,

sounded harsh and grating. Her lips were very dry.

Halleck started and looked at her as if reminded of her existence.

Then a smile stole over his face and sparkled in his handsome blue

eyes.

"Yes, she's rather pretty," he answered, carelessly "but--a little

disappointing on a close view. However, she'll do very well as a

model--she's picturesque, at least."

Amanda drew a long breath of sudden and intense relief.

_Chapter V_

"And so you say this young man lives at The Mills, my dear?" Miss

Cornelia paused, the heavy, elaborately chased tea-pot suspended in

her hand. Her gentle, near-sighted eyes looked anxiously across the

table at Elizabeth.

It was the first time that the girl had spoken of her new

acquaintance, though it was now some time since her return from

Bassett Mills, and she had told at once of the measles at the Rectory.

This piece of news, however, had lasted them well through dinner, and

in the country it is improvident to use up all one's information at

once. Perhaps Elizabeth thought of this; or it might be that the other

item did not strike her as of any special importance. She only

mentioned it very casually at tea-time; but her aunts' anxiety was

easily aroused at any suggestion of new acquaintances at Bassett

Mills.

"I don't think he lives at The Mills," Elizabeth made answer now

reluctantly to Miss Cornelia's question. "I think he--he is just

staying there--I believe Aunt Rebecca said something about his coming

from Chicago. But his family used to live at The Mills."

"You don't mean those Hallecks who went West a long time ago?"

exclaimed Miss Joanna. "Do you remember, sister?--the man was in jail

the most of the time. The children used to play on the road behind the

church--poor little neglected things, I was quite worried about them.

It was a relief, I remember, when they all went away."

Elizabeth found this piece of ancient history peculiarly inopportune.

"Well, that was a long time ago, Aunt Joanna," she said. "It doesn't

matter, I suppose, so much what people's parents were like. Mr.

Halleck is very nice himself. He is an artist, and he wants to paint

my picture." She brought out this last information, which she had been

longing to tell for some time, with a certain triumph; but it fell

unexpectedly flat.

"An artist!" Miss Joanna repeated. "Dear me! One of those little

Hallecks who used to play in the road."

"To paint your picture, my dear?" repeated Miss Cornelia still more

doubtfully. "When he has only met you once! I am afraid he is rather a

pushing young man. But of course, dear, you won't encourage him."

Elizabeth's eyes were fixed on her plate; her cheeks were painfully

flushed and she bit her lips to keep back the scalding tears that rose

to her eyes. "I don't think he is pushing," she murmured, but she said

no more. How could she explain to her aunts the vast difference that

existed between this young man and any other friend of Amanda's? They

were dear, good women, but so hopelessly narrow and antiquated, with

their little old-fashioned ideas of propriety, their distinctions

founded on the conventional laws of the Neighborhood. Elizabeth, too,

was not without an involuntary respect for these distinctions. She had

her full share of the pride of birth which was instinctive in every

Van Vorst, even in the most ignorant country lout that had ever borne

the family name and lowered the family credit. With Elizabeth it was

only intensified, perhaps, by a doubt of her own position. But then

she belonged to the new generation; and there was a side of her nature

that recognized the futility of these old traditions. Elizabeth did

not analyze her feelings; she was only conscious of a vague sense of

revolt, a desire to beat her wings as it were, against the cages of

conventional distinctions, and test her powers of flight.

But she did not put all this into words. Her aunts would not have

understood. She did not understand herself. She rose from the

tea-table presently, with a murmured excuse, leaving the food on her

plate untasted, to Miss Joanna's great distress, and wandered into the

drawing-room and sat down at the piano. The keys seemed to respond

with unusual readiness to her touch, the music expressed in some vague

way what she could not put into words. She played on restlessly,

feverishly, for more than an hour, passing from one thing to another;

Chopin nocturnes, waltzes, Hungarian dances, fragments from Wagner;

anything she could remember.

The drawing-room remained dim for the sake of coolness; it was

unlighted except for a lamp at a corner-table, beside which Miss

Joanna sat with her knitting. As Elizabeth played she nodded

comfortably and presently fell asleep. This was always the effect of

Elizabeth's playing; she said she found it very soothing. Miss

Cornelia sat upright in an old-fashioned, high-backed chair close to

the piano. She moved her head in time to the music, and the thin

little silvery curls that framed in her worn, delicate face seemed to

sway in unison with the melody. She wore a black gown, a trifle

antiquated in fashion but falling about her in graceful folds, and

some rich old lace softened the outlines of her throat. There was a

gentle, tremulous dignity about her nowadays. Miss Cornelia was very

happy in moments like these. It was touching to see the pride she took

in Elizabeth's music. But after awhile this evening the girl let her

hands drop on the keys, and said impatiently: "Oh, it's no use, I

can't say what I want to say. The music's in me, but it won't come

out. If you could have heard that man to-day at Aunt Rebecca's."

"Do you mean that young Halleck, my dear?" said Miss Cornelia in

surprise, and pronouncing his name with evident distaste. "I didn't

know that he played."

"He can do anything," Elizabeth declared. "He paints, he can improvise

by the hour, he sings as well as any opera-singer, and--he is very

handsome. He would make a superb Lohengrin or Tristan," she added,

thoughtfully "only, unfortunately, his voice is barytone. I wonder why

Wagner showed such partiality to tenors."

"But he is not--going on the stage, is he, my dear?" asked Miss

Cornelia, tentatively. She felt more anxiety than pleasure at hearing

of this paragon.

"I don't know," said Elizabeth, "and it doesn't much matter. I am not

to know him, you see, because his people used to live in the village

years ago, and Aunt Joanna saw him playing on the road." She spoke

bitterly.

"But, my dear, I--we never meant anything of the kind," protested Miss

Cornelia. But Elizabeth went on without heeding her.

"Of course I know the rules of the Neighborhood. They would no more

think of knowing a young man from Bassett Mills than they would a

convict. But I don't really belong to the Neighborhood; I'm only on

the outskirts, as it were--tolerated for your sake and for

Grandmamma's. I'm tired of being a sort of nondescript--neither flesh,

fowl, nor good red herring." The girl's face was hard, but she spoke

quietly, in a matter-of-fact tone, as if stating inevitable truths.

Miss Cornelia sat mute, bewildered, her whole soul wrung by a

powerless resentment against fate. If by any sacrifice on her part she

could have provided for Elizabeth congenial society--the charming

young girls and attractive young men of whom she and her sister had

often dreamed--she would have made it thankfully; but with all her

love, there was nothing--or there seemed to her nothing that she could

do. They had given Elizabeth every advantage, she was beautiful and

charming; and the result of it all was that she felt herself to be "a

sort of nondescript, neither flesh, fowl, nor good red herring." It

was a very bitter thought for Miss Cornelia.

Elizabeth, seeing this, felt remorseful for the second time that day.

"Don't look so unhappy, auntie," she said, quickly. "It's not your

fault--no, nor mine either; and, I suppose, it's not the fault of the

Neighborhood. People can't help being narrow and conservative; they

were born so. But then, Aunt Cornelia, when--when I don't have so many

friends, you can't expect me to draw the line so awfully closely."

Something like a sob crept into the girl's voice, but she went on with

hardly a pause: "You mustn't think that I would want to know--any one.

This man isn't like the rest of Amanda's friends. Only wait till you

hear him sing--you would lose your heart, I'm sure, on the spot. And

now, confess, auntie, you would like me to have my picture painted.

The girls at school used to say that I would make a glorious picture.

Do _you_ think I would make a pretty picture, auntie?" She went over

to Miss Cornelia and put her arms around her, looking up into her face

with laughing, brilliant eyes, from which all bitterness had

disappeared.

"My darling." Miss Cornelia, bewildered by the quick change of mood,

could not find words. She thought that Elizabeth would make the

prettiest picture in the world; but to have told her so would have

been to run counter to all her ideas of propriety. So she finally

said, with due regard for accepted formulas: "You shouldn't think so

much about looks, Elizabeth. If you are good, that's the main thing."

"Of course, it's the main thing," Elizabeth assented, "but I'm afraid

if it came to a choice, I'd rather be pretty, auntie, and so would

most people." She ended with a light little laugh, and Miss Cornelia,

in spite of her principles, attempted no rebuke.

The look of gaiety soon faded from Elizabeth's face. With a quick,

impatient little sigh, she walked over to the window, and looked out

into the night. It was still and sultry; heavy storm clouds were

gathering and obscured the sky. The old elm trees, growing close about

the house, cast sombre shadows; they seemed to keep out what little

air there was. Elizabeth, as she leaned her hot cheek against the cool

glass of the window-pane, felt again a sense of stifling, of being in

a cage. It was useless to beat her wings; life was outside, but she

could not reach it. "Oh, I would give anything in the world," she

thought "just to breathe, to be free, to know what life is."

Suddenly she turned around with a start. There was a voice in the

hall; some one spoke her name. A moment later a young man was

advancing towards her across the dimly-lighted room. Mechanically she

went to meet him. She did not think of her aunts, she did not think of

anything but his presence.

"Have I--come too soon?" Paul Halleck asked, as he took her hand.

_Chapter VI_

Elizabeth drove again, a few weeks later, through shady, fragrant

lanes, on her way to Bassett Mills. It was early in the morning, but

the sun was already hot. The wild-roses along the road-side had mostly

departed, the grass in the fields had a parched look. It was a long

time since any rain had fallen, and the roads were thick with dust.

All the freshness of the early summer had faded. But for these signs

of premature blight and the scorching effect of the sun, Elizabeth

seemed to have no eyes.

She drove along in a happy dream. There was a brilliant color in her

cheeks, a radiant light in her eyes. She bloomed like a rose that has

unfolded every petal to the summer sunshine. The fields through which

she passed were not the familiar pasture-lands and "places" that

skirted the road to Bassett Mills; they were the flowery meadows of

poetic Arcadia, on the road that led to Paradise.

It was something of a bore, under the circumstances, that she must

first of all go to Bassett Mills, but Miss Joanna had intrusted her

with numerous commissions, that she could not very well refuse to

discharge. That was the reason why she had started so early. There was

a brook in a meadow near by; a brook shaded by weeping willow trees,

under which nowadays a young artist sat sketching for many hours at a

time. Elizabeth's drives, or walks had for the last few weeks led no

further. But to-day she had decided to go first to Bassett Mills, and

be back in time for the usual engagement, of which her aunts knew

nothing.

The affair was not really so clandestine. There was no reason why she

should have kept it secret beyond a vague embarrassment, an

unwillingness to speak about the one subject that occupied her

thoughts. Miss Cornelia and Miss Joanna had, after the one protest,

yielded to the inevitable; they had not even discouraged young

Halleck's visits to their niece. They had gone so far as to admit,

when he had come to tea at the Homestead, and sung and played for them

afterwards for hours, that he was an extremely talented young man. It

had been a most successful evening, Miss Joanna had not even gone to

sleep. And yet, with it all, in both sisters there was some innate

distrust, some lingering prejudice perhaps, that prevented them from

succumbing entirely to the charm of his handsome face and beautiful

voice. They were civil to him--painfully civil; but they did not

welcome him as they would have welcomed young Frank Courtenay, who

used to stare at Elizabeth in church every Sunday, but had never

apparently mustered up courage to come and see her. He was much under

the influence of his mother, who considered Elizabeth's hair

"conspicuous" and had remarked that it was bad taste for a young girl

to be _too_ well dressed--a fault that could not in justice be

alleged against her own daughters.

Elizabeth, too, might have welcomed the visits of young Courtenay.

There had been times when she had doubted, sadly, if she were really

so pretty as the girls at school had seemed to think. But these times

were past, and she had not a thought to spare for Frank Courtenay's

heavy, commonplace good looks. Paul Halleck had assured her many times

that she was beautiful, and had sketched her in every variety of pose,

in that impressionistic style which Elizabeth had secretly thought

rather ugly, before she learned to regard it as the last word in Art.

Elizabeth had learned many other things in the last few weeks. Halleck

undertook her education in all artistic and literary matters, showing

her how little she had hitherto known of this or that great light. He

quoted Swinburne and Rossetti; he read her extracts from Maeterlinck

and Ibsen; he opened for her the treasures of that school which Nordau

calls degenerate. He had all the intellectual and artistic jargon of

the day at his tongue's end. She sat at his feet and devoutly learned

it all.

She knew his history, now. It was very romantic, and it lost nothing

in the telling. He had a keen eye for artistic effect, and spared not

one sordid detail of his early surroundings which served to throw into

more brilliant relief his subsequent career. He told how the

possession of a lovely childish soprano had raised him literally from

the gutter, and procured him a position as boy soloist in a Chicago

church, and how, later on, a patron was found, who sent him abroad to

study. He had wandered from one European centre to another; learned to

play in Dresden and to paint in Paris, and developed a fine barytone

voice, of which great things were prophesied. In fact, he was a

universal genius, and could do anything, except apparently earn a

living, which indeed has been always hard for genius. And so at last

he drifted back to Chicago, where he sang for a while in the same

church where he had begun his career; but finally left for some reason

or another, and tried his fortune in New York. He was debating now

whether to go abroad again to study in earnest for the stage, and

meanwhile he was on a walking tour, sketching about the country. He

had come to Bassett Mills for the sake of old associations, and had

stayed--well, he left it to Elizabeth to imagine _why_ he stayed.

All this was very interesting and romantic; far more so, Elizabeth

thought, than any ordinary affair could have been, with some

commonplace youth of the neighborhood. She had only one regret; she

could not help wishing in her heart that Paul's early surroundings had

been, if not more exalted, less familiar. She would have preferred him

to have no associations with, no friends at, Bassett Mills. The place

seemed to her, as she drove through it that morning, so hopelessly

common, so unusually prosaic. The ugly, sordid houses, the people with

their faces of dull stolidity, jarred upon the ecstatic tone of her

mood. She could not imagine that genius could be born in such

surroundings.

The discordant note was still more striking when, having discharged

the greater part of her commissions, she entered the dry-goods shop,

and found Aunt Rebecca in her most trying humor.

"So that's you, Elizabeth," she said, looking her niece severely up

and down, while her thin lips moved at the corners. "It seems to me

you're very much dressed up, driving round these dusty roads. The way

you wear white is a caution! But I suppose for a millionaire like you

it don't matter about the washing."

Elizabeth bit her lip. "I'm not a millionaire, you know Aunt Rebecca,"

she said, "but I like to wear white, and it's as cheap as anything in

the end. Is Amanda in?" she added quickly, anxious to stave off

further criticism. "I'll go back and see her if she is."

"She's in the parlor," said Amanda's mother, shortly. "She's got a

headache. I guess she don't feel like seeing company," she added

hastily, but the words came too late. Elizabeth had already left the

shop, and was crossing the narrow, dark little hall that led to the

parlor. Her heart beat rapidly as she did so. She felt an odd, utterly

irrational desire to feast her eyes on the spot where she had first

experienced such new and delightful sensations.

There was no music in the room now, no air of festivity. The

atmosphere was close and musty, the sun poured in at the window beside

which Amanda sat sewing. She bent closely over her work, her skin was

more pasty than ever and her eyes were red and swollen. Elizabeth

remembered her aunt's words about the headache; otherwise she might

have thought that her cousin had been crying. She went over and kissed

her with a friendliness born of her own superabundant joy. The lips

she touched were dry and hot. Amanda did not respond to the caress.

She stared stupidly at Elizabeth, as if half dazed by her sudden

entrance.

"How are you, Amanda?" Elizabeth said. "I'm sorry you have a headache.

Perhaps it's the heat. It's a terribly hot day, and the roads are so

dusty. Aunt Rebecca implied that my dress showed that very plainly. It

was clean this morning--does it really look so badly?" She walked over

to the mirror and inspected herself critically, setting her hat

straight and adjusting the white ribbon about her throat. It was a

long narrow glass, framed in black walnut, and there was a shelf

underneath it, which supported a large sea-shell. The whole thing

reminded her of a similar arrangement at her dressmaker's in town, and

seemed in some way the crowning feature of the prosaic, painfully

respectable character of the room. She hated to look at herself

there--the glass brought out all one's defects. But to-day, in spite

of the trying glare of the sunshine, her own image flashed back at

her, so brilliantly fresh, in her white dimity gown, so redolent of

health and beauty, that she could not help smiling back at it, as at

some delightful apparition. Ah, yes, it was good to be young and

pretty, and to have a lover waiting for one near by. Her eyes

brightened unconsciously, and she gave a little caressing touch to

the shining masses of wavy hair which stood out, like red molten gold,

against the broad brim of her shady white hat.

The other girl sat and watched her.

"You like to look at yourself, don't you?" The words rang out harshly,

suddenly. Elizabeth started and turned around. It seemed to her for a

moment as if some third person had spoken--some one with a strange,

mocking voice that she had never heard before. But there was no one

else in the room.

"Yes, you like to look at yourself." Amanda went on after a pause,

more quietly, "you think yourself a beauty, and a good many people,

perhaps, might agree with you. _He_ tells you so, I suppose. I daresay

he tells you your hair's picturesque--he used to tell me that about

mine. He was going to paint my picture, but it went out of his head

when he saw you. Most things did, I guess. He--he hasn't been here

since." The girl's voice broke in a quick, convulsive sob, and she

stopped for a moment, but went on almost immediately: "If you hadn't

come in that day, it would have been all right. We were keeping

company; every one in The Mills knew we were. All the girls were

jealous of me--as if he'd have looked at them! Some of them work in

the factory, there's many of them don't even have a piano and sit in

their kitchens. I know what's genteel, even if I can't talk all that

rubbish about music and Wagner that you learned at school. And what

good will all that do you when you're married? What do you know about

mending and sewing and cooking? What sort of a wife would you make

him? You'd ruin him in a month with your fine clothes. But men are

such fools!" She gave a short mirthless laugh, her eyes glittered

strangely. Elizabeth stared at her paralyzed, glued to the spot in

helpless fascination. She had never heard Amanda talk so much before.

Her words came quickly, fiercely, one upon another, like some

overwhelming torrent that had been suddenly let loose.

"Why should you have so much more than me? Why should you have fine

clothes, and a carriage, and go to school in New York, and have the

swells in the neighborhood call on you? Was your mother any better

than mine, or a hundredth part as good? She wasn't even respectable;

no decent people at The Mills would speak to her before your father

married her--I know that for a fact. And then to give yourself airs!"

Amanda stopped short, panting, exhausted by her own vehemence.

Elizabeth still stood before her powerless. When Amanda spoke of her

mother the color rushed into her white face, and she made an effort to

speak; but the words seemed to die away on her lips. Amanda, after a

moment's pause, went on.

"It isn't that I care so much about that; you might have had

everything else, if you hadn't taken--him. Why did you come in that

day looking like a dressed-up doll? You hadn't been here for weeks,

and I was glad. I didn't want him to know you--I wasn't afraid of the

other girls. But you who've got so much--couldn't you have had the

decency to leave him alone? Couldn't you see that he was mine?"

"Amanda," Elizabeth gasped out. "I--I didn't know. I--I never

thought"--Her brain reeled, she stammered painfully, trying in vain

for words to vindicate herself from this shameful charge. Amanda

brushed her aside contemptuously.

"You didn't think?--no, you never do, of anything but yourself, your

pretty face and pretty clothes! You're selfish and spoiled--every one

knows it; you've had every wish granted till you want everything, and

you won't be satisfied with less. But what's the good of saying all

this to you?" she broke off suddenly, with a sharp change of tone. "I

must be crazy; I've felt so, I'm sure, these last weeks. It won't make

any difference--nothing I say can bring him back. And yet he'd have

married me--if you hadn't come." She went to Elizabeth and gripped her

by the wrist. "He kissed me once," she said. "Has he kissed you yet?"

"No," said Elizabeth, mechanically, "no." She shrank away a little and

set her teeth. Amanda's grasp was painful, but she would not have

cried out for worlds.

"Well, when he does," Amanda said, "remember this--he kissed me first.

You can't take that away from me--I have the first claim." She let go

of Elizabeth's hands and fell back a step. There were two deep red

marks from her grasp. "Now go," she said, "go to him. I knew you were

going to him--I saw you thinking of it, and it made me hate you. Go

to him and tell him that I hope his love for you will last as long as

it did for me." She laughed again harshly and then suddenly burst into

violent weeping. "Oh, it's ignominious," she said, "it's contemptible.

No one can despise me more than I do myself. I haven't any pride. I

hate him--I hate him; yet I'd take him back now, if he'd come to me."

She sank down on the sofa and hid her face in the red plush cushions,

while her whole frame shook with convulsive sobs.

Elizabeth stood still in the middle of the floor. Mechanically she

glanced at her reflection in the mirror; white, distraught, with

startled eyes--a ghastly parody of the brilliant vision which had

smiled back at her only a few minutes before. The hot sunlight,

flooding the commonplace little room, seemed to bring out, with

glaring vividness, all the tragic, sordid elements of the scene. A

quarrel between two women about a lover! Could anything be more

hopelessly vulgar and grotesque?

It was the sting of this thought that finally roused Elizabeth to

speech. She raised her head with sudden haughtiness, and her words

came clearly and fluently. "I don't know what you mean, Amanda," she

said "by this scene. If there is any one whom you--you think I have

taken from you, you can have him back to-morrow so far as I am

concerned. I don't want any other woman's lover. It--it would be base.

Whatever else you think me, I'm not--that. If it is Paul Halleck whom

you mean, you can marry him, if you wish, to-morrow. At least you may

be sure of one thing, that I never will." Her low, vehement voice

died away, and she waited for an answer; but none came. Amanda only

sobbed on hysterically, her face buried in the sofa-cushions.

Elizabeth stood looking at her for a moment, with a feeling in which

pity, anger and repulsion were strangely mingled; then she hastily

left the room by the door that led directly to the street. She had

presence of mind enough to avoid the shop and her aunt's unfriendly

eyes. She reached the carriage, and--un-heard-of thing--touched the

white pony with the whip.

_Chapter VII_

They had left the last house behind; they were out in the open

country. Elizabeth dropped the reins and let her tears flow

unchecked--hot, blinding tears, the bitterest she had ever shed. At

each familiar tree and landmark she sobbed with redoubled violence.

Only an hour before she had driven along this same road in the

ecstatic glow of her first romance. Now all the bloom had been rubbed

from that romance, all the glory faded from the hero of her dreams;

she herself was a woman who had been insulted, humiliated, dragged in

the dust.

By degrees a few coherent phrases detached themselves from the

confused mass of painful recollections, and stung more sharply than

the rest. "My mother better than yours--she wasn't even respectable;

no decent people would speak to her" ... Oh, it was too bad--too bad;

she had not thought it was so bad as that. Amanda must have

exaggerated--she would ask her aunts; but no, no she would never speak

of that interview to a soul. It was humiliating enough as it was....

"He kissed me once. Has he kissed you yet?" No, thank Heaven! that

indignity had been spared her. They had hovered as yet on the

borderland of love; she had put off the inevitable declaration with

instinctive coquetry, a vague unwillingness to be won too easily. She

was glad now--glad and thankful; he did not know that she cared,--he

should never know. She had no love for the man who had kissed

Amanda.... "Selfish and spoiled--thinking only of herself?" Yes, she

might be all that; but at least she would not take another woman's

lover. The words "it would be base," rang in her ears. Had she spoken

them, or Amanda? At all events, they were true. It would be base to

marry Halleck now. In fact, she did not wish to marry him. It was he

who had involved her in this horrible, sordid misery. Her aunts were

right; there must be distinctions of classes. Had her father

remembered this, people would not have it in their power to insult his

daughter now.

Through all her complex feelings ran a sharp sense of anger against

Amanda, mingled strangely with an involuntary pity, almost with an

understanding of her point of view. It was not based on justice, but

on fellow feeling. Amanda had resented her superiority; she,

Elizabeth, knew what that was. She had felt the same herself, when

smarting impotently under the patronizing friendliness of the other

girls in the Neighborhood, and then had turned, with unconscious

snobbery, to play the same part towards Amanda. The incongruous,

grotesque humor of the situation struck her suddenly, and she laughed

out loud in bitter irony. She had envied the other girls of the

Neighborhood, Amanda had envied her, the girls at Bassett Mills had

envied Amanda. Strange net-work of classes in a democratic country,

of distinctions the more galling for their intangibility. Of one thing

Elizabeth was convinced, that she could never herself "put on airs" as

Amanda had said, again; there was not a girl in the whole countryside,

blessed with a good mother, who could not look down on her, if she

pleased.

Her tears were falling now so fast and blinding that she could not see

the road; she was not even conscious that they had reached the spot

where the white pony stopped now of his own accord. And even as he did

so, a young man stepped forward and grasped the reins which had fallen

from Elizabeth's nerveless hand; a tall, fair young man who had been

standing for the last half hour, scanning anxiously, with his bright

blue eyes, the glaring dusty road.

"Elizabeth," said Halleck (he had called her that for five happy days)

"Elizabeth, why are you so late? And, for Heaven's sake, what's the

matter?"

Elizabeth looked up and with great effort, stopped crying; but

otherwise she made no sign of pleasure in his presence or even of

recognition. She put up one hand, indeed, and straightened her hat,

but this was a purely mechanical concession to the force of habit. She

knew that her face was flushed and tear-stained, her eyes red and

swollen; she was sure that she looked an absolute fright, and she did

not care. She was past caring, at least for the moment.

"Elizabeth," Halleck repeated, more and more bewildered, "what is the

matter? I've been waiting for you an hour. You've been crying," he

added, stating unnecessarily an obvious fact. "Won't you tell me what

it is?"

"Nothing--nothing," Elizabeth answered at last, in a voice that was

still thick and choked with sobs. "I haven't been crying or," struck

by the futility of denial, she added hastily "if I have it--it's no

matter. Will you please let me pass?" She tried to take the reins from

his hands, but he grasped them firmly, and laid the other hand on the

bar of the wagon.

"Won't you let me pass?" she repeated stubbornly.

"Not till you tell me what's the matter."

He eyed her coolly, determinedly, all the habit of power depicted on

the lines of his handsome face. She stared back at him defiantly, with

her tear-swollen eyes. Her whole attitude breathed the spirit of

rebellion; a spirit new in their intercourse. Halleck saw it, at the

same time that he noted the disfiguring marks of tears on her face.

Oddly enough, he had never admired her so much.

Nevertheless, he was determined to remain master of the situation. He

glanced up and down the road; there were never many people passing,

but it was not safe to rely on this fact.

"We can't talk here," he said. "Come into the field."

"I don't wish to," she said, stubbornly. "I'm going home."

He fixed his eyes upon her. "You shall not go home," he said quietly,

"till you have told me all about it." She sat immovable, her pouting

under lip thrust out in a way that she had sometimes, in moments of

obstinacy and displeasure. She did not meet his eyes. "Don't be

childish," Paul said, pleasantly, after a moment. "You know you must

tell me what it is."

She looked up reluctantly, and met his steady gaze, under which she

turned first white, then red, and slowly, as if fascinated, rose from

her seat. Yet still her words were unyielding. "We may as well have it

out at once," she said, coldly.

Halleck could not repress a thrill of triumph. It was sweet to test

his power over this beautiful, high-spirited girl, to feel her will,

her intellect, like wax in his hands. But he tried not to show this

consciousness in his face. She was in a strange mood; he did not

understand her. Gravely and respectfully he helped her to scale the

stone wall, which separated the meadow from the road. Her hand barely

rested on his, and her eyes were averted carefully, but he paid no

heed. He fastened the white pony to a tree, then slowly and

thoughtfully followed Elizabeth across the field.

The noon-day sun beat down upon them in all its scorching brilliancy;

it was pleasant to gain the shade of their usual trysting-place. Here

the little brook, which had rippled and sparkled over stones and moss

all the way from the mill-stream, formed itself into a quiet pool,

over which weeping willows spread out long branches, and seemed to

admire their own reflection in the cool green mirror beneath.

Elizabeth took her usual seat on a fallen moss-covered log, drawing,

as she did so, her white skirts about her, with what seemed an

involuntary gesture of repulsion, and Halleck, who was about to place

himself beside her, flushed and bit his lip. After a moment's

hesitation, he threw himself down sullenly on the grass a little way

off.

"Tell me," he said, in a tone that was the more determined for this

little episode "tell me now what the matter is."

Elizabeth's eyes were fixed upon the cool, green water at her feet. "I

don't know why you think," she said, slowly "that it has anything to

do with you."

"Not when you are a full hour late for our appointment? Not when you

treat me like an outcast? Oh, Elizabeth,"--the young man's voice

softened suddenly, skillfully--"how can you trifle with me so, when I

love you?"

He caught, or thought he did, a quiver in her face, although her eyes

were still resolutely bent upon the pool. "Yes, I love you," he

repeated. "I've loved you, I believe, ever since the day you came into

that horrid, stuffy little room, looking like an angel--with that hair

and that skin--so different from Amanda."--

He stopped as an indignant wave of color flamed in Elizabeth's cheeks.

"How can you speak of Amanda--like that?" she broke out passionately,

"when you loved her too, or told her so at least, when you said the

same things no doubt to her that you are saying now to me?"

A light broke in upon Paul. In his relief he laughed out loud.

"Amanda," he said. "Amanda! So she has been talking to you? And you

believed all the nonsense she told you? And that is why you acted so

strangely. I thought it was something serious!" And he laughed again

in sheer light-heartedness. So all this had been only jealous pique,

after all.

The gloom on Elizabeth's face did not lighten. "You seem to find the

idea amusing," she said, coldly. "I do not."

"Because you don't understand how absurd it is. I never made love to

Amanda--if she made love to me"--Paul stopped, warned by a curious

stiffening in Elizabeth's attitude that he was on dangerous ground.

She was not like other girls whom he had known--he had noticed this

before; she required special treatment. "My dear child," he said, in a

calm, argumentative tone "really you are a little hard on me. A man

can't measure every word he says to a girl. I may have paid Amanda a

few compliments, flirted with her a little, if you insist upon it,

but--that's not a crime, is it? And I never gave her a thought, I

hardly remembered her existence, after I had once--seen you." There

was unmistakable sincerity in his voice. "Look at me, Elizabeth," he

went on anxiously, "look at me, and tell me that you believe me."

Elizabeth raised her troubled eyes to his. "I--I don't know," she

said, slowly. She did believe him--to some extent, at least. But what

he told her did not alter the fact that it was she who had taken him

away from Amanda, that, but for her, he might have been her cousin's

admirer still. And that, after all, had been the substance of Amanda's

accusation.

"Tell me the truth," she said, suddenly "if I had not come in that

day--if you had never seen me, would you--would you have married

Amanda?" She fixed her eager eyes upon his face, and waited breathless

for his answer. He gave it with a light laugh.

"Marry Amanda!" he declared, "well, hardly! Such an idea never entered

my head."

"Then," said Elizabeth, slowly "you deceived her."

He shrugged his shoulders. "She deceived herself, I think," he said.

"It's not my fault if she--imagined things. Why should I marry a girl

like that? She's not pretty, she's stupid, ignorant. Bah, don't talk

to me of Amanda." He disposed of the matter with a wave of the hand

and another light laugh. Elizabeth felt a sudden conviction of the

absurdity of her own behavior. The painful, scorching flush in her

cheeks was beginning to cool; the burning, angry shame in her heart

was dying away. The remembrance of Amanda's words grew fainter; Paul's

handsome face, his air of triumphant health and life, were again in

the ascendent.

He saw the yielding in her eyes and brought out his most effective

argument. He took boldly the seat beside her on the log and though she

shrank away, it was not, he thought, entirely with aversion. "My

darling," he said, "don't let trifles come between us. I love you, you

love me; isn't that enough? Elizabeth, you are the most beautiful

woman in the world. Elizabeth, dearest" ... He put out his arm and

drew her towards him. She still shrank away, fascinated yet trembling,

frightened at this new delight, this thrill of pleasure in his touch.

"Don't," she gasped out, "Amanda"--He stopped her protest with a kiss.

And it was not till later, when she reached home, that she thought

again of Amanda's words: "Remember, he kissed me _first_."

_Chapter VIII_

Miss Cornelia and Miss Joanna sat at the breakfast-table and looked

aghast at Elizabeth, who had just informed them of her engagement. The

old Dutch clock on the mantel-piece ticked loudly, the sunlight fell

in shining bars upon the snowy table-cloth, the old Dutch china, the

glistening silver. Miss Cornelia was reminded forcibly, painfully, of

a morning in that same room many years ago, when Peter had announced

his marriage. Now the shock was not so great, was not unexpected,

perhaps; but it brought with it, if less horror, an even greater

disappointment.

"Well," Elizabeth said, after a moment, when her important

announcement had produced no response, and she looked proudly, yet

half wistfully, from one to the other. "Well," she repeated, "have you

nothing to say? Can't you--congratulate me?" Her voice faltered over

the last words.

"My dear," Miss Cornelia tried bravely to respond to the appeal in the

girl's tone. "Of course, we--we wish you every happiness," she

stammered out. She stopped, for tears choked her voice. She looked

despairingly at her sister. Was this the moment that they had so often

talked of together, planning with delicious thrills of pleasure all

they would say and do? "This china must be Elizabeth's when--when she

marries, you know." "We must lay by a little for--for Elizabeth's

trousseau." This in demure whispers to each other, for they would not

for the world have suggested such a possibility to the girl herself.

Nice girls, of course, must not think of getting married till the time

came, but--with Elizabeth's beauty, that time could not be long

delayed, not even in the Neighborhood. The fairy prince would appear

some day; though he had never come to them, they believed devoutly

that he would come to Elizabeth. And now--and now--the fairy prince

had come, or Elizabeth thought so; but they were only conscious of an

overwhelming sense of doubt.

"You know so little about him, my dear," Miss Cornelia could not help

at last protesting.

Elizabeth opened her eyes wide in genuine surprise. "So little of

him," she repeated. "Why, I--I know everything, Aunt Cornelia." And

she smiled to herself in silent amusement. Had she not seen him, every

day and twice a day, for a matter of four weeks. How long did they

think, these older women, that it took to know a man? "I know that he

loves me," she said, after a moment, descending to further particulars

"and I love him, and that's enough."

"But you can't live on love," urged Miss Joanna, practically. "You

must have some money, you know, and I shouldn't think he, poor young

man, had anything--at least, judging by his clothes. Those artists

never have, they say. And meat, and everything indeed, never was so

dear as it is now."

"I didn't know you were so worldly, Aunt Joanna," said Elizabeth,

loftily. "Do you want me to marry for money?" Miss Joanna was crushed.

But as she reflected in her own justification, one had to have

something to eat, let lovers say what they would.

"My dear," said Miss Cornelia, coming to the rescue with the little

air of dignity that she could sometimes assume "we certainly wouldn't

want you--not for the world--to marry for money. But one has to be--to

be prudent. We have brought you up in a way--perhaps it was

unwise--poor Mother would have thought so. But at any rate you know

nothing about economy, and--and you have only a little money, my dear,

and he, I suppose, has nothing."

"He--he expects to make a great deal of money soon," faltered

Elizabeth, coming down a little from her heights of romance. All this

prudence was like a dash of cold water in the face. She felt

disconcerted, indignant, and yet conscious, through it all of some

reason in her aunts' objections. Yes, it was true--she had not been

brought up to economy, she was fond of luxury and pretty things. In

all her wishes for change, she had never thought that it would be

amusing to miss any of these.

Miss Cornelia saw that she had produced some effect. "I think," she

went on, still speaking with unusual decision, "that the most

important thing is to find out something about him. You can't marry a

man whom we know nothing about, except that--that he was born at The

Mills. We must investigate his character." Miss Cornelia felt, as she

brought out this last sentence, that it sounded eminently practical,

and it received from Miss Joanna, indeed, its full meed of respectful

admiration. Elizabeth only smiled superior.

"You can investigate as much as you like, Aunt Cornelia," she said. "I

know all about him." And so the matter rested.

But how could two elderly and innocent spinsters, who had never in

their lives stirred two hundred miles from home, investigate the

character of a young man who had lived in Chicago and Paris and Vienna

and all the four quarters of the world apparently? They had no idea

how to set about it. In this perplexity Miss Cornelia again rose to

the occasion, and suggested that the Rector might be a fit substitute

for that invaluable possession "a man in the family," who is always

supposed to accomplish so much. And the Rector, when consulted, proved

unexpectedly resourceful. He had made Paul's acquaintance, and learned

the name of the church in Chicago where he had sung for so many years.

He had discovered, too, that the Rector of this church was an old

college friend of his, and he wrote to him at once, requesting full

and confidential information as to the young man's character,

antecedents, and prospects.

The answer seemed to the poor ladies a long time in coming; as a

matter of fact, it arrived very promptly. The Rector of St. Anne's at

Chicago regretted to inform his old friend and colleague the Rector

of St. Mary's, at Bassett Mills, that he had no good account to give

of Paul Halleck, who had not long ago been dismissed from the choir of

his church, and had left behind him in Chicago many debts and a bad

reputation. The young man was believed to have, as the Rector added,

genuine musical talent; but like many artists and musicians, he was

morally irresponsible, dissipated and reckless.

The Rector of St. Mary's repeated the verdict, as gently as he could,

to the older ladies at the Homestead. They bore it better than he

expected. There were compensations indeed in the very extent of its

severity. Had Halleck been less evidently and irredeemably a black

sheep, there might have been some doubts as to their own duty; but, as

it was, they felt that they must break off the dreadful match at once,

and at any cost.

Yet the heart of each sister misgave her as they sat in a solemn

conclave, and summoned Elizabeth before it. She came, rosy,

bright-eyed, fresh from talks with her lover and happy dreams of a

brilliant future, which they were to share together. She stood

listening in apparent indifference, while Miss Cornelia faltered out

the painful result of their inquiries. And when the worst was told,

she had turned perhaps a trifle pale, but otherwise she seemed

unmoved.

"I don't know why you tell me all this, auntie," she said, slowly.

"I--I am sorry to hear it, but it can make no difference."

"No difference!" Miss Cornelia repeated, stupefied. "No difference,

Elizabeth?"

"No, it can't change my love for him," she said, defiantly. "He told

me that he has enemies at Chicago, and that you would probably unearth

a lot of old scandals; and I promised that it should make no

difference. Perhaps some of them are true; I don't care. Auntie, I

can't--I can't give him up," she went on with a sudden change of tone

and clasping her hands appealingly. "I tried to once before, and--I

couldn't. If he were to go away now and leave me, I--I should die. I

couldn't bear to go on living without him." The girl's face was

flushed, her voice tremulous with feeling; it was evident that she

fully meant--or thought that she meant--what she said. Her aunts

looked at her in helpless perplexity.

"My darling," Miss Cornelia faltered at last, "think how much better

it is to give him up now than to--to marry him and be unhappy. You

don't know--men are very bad;--one reads such things in the

newspapers. If he were to ill-treat you, desert you."

"Ah, but he won't," said Elizabeth, smiling incredulously. "You

needn't worry, Aunt Cornelia; we shall be very happy. But even if we

were not," she concluded, with a sudden burst of defiance. "If I

thought that he would beat me, treat me like a dog--I don't care; I

should marry him to-morrow."

And she thrust out her full under lip, and stood facing them, with a

look of obstinacy on her fair, girlish face, that for the moment bore

a strong resemblance to her father.

To Miss Cornelia's mind there rose again, with startling vividness,

the events of twenty years before. The recollection seemed to endow

her with an unwonted and unnatural strength. She went over to where

Elizabeth stood and took both the girl's hot hands in hers.

"Elizabeth," she said, desperately, "you don't know what you're

saying. You will be miserable if you marry that man. You don't know

what it is to live with a person who is beneath you, who--who drags

you down. We know, my darling, we have seen it. Be warned by us, and

give him up."

Miss Cornelia had never in all her gentle life spoken with so much

vehemence. Elizabeth, in her astonishment, stood for a moment

absolutely passive. She stole a glance at Miss Joanna; she was weeping

quietly. Elizabeth's own face worked, her lip quivered. "I know whom

you mean," she broke out, suddenly, in a quick hard voice. "You're

thinking of my mother." And then, in the dismayed pause that followed,

she dragged her hands away from Miss Cornelia's grasp and fled from

the room.

The two older women looked at one another in silence.

"I didn't know," Miss Joanna said at last in a low, awe-struck tone

"that the child knew anything about--about poor Malvina."

_Chapter IX_

"And so you let all this nonsense influence you?" Halleck asked this

bitterly, staring up with moody eyes into Elizabeth's face. They were

sitting under a wide-spreading tree, in a field not far from the

Homestead. It was late afternoon and the shadows were long and

peaceful. A ray from the sinking sun shot through the foliage overhead

lighting up the red tints of Elizabeth's hair. Halleck's artistic eye

rested upon them fascinated. He had never, as he told himself, been so

much in love before.

"You give me up because of a little opposition?" he went on bitterly,

roused to increased irritation by the thought of losing her.

"Why, what can I do?" The girl's voice was weary, and she threw out

her hands with a helpless gesture. "They will give in to me, I

suppose, if I insist; but it makes them too unhappy. I believe it

would kill them. If they were unkind, I shouldn't care; but they only

cry, and are so wretched, and I can't stand it. It makes me feel so

ungrateful."

"And yet," said Halleck, anxiously, "you think they will give in in

the end?"

"Oh, yes, they'll give in," said Elizabeth, wearily. "They'll give

in, if I insist; and that's the very reason why I--what makes it so

hard, you see."

"No, I don't see," said Paul, bluntly. "If you think they will give

in, why are you so unhappy? But I understand how it is" he went on,

harshly, "you don't love me. I'm too far beneath you--a Bohemian and

an outcast. You are glad of an excuse to throw me over."

"Paul!" The indignant color flushed into Elizabeth's face. "How can

you say such things," she asked reproachfully. "You know they are not

true. I told my aunts that I would never give you up; I told them

that--that I would marry you to-morrow, if I could."

"You told them that?" Paul exclaimed exultantly. He put his arm around

her and drew her towards him. "Then keep your word, darling," he said.

"Marry me to-morrow."

Elizabeth shrank away, startled. "Marry you," she repeated.

"To-morrow, how could I?"

"Why not," said Paul, quietly. "Come up to Cranston and we will be

married. Then let them say what they please."

Elizabeth was very pale. "I couldn't do that," she said in a low

voice. "I don't want to be married so soon; and besides--it would kill

my aunts."

He laughed. "Nonsense! People soon resign themselves to what they

can't help. And then they needn't know--yet awhile. Listen, darling,

this is my plan. You know that I want to go abroad--well, I have had a

letter offering me a position in an opera company in Munich. If I

accept it I start this week."

He stopped as Elizabeth gave a little cry and stared up at him with

reproachful eyes. "This week," she said. "You go away this week?"

"Why, I can't stay here forever, you know," Paul said. "I've idled

away my time unconscionably already--but that is your fault,

Elizabeth. Now it is time I went to work. And that is why I say--marry

me before I go. Then, while I am away, nothing can separate us."

Elizabeth, pale and thoughtful, seemed to ponder the suggestion.

"Marry you," she repeated, slowly. "Marry you--now at once?"

"Yes, to-morrow," said Paul, boldly.

"And--and keep it _secret_?" she went on, with a troubled look.

"Yes, for a little while," said Paul, "for a few months, till I come

back. I shall have made my name and my fortune, darling, I hope, by

that time, and your aunts will be quite reconciled to me."

"Then wouldn't it be better," said Elizabeth, with much reason, "to

wait till then?"

"Are you willing to wait--in uncertainty all this time?" he asked,

reproachfully. "Ah, Elizabeth, it is evident that you don't love me as

I love you. Such an absence would be unbearable to me, if I felt that

some lover was likely to come along at any time and take you from me."

Elizabeth could not help reflecting that the danger of such a

catastrophe did not seem imminent, in the present condition of the

Neighborhood; but she did not put the thought into words. She only

said, with some dignity: "I don't think that I am the sort of girl to

change so easily."

"Ah, you can't tell," said Paul. "Women are fickle beings. I don't

trust you, Elizabeth. I have a feeling that, if you don't marry me

now, you never will. And why should you hesitate?" he went on eagerly.

"It isn't so much that I ask. I don't even say--come abroad with me

now; only give me the certainty that when I come back, I shall be able

to claim you."

"You would have that certainty now," she still insisted. "I promise

that I will marry you when you come back."

"Then why not marry me now," he asked, triumphantly.

Elizabeth could give no good reason to the contrary. The idea was

vaguely alarming, yet it held for her a certain fascination. She sat

listening in troubled uncertainty, while Paul discoursed with

enthusiasm over the many advantages of his plan. He was exceedingly

anxious, as he had said, to make sure of this beautiful girl, who was,

he vaguely felt, a little above him--of a grade superior to that of

the other girls whom he had known and made love to, for the space of a

fortnight perhaps. He had been true to Elizabeth, now, for more than

double that time. He really believed that he should be true to her

always. There were other things that attracted him besides her beauty.

The thought that Elizabeth was Miss Van Vorst of the Homestead was not

unpleasant to him; the old house, the family silver, the family

traditions, appealed to his artistic sense of fitness. And then though

he was no fortune-hunter, and certainly would have made love to no

girl whom he did not for the moment at least sincerely admire, he

admitted to himself, frankly, that it was by no means inconvenient

that Elizabeth should have a little money of her own and the prospect

of more in the future. The Van Vorst property, while it was

insignificant enough when measured by the standard of the Van Antwerps

and other rich people in the Neighborhood, seemed by no means

contemptible to Paul, who measured it by the standard of

poverty-stricken Bohemia.

Elizabeth's feelings were more complex, less frankly selfish, much

more anxious and uncertain. The money question did not enter into them

to any great extent, though she had an instinctive dread of poverty,

and she was convinced that, if once married to Paul, she would not be

able to have the pretty gowns, and other luxurious trifles, which had

hitherto seemed a necessity of life. But she was young and romantic,

and this thought did not weigh with her very much. What most

distressed her, and made her feel in some way vaguely in the wrong,

was the trouble this, her first love affair, seemed to bring to

others; to her aunts, to Amanda. She loved her aunts, and hated to run

counter to their wishes; she did not love Amanda, and yet the thought

of having injured her, though unconsciously, brought with it an

uncomfortable sense of guilt.

She had not seen her since that terrible interview, which she still

could not recall without a feeling of humiliation; but she had seen

her aunt, who told her that Amanda was ill with some low

fever--typhoid malaria, probably; there was always a good deal of that

at The Mills. It was not considered wise that Elizabeth should see

her; and besides, Amanda was delirious, and did not recognize any one.

Elizabeth was more relieved than sorry to hear it. No doubt, she told

herself, Amanda was already out of her head when she uttered that

extraordinary outburst, and it was foolish to attach any importance to

what she said in her feverish excitement. Still, Elizabeth did not

like to think of it, much less of the promise she herself had given,

voluntarily, in such forcible words. She had been so absolutely

sincere in making it; she had broken it so completely within the hour.

The whole affair was unpleasant, and weighed upon her more than those

more serious charges against Paul, which had fallen vaguely upon her

ear, not seeming to make any deep impression. His conduct to Amanda

was at its worst a mere trifle in comparison.

Still she could not give him up. That broken promise to Amanda only

proved this the more strongly. She could not face the prospect of life

without him. And yet she could not face without terrible misgivings

the prospect of further tears and remonstrances from her aunts. The

two claims struggled for the mastery; on the one hand, the claims of

the women who had brought her up, whose every thought for twenty years

had centred in her; on the other, the claims of the man who had loved

her in his light way some five weeks. Under these circumstances, it

was inevitable that the claims of the man should predominate. And yet

Elizabeth longed to satisfy them both.

Paul's plan seemed to suggest a compromise. And Elizabeth had not yet

learned that compromise is never satisfactory to either side.

"Listen," she said, looking at him intently, with eyes that seemed to

hold, even in the moment of yielding, a certain defiance of his power,

"If I do as you wish, if I--I marry you to-morrow, I am free to--to

come home at once, to go on with my life as if nothing were

changed--not to tell my aunts, not to tell any one, till you come

back? Do you promise this, on your word of honor?"

For a moment Paul hesitated. He had hardly expected her to yield so

easily; perhaps if he pressed the matter she might be persuaded even

to go abroad with him at once. But there were financial reasons which

made that inexpedient just then. On the whole, Paul decided not to

test his power too far.

"Upon my word of honor," he said, looking her steadily in the face "I

promise that you shall be free as air, to go on with your life as you

please, till I come back to claim you."

And so the thing was settled. Paul was to go to Cranston early the

next morning to make all necessary arrangements; Elizabeth was to

follow him a little later. They were to be married at once. Then Paul

was to take an afternoon train for New York, Elizabeth was to return

home, the whole affair should remain a secret.

Then Paul, radiantly triumphant, clasped Elizabeth in his arms, and

pressed his lips to hers.

"To-morrow," he whispered, "to-morrow, my darling, at this

time--though the world won't know it--still you will be my wife."

A strange feeling thrilled Elizabeth. She could not have told if it

were pleasure, or some involuntary presentiment. But aloud she

repeated mechanically: "Yes, I shall be your wife."

"You won't fail me, dearest," he said, scanning her face eagerly. "You

won't break your word? You have promised--you won't fail me?"

"No," Elizabeth answered, "I have promised--I won't fail you."

And yet the thought crossed her mind irrelevantly, that she had broken

a promise once already.

She left him and went home through the stillness and the fast

gathering shadows of the evening. The days were already growing

shorter. She noted the fact mechanically; noted too that the deep

glowing crimson of the sunset foretold a hot day for the morrow. She

entered the house and looked in at the dining-room; the table was set

out for tea with all the wonted care. Her aunts sat each at one end;

they were neither of them eating and both had red eyes. In the centre

of the table stood Elizabeth's favorite cake--the kind with the

raisins in it, which she used to beg for as a child, and which was

reserved either as a reward for virtue, or for consolation in some

childish trouble. Now in this trouble that was so far from childish,

poor Miss Joanna had bethought herself of the old attention, and

brought out the favorite cake as the only means of comfort within her

power. Elizabeth could not see it without a lump in her throat.

She smoothed her ruffled hair before the glass and came in quietly to

her usual place at the table. They looked up nervously at her

entrance, but neither spoke; they did not reproach her with being late

or ask where she had been. Miss Joanna pressed upon her the various

dainties, reminding her that she had eaten no dinner; otherwise the

meal was a silent one. It was not till near the end of it that

Elizabeth spoke in a strained harsh voice unlike her own.

"Paul is going away." That was what she said. "He--has an engagement

to go abroad. He goes to New York to-morrow. I--I hope you are

satisfied."

And then she stopped, for the look of tremulous relief on both their

faces was almost more than she could bear. The raisins in her favorite

cake seemed suddenly to choke her. She began to doubt, after all,

whether she would go to Cranston the next day.

_Chapter X_

This was Elizabeth's last thought that night; it was her first in the

morning. She dressed herself carefully, putting on white, according to

the custom which had aroused Aunt Rebecca's criticism; and all the

while she asked of the reflection that stared back at her with

perplexed eyes out of the mirror: "Shall I go, or shall I not?" She

put the question to a rose when she got down-stairs, repeating as she

ruthlessly destroyed each petal. "Yes, no, yes, no?" But the flower

answered with a "no," and she threw away the last petal in disgust.

"I think I shall drive over to The Mills this morning," she announced

quietly at the breakfast-table. "There is some ribbon I want to

match." Her aunts looked up startled. They wondered simultaneously at

what hour Halleck was to leave for New York. Yet what if after all the

child wished for one last meeting?

"You don't think it's--it's too hot to go over there to-day, my dear?"

Miss Cornelia ventured at last uncertainly.

"No, I don't mind the heat," Elizabeth answered indifferently, as she

sat playing with her knife and fork. She was very pale and had no

appetite. This seemed to them only natural. They hoped that when the

young man were once out of the way, their darling would be herself

again.

"We must take her to the sea-shore for a little while," Miss Cornelia

observed when Elizabeth had left the room. "She needs change of air."

Miss Joanna cheerfully assented. The idea and the sacrifice which it

involved (since to go away from home, even for a few weeks, seemed a

terrible undertaking) consoled them both greatly.

And meanwhile Elizabeth went her own way. It was not till she was

seated in the carriage about to start on her drive, that she observed

as if by an afterthought: "Oh, by the way, if I can't match the ribbon

at The Mills, I may go to Cranston for it by the trolley, so don't be

worried if I don't come back till late, and don't wait dinner." Her

aunts looked at one another questioningly; but she drove off at once,

before they could offer any objections.

And so Elizabeth drove towards Bassett Mills. The day was dry and hot,

as were most days that summer. The sun beat down out of a brazen sky,

the roads were white with dust, the grass in the fields was sere and

brown. The locusts all along the way kept up a loud, exultant song,

the burden of which was heat.

To Elizabeth, as she drove on, there began to be something ominous in

it all; in the heat and the dust and the dazzling sunshine and the

locusts with their eternal noise. They seemed all part, and she with

them of some horrible nightmare; she was under some spell which

benumbed her, deprived her of the capacity for thought, of all but

the power to keep doggedly on the way to Bassett Mills. What she

should do when she got there she did not know; her brain was torpid,

there was a strange ringing in her ears. It was the sun, no doubt,

that was affecting her head; it would be wise to turn back, or she

might be ill. But still she kept on.

It was not far from noon when she reached Bassett Mills. There was

little life about the place this hot morning; the mill-stream even

seemed to dash less tumultuously, and showed signs of running dry. A

group of men stood outside the drug-store, which was a great

meeting-place, and discussed the drought. It was decided that if it

continued the crops would be ruined; but hopes were founded on the

fact that prayers for rain were to be offered in all the churches on

Sunday.

"But there's not much use praying for rain," said one skeptic, "when

the wind's due west."

Elizabeth heard the words as she drove up, and, alighting tied the

white pony to a post and bribed a small boy to "keep an eye" on him.

Then she joined the group in front of the shop, who were some waiting

for the trolley, others merely passing the time of day. She did not go

into the dry-goods shop to try to match her ribbon; she knew that such

ribbon as she wanted was not to be had at Bassett Mills. She stood

idly listening to the men's conversation, and wondering if it were

indeed true, as the skeptic had declared, that it was useless to pray

for an event already determined by natural causes. She had been

brought up to believe implicitly in the efficacy of prayer, and had

added to her usual formula that morning a petition of unwonted fervor

that she might be enabled in this perplexing situation to decide for

the best. But perhaps there was no use in praying; perhaps one was not

a free agent. Fate, she thought, had evidently determined that she

should go to Cranston that morning to be married, since it was a thing

that might so easily have been prevented--by an objection from her

aunts, an offer of company on the expedition, even by the white pony

going lame; she would have yielded, or so she thought, to the merest

trifle, glad to have the decision taken out of her hands. But

everything had been made easy; it evidently was to be. And an implicit

believer in heredity might have observed that the matter had been

decided for her, by events and influences which had moulded her

character even before she was born. It was in just such clandestine

fashion as this that her parents had once gone up to Cranston to be

married; and it might be that some mysterious hereditary instinct,

some force over which she had no control, was now constraining their

daughter, under the same circumstances, to act in the same way.

Elizabeth, fortunately or otherwise, did not think of this. She only

knew that she was standing outside the drug-store with the other

loiterers, straining her eyes along the dusty white road for a sight

of the trolley; and that, even while she doubted the wisdom of

waiting, some fascination held her rooted to the spot. When the

trolley came she took her seat at once. After all a trip to Cranston

meant nothing; she might simply buy her ribbon and come back.

The trolley started off fast and jerkily, creating a teasing wind,

that seemed to blow from some fiery furnace. Elizabeth clutched her

hat with one hand, while with the other she tried to shield her eyes

from the flying dust and glare. Soon they were past the cemetery and

the straggling outskirts of Bassett Mills, out into the open country,

with rolling meadow and upland on either side, all withered, scorching

under the sun's fierce rays. An occasional wagon met them, wrapped in

a cloud of dust; the trolley was hailed now and then from some

solitary farm-house, and came to a sudden stop. The ride seemed

endless, but that they were approaching Cranston was at last made

evident by unmistakable signs; by the advertisements staring at them

from trunks of trees and the expanse of stone walls; by the asphalt

pavement that succeeded the rough country road, the increasing

quantity of bicycles, carriages and dust; and finally by the neat rows

of Queen Anne villas, with their gabled fronts and terraced gardens

sloping to the road. Then the car, with a last triumphant jerk, turned

a corner and landed its passengers squarely in the High Street of

Cranston.

Elizabeth alighted rather limply, and stood looking about her in a

dazed sort of way. A country woman laden with parcels addressed her

timidly. "Excuse me miss," she said, "but would you tell me the best

place to go for stockings?"

Elizabeth started and stared at her, as if the simple question had

been put in Hebrew. Then in a moment she recovered herself and

directed the woman very civilly. She watched her bustle off upon her

round of errands, then turned and slowly walked into the

confectioner's shop. It was there that she had promised to meet Paul.

There was no one, as it happened, in the front part of the shop, where

candy and cake were sold; no one in the little restaurant at the back.

Elizabeth sat down at one of the small marble-topped tables; her head

was aching, her eyes blood-shot, she was conscious of nothing but a

feeling of pleasure in the coolness and darkness, of relief from the

outside glare. Mechanically, she glanced at the small mirror, that

hung at an unbecoming angle opposite on the wall, and felt a slight

shock at the sight of herself--pale, worn, with blood-shot eyes, her

white gown dusty and bedraggled. No, she did not look well--she had

never looked worse in her life. Her lips curled in an unmirthful

smile, as she thought irrelevantly of Aunt Rebecca, and of how she

might have held forth on the folly of wearing white for such a dusty

ride. And thereupon with a sudden pang, came the thought of

Amanda--Amanda, tossing no doubt just then in the delirium of fever.

The unpleasant idea struck Elizabeth of a resemblance between her own

white face in the mirror, and her cousin's face as she had last seen

it, with those staring, red-rimmed eyes. Certainly, there was a latent

family likeness; but it took unbecoming conditions such as these to

bring it out. She wondered languidly if any one else had ever noticed

it.

Poor Amanda! Was she still, in her delirium, fretting over Paul? Or

was she, perhaps, secure in Elizabeth's promise, and the pleasure of

having separated them? What would she think if she knew that Elizabeth

was even now waiting for him here in Cranston--waiting to be married

to him? But with this thought the spell of indifference which had

rested upon Elizabeth seemed suddenly to fall away, and there swept

over her a sudden sense of revolt, of shame and repulsion. She started

impulsively to her feet. No, she could not be married--not in that

way; it was clandestine, disgraceful. There was still time to escape.

If only she could reach home, without seeing Paul! She made one quick,

blinded rush for the door, and then, a tall figure stood in her way,

and her hands were seized in a man's eager grasp. His handsome,

exultant face looked into hers.

"My brave girl," he said. "So you have not failed me."

_Chapter XI_

Elizabeth with a great effort wrenched her hands away from Paul's

grasp, and fell against one of the marble-topped tables. Her face was

white, her dull eyes looked up at him with a sort of terror.

"I--I have failed you," she said, speaking slowly and thickly, with

parched lips. "I have come, but I--cannot stay. I was going when you

came in."

"Elizabeth!" The look of exultant joy faded slowly and reluctantly

from Paul's face. "Elizabeth, what do you mean? Why did you come if

you don't mean to stay?"

"Because I--was crazy." She was trembling now, and she clung to the

table for support; but still she was firm. "I--I didn't think what I

did. Now I--I know. It would be wrong to marry like this--so secretly.

I must go home. Let me pass." She spoke the last words quickly,

imperiously, and made a motion as if to brush past him; but he stood

motionless in the door and blocked her way.

He was very angry; she had never seen him so before. The emotion lent

a curious brute strength to his fair, sensuous beauty. His face was as

white as hers, his full red lips were set in a curve of unwonted

determination.

"Listen to me, Elizabeth." He had never spoken to her in such a tone

before. "I won't be trifled with like this. I have made all the

arrangements. I won't have you--jilt me now. You must come with me, or

I--I'll know the reason why."

She met his gaze defiantly. "You can't compel me to come you know,"

she said. And again she would have passed him, and again he stopped

her. She did not try a third time, but sank into a chair and put up

her hands to her face. A sudden faintness came over her; it might have

been the heat, or the sharp, conflicting play of emotion. He followed

her and gently took her hands from her face and looked into her eyes.

"Don't be foolish, darling," he said, persuasively. "You know that you

love me, that you are only playing with me. You wouldn't really throw

me over now."

She looked up reluctantly, fascinated as she had often been before, by

the mere physical attraction of his beauty. "I--I don't know," she

began slowly, and then stopped frightened at the sound of voices in

the shop. A dread flashed over her all at once of a scene in a place

like this. The trifling, frivolous consideration turned the scale in

Paul's favor. She rose, shook off his grasp, and gave a hasty glance

in the glass.

"No, I won't throw you over," she said. "It's all wrong but--as you

say, it's too late now. Take care--some one is coming." She gave a

warning look at the door, as Paul pressed her hand.

So the threatened scene was averted and Elizabeth's fate was sealed.

The people who, after buying candy in the shop, came into the little

back room for some ice cream, saw a young woman arranging her hair

before the glass, and a young man waiting for her--a not unusual

sight.

What followed seemed in after life a dream to Elizabeth. There were

times when she tried to think that it had never happened; that the

whole thing was a mere figment of the imagination. But on that day she

was quite conscious that it was she herself, in very flesh and blood,

Elizabeth Van Vorst, who walked by Paul Halleck's side through the

glaring, sunny streets of Cranston, went with him into a dimly-lighted

church, let him place a ring upon her finger, spoke her share in the

marriage service, and wrote her maiden name for what should have been

the last time, in the parish register. The clergyman was very old and

mumbled over the service; the witnesses, two servants of his, were old

and feeble, also, and took but small interest. The church was damp

like a tomb after the heat without; Elizabeth found herself shivering

as from a chill. It was a relief to come out again into the heat which

had been so oppressive before. But on the church steps Elizabeth gave

a little cry. A funeral was slowly filing past, its black trappings

standing out in incongruous gloom against the noon-day brilliance.

Elizabeth looked at Paul. He had turned very white, and he too was

shivering. "It is a bad omen," he said, in a low voice, as if to

himself. He said no more, but led the way carefully in the opposite

direction from that which the funeral had taken.

They found themselves in a part of Cranston unknown to Elizabeth. The

road was bordered on either side by flowering hedges and led

apparently into the open country. There were no houses in sight; for

the moment, even no people. Halleck suddenly turned and clasped

Elizabeth almost roughly in his arms, while he pressed passionate

kisses upon her brow, her lips, her hair.

"My darling," he cried "I can't--I can't give you up. I was mad to

promise it. Let everything go and come with me to New York."

"No, no, I can't," she murmured faintly. "I can't." His vehemence

stunned, bewildered her; but instinctively she struggled against it.

"You promised," she cried out indignantly, "you promised that I should

be free--till you came back. I've kept my word, you must keep yours."

He let her go and for a moment they eyed each other steadily. This

time the victory remained with her. "Did I really make that promise?"

he said at last with a sigh. "Well, if I did, I must keep it, I

suppose. But, Elizabeth, you must be made of ice--you can't love me,

or you wouldn't hold me to it."

Elizabeth was chiefly conscious of an overpowering sense of relief.

"I do love you," she said, soothingly, "but indeed it is better--much

better to let things be as we arranged them. I can't go to New York in

this dress"--she gave a little tremulous laugh, as she glanced at her

fluffy muslin skirts. "Only a man could suggest such a thing. And then

my aunts!--they would be distracted. No, no, I must go home at once.

You will be back in six months," she went on, trying to console him.

"They will pass very quickly."

"Six months," he sighed. "It is an endless time." He was the picture

of gloom as they turned and walked steadily back to the busy part of

Cranston. And she, too, had her regrets. The compromise was

satisfactory to neither.

At the corner of the High Street they parted. There was no opportunity

for more than a hand-clasp, a few hurried words of farewell. Then he

went his way to the railroad station, and she hurried to the trolley.

The country woman with the many parcels was there before her, and told

where she got the stockings, and how much she paid for them.

Back again went the trolley, along the asphalted road past the Queen

Anne villas with their terraced gardens, past bicycles, carriages,

wagons, and always clouds of dust; out into the open country, with

rolling meadow and upland on either side, simmering in the heat of the

summer afternoon, to which the morning heat was as nothing; Elizabeth

sitting upright, shading her eyes from the glare, with aching head and

burning eyes, and throbbing brain that refused to take in the reality

of what she had done. This was her wedding journey.

An hour later the white pony brought her home.

"Did you--did you match your ribbon, dear?" Miss Joanna inquired

anxiously. Elizabeth stared blankly for a moment.

"I--I never thought of the ribbon," she cried at last, and burst into

hysterical laughter.

_Chapter XII_

It was that time of year when the Neighborhood, and the whole

riverside, are in their glory. Day after day dawned clear and frosty,

to warm at noon-day into a mellow brilliance. On every side stretched

wooded meadow and upland all aglow, resplendent in varied tints of

crimson and russet, magenta and scarlet, blending in a glorious scheme

of color, till they melted at last into the soft gray haze, which

rested, like a touch of regretful melancholy, on the tops of the

distant hills. Over the fields the golden-rod was still scattered

profusely, amidst the sober browns and purples of the bay, and the

pale lavender of the Michaelmas daisies. Red berries glistened on the

bushes, the ground was covered, every day deeper, with a carpeting of

fallen leaves and chestnut burrs.

On one of these autumn days, when the light was fading into dusk, Mrs.

"Bobby" Van Antwerp came to call at the Homestead, and found no one at

home but Elizabeth, who was kneeling on the hearth-rug, staring into

the fire.

Elizabeth's thoughts were not pleasant ones. She had refused to go to

Cranston with her aunts that afternoon, for she had never been near

the place since that hot July day, nearly three months before, when

she had forgotten to match her ribbon. What construction her aunts

placed upon the episode she never knew. They did not allude to it in

words, but treated her with added care and solicitude, as if she were

recovering from some illness. In pursuance of this theory, they took

her to a highly recommended and very dull seaside place, where she was

extremely bored. She returned in better health, though hardly better

spirits. She had now a new trouble, which increased as the autumn

advanced. Paul's letters, at first many and ardent, grew fewer and

colder, till they ceased altogether. Elizabeth's last letter remained

unanswered, and she was too proud to write again. No doubt, she told

herself, his thoughts were occupied by some new attraction. With a

sudden flash of intuition, she realized that for Paul there would

always be an attraction of some kind, and generally a new one.

This unpleasant perception had one good result, at least; it lightened

her sense of remorse towards Amanda. She had long ago got over the

ordeal of seeing her cousin again, and the strange scene between them

had been relegated to a curious phase of unreality, covered up and

almost obliterated, as such scenes not infrequently are among

relations and intimate friends, by the thousand commonplace incidents

of every-day life. And yet some sort of apology had been proffered by

Amanda, as she sat up in her white wrapper, very pale and hollow-eyed,

with her red hair cut short, and just beginning to come in in soft

waves like Elizabeth's--a thing she had always desired.

"You know," she said, in her weak voice "I was real sick that last

time you saw me. I was just coming down with the fever."

"I know you were," Elizabeth said gently, conquering the thrill of

anger which swept over her at the recollection.

"I guess I said some queer things," Amanda ventured next, and gave an

odd, furtive look from her light eyes.

"You certainly did," said Elizabeth, coldly. Not all the pity she felt

for Amanda's weakness could avail to make her speak in any other way.

"Well, I guess," Amanda said, after a moment and closing her eyes as

if wearied out, "people aren't accountable for what they say when

they're sick."

"No," said Elizabeth, "I suppose not." And with this tacit apology and

its acceptance, this episode between the cousins might be considered

closed. Certainly, on Elizabeth's side, it was not only closed, but

forgotten, in the pressure of far more serious troubles.

As she knelt that afternoon looking into the fire, a vision of her

future life--colorless, empty, without joy or love--seemed to stare

back at her from its glowing depths. The years stretched out before

her, a dreary waste--without Paul. She was sure that he would never

come back; the bond between them seemed the merest shadow. He had

forgotten her in three short months, while she was more in love than

ever, since she had never fully realized, at the time, the void that

he would leave behind him. For a short time her life had bloomed like

the summer; and now nothing was left to her but the fast-approaching

gray monotony of the November days, and the bleak cold of the winter.

Upon these cheerful reflections entered Mrs. Bobby Van Antwerp, in a

short skirt somewhat the worse for wear, with dark eyes that shone

brilliantly beneath her battered hat, and her small piquante face

glowing with health and exercise.

"Don't get up," she said. "What a beautiful blaze!" She sat down to it

at once and held out her small, gloveless hands to its pleasant

warmth. "I walked all the way," she announced, triumphantly, "and I

thought I would just drop in, and perhaps you'd give me a cup of tea."

One must have lived in the Neighborhood to appreciate the informality

of all this. People paid calls in their carriages, with their

card-cases and their best Sunday gowns--it was not good form to come

on foot, even had the distances permitted. But the young woman always

spoken of as "Mrs. Bobby" though her claims to a more formal

designation had long since been established, was a law unto herself

and cared little what the Neighborhood's laws might be. Elizabeth had

already noticed that this great lady, the greatest lady in the

Neighborhood, treated her with more friendliness than other people of

less assured position with whom she was, theoretically, on more

intimate terms. This curious fact, and the cause of it, occupied her

thoughts while she rang the bell and ordered tea, a little flustered

inwardly, but outwardly calm, and comfortably conscious of the

becoming neatness of her serge skirt and velveteen blouse. Whatever

her troubles might be, she had not yet reached so great a pitch of

desperation as to neglect her appearance.

"Aren't these autumn days beautiful!" said Mrs. Bobby, making herself

at home by unfastening her coat and tossing aside her hat, whereby she

disclosed to view a somewhat tousled halo of curly dark hair. "I tell

Bobby that just these few days in the autumn make up to us for the

bother of keeping the place, though in summer it is fearfully hot, and

unspeakably dull all the year round. It must be very dull for you,"

said Mrs. Bobby, coming to a sudden pause.

"Oh, yes, it's dull," Elizabeth admitted, with a little sigh.

Mrs. Bobby laughed.

"Why don't you say 'oh, but I am so fond of the place,' or 'but I'm

not at all dependent on society,' as the other girls in the

Neighborhood do?"

"I don't know," said Elizabeth, reflectively. "I don't think, for one

thing, that I am so awfully fond of the place; and as for society--I

have never had any, so naturally I get on without it."

"But you would enjoy it, if you had it?"

A curious brightness shone for an instant in Elizabeth's eyes. "Ah,

yes, I should enjoy it," she said, quickly. "I'm sure I should."

"I'm sure you would, too," said Mrs. Bobby. She seemed to reflect a

moment. "Don't you go away in August?" she asked at last.

"Yes, this year we did," said Elizabeth. "We went to Borehaven.

It--it wasn't very amusing." She stopped short blushing as if the last

words had been wrung from her unawares; but Mrs. Bobby's smile seemed

to invite confidence.

"Tell me all about it," she said. "Was it very terrible?"

"Yes, very," said Elizabeth, frankly. "There were a good many girls

who used to promenade up and down, and a number of old ladies who sat

in rows on the piazza and criticized the people and grumbled about the

table; and they one and all treated us as if we had committed some

crime. We were quite distressed till we found out that it was nothing

personal--only the way they always treat new arrivals."

"Ah, I know the type of place," said Mrs. Bobby "and the people. Were

there any men?"

"A few who were called men--about sixteen, I should think--most of

them--but they didn't interest me particularly." And Elizabeth

blushed, as she remembered the reason which had made her indifferent,

at least to such men as Borehaven could boast of. Mrs. Bobby noticed

the blush.

"What!" she said to herself "another attraction in this wilderness?

Not that stupid Frank Courtenay--I hope not. Yet there isn't and never

has been another man in the place that I ever heard of." While she

pondered this problem the tea-things were brought in, and Elizabeth

seated herself at the small table, behind the old silver urn, in the

full glow of the firelight, which played on her hair and brought out

the warm creamy tones of her skin. Mrs. Bobby watched her silently

with her bright dark eyes, her small, pointed chin supported on her

hand.

"You ought to go to town for the winter," she announced at last

abruptly. This seemed to be the upshot of her reflections. Elizabeth

looked up with a little start, and a momentary brightening of the

eyes, which faded, however, instantly.

"Oh, my aunts could never bear to leave here," she said. "They have so

taken root in this place. Besides," she went on, constrained to

greater frankness by the consciousness of that quality in Mrs. Bobby

herself "what would be the use if we did go? We know so few people. It

would be horrid to be in New York and not know any one or go

anywhere."

"Yes, that wouldn't be pleasant," admitted Mrs. Bobby, to whom indeed

such a state of things was inconceivable. "But you would know people,"

she went on, after a moment "every one does somehow. There are your

cousins, the Schuyler Van Vorsts, for instance."

"Who would probably never notice us," said Elizabeth "or if they did,

would ask us to a family dinner."

"Well, that certainly would be worse than nothing," Mrs. Bobby

admitted. "But--how about your old school friends? You must have known

some nice girls at Madame Veuillet's. You would see, no doubt, a great

deal of them."

Elizabeth shook her head. "I doubt it," she said. "They spoke--some of

them--of asking me to stop with them, but they have none of them done

so. They don't even write to me any more. It doesn't take long for

people to forget one, Mrs. Van Antwerp," said poor Elizabeth, putting

into words the melancholy philosophy which experience had lately

taught her.

"My dear child," cried Mrs. Van Antwerp, "you're too young to realize

that--yet." She put out her hand in her warm, impulsive way, and

touched Elizabeth's. "I can promise you one thing," she said. "If you

come to New York, I'll do what I can to make it pleasant for you."

Elizabeth looked up with glistening eyes. "You're--you're awfully

kind," she began, stammering. In another moment she would have burst

into tears, and perhaps, in the sudden expansion, confided everything

to this new friend--in which case her life's history would have been

different. But just then she heard the sound of wheels, and

immediately she stiffened and the habit of reserve, which had been

growing upon her during the last three months, reasserted itself. When

her aunts entered, in a little glow of excitement after their day at

Cranston, Elizabeth was sitting quite cool and placid behind the

tea-things, absorbed in the problems of milk and sugar.

The rest of Mrs. Bobby's visit seemed to her rather dull. They sat

around the fire, and Mrs. Bobby drank her tea and ate a great many of

the little round cakes which accompanied it, and which she praised

warmly, to the gratification of Miss Joanna, who had made them. She

told them all about her domestic affairs, and Bobby's affairs, and

the family affairs generally, and was altogether very charming and as

the Misses Van Vorst expressed it, "neighborly;" but still she said

not a word further of their going to town, or of that pleasant if

rather vague promise she had made in a moment of impulse, which

perhaps she already regretted. It was not till she held Elizabeth's

hand at parting that she invited her, as if by a sudden thought, to

dinner on the following Friday.

"It will be dull, I'm afraid," she said. "Only the Rector and his

wife, and the Hartingtons, and Julian Gerard, who is coming up over

Sunday. You will be the only young girl, and I want you to amuse

Julian. We dine at eight. Do come early, so we can have a talk

beforehand."

Elizabeth, entirely taken by surprise, had only time to murmur an

acceptance, when Mrs. Bobby hurried off, being hastened by the arrival

of her husband, who had called for her and was waiting outside in the

dog-cart. "Friday, remember," she called out from the yawning darkness

beyond the door, "and come early." Then Bobby Van Antwerp's restless

horse bore her off.

The Misses Van Vorst returned to the drawing-room, in a state of

considerable excitement.

"Think of my dining at the Van Antwerps!" Elizabeth exclaimed, still

rosy from the unexpected honor. "I was so taken aback that I could

hardly answer properly. But how on earth am I to amuse Julian--whoever

he may be, and what have I got to wear?"

"It's a--a very nice attention," said Miss Cornelia, complacently.

"She's never asked the Courtenay girls, I know, from what their mother

told me. She said they thought it a pity she was so unsociable. I

think, sister, when we see them we might mention that we don't find

her unsociable--just casually, you know. As for what you can wear, my

dear--either your white crepe or white organdie is quite pretty

enough, and much nicer than anything the Courtenay girls would have."

"To think of dinner at eight o'clock!" said Miss Joanna, who was only

just recovering her powers of speech. "So very fashionable! I wish,

dear, if you can, you would notice what they have. Mrs. Bobby says her

cook is very good at croquettes. I wish you could tell me, dear, if

they are better than ours."

"I'm afraid I shan't be able to think of croquettes," said Elizabeth,

"what with the burden of being on my best behavior and entertaining

Mr. Gerard. I think by the way, that he must be that dark man I have

seen sometimes in their pew on Sundays. Which would he like me best

in, do you suppose--the white crepe or the organdie? I must get them

both out, and decide which to wear."

Elizabeth's spirits were as easily exhilarated as they were depressed.

She ran up-stairs, humming a gay little tune which had not come into

her head for many a day. This dinner at the Van Antwerps', with the

prospect of meeting a few of her neighbors and apparently, one

unmarried man, might have seemed to many people a commonplace affair

enough; but to Elizabeth it was a great occasion, and for the rest of

the evening, bright visions of future pleasure danced before her eyes.

That night, for the first time in many weeks, she did not cry herself

to sleep, thinking of Paul.

_Chapter XIII_

"And you really think I look nicely?" Elizabeth asked this question in

tremulous excitement, as she stood before the long pier-glass in her

room on the night of her first dinner-party. The maid was on her knees

behind her arranging the folds of her train, Miss Joanna stood ready

with her cloak, and Miss Cornelia hovered a little way off, admiring

the scene. Elizabeth held her head high, there was a brilliant color

in her cheeks, her eyes shone like stars. You would hardly have known

her for the same girl who had struggled with sad thoughts and

disappointed hopes in the twilight only a few days before. This seemed

some young princess, to whom the good things of life came naturally,

unsought, by the royal prerogative of beauty.

"You--you look lovely," faltered Miss Cornelia, forgetting her

principles in the excitement of the occasion "and your dress is

sweet."

"It is fortunate I had it cut low, isn't it," said Elizabeth, as she

clasped a string of pearls, which had once belonged to her

grandmother, about her round white throat. "There, do I look all

right? You're _sure_ my skirt hangs well? I wanted a white rose, but

we have no pretty ones left." A slight cloud of discontent crossed

her face, but vanished instantly; since really, as she said to

herself, she looked very nice even without flowers.

"Don't be late," entreated Miss Joanna. "Just think if the dinner

should be spoiled!"

"Yes, it would be very bad manners," added Miss Cornelia "not to be

punctual."

"I don't know," said Elizabeth, doubtfully. "It's rather countrified

to be too early." But still she drew on her gloves and put on her

cloak, and started a good half-hour before the appointed time, in

deference to Miss Joanna's fears for the dinner and Miss Cornelia's

sense of the value of punctuality.

The clock was striking eight as she entered the wide hall of the Van

Antwerps's house, and read, or fancied that she did, in the solemn

butler's immobile countenance, an assurance that she was unfashionably

prompt. The demure little maid who followed him and took Elizabeth's

cloak, regretted to inform her that Mrs. Van Antwerp was not quite

ready, but would be down directly, and hoped that Miss Van Vorst would

excuse her unpunctuality. Elizabeth's heart sank, but the maid was

ushering her into the drawing-room, and there was no retreat. Yet she

shrank back involuntarily, as the long room yawned before her, empty,

except for one person whom she did not know; and thus she stood for a

moment hesitating, her warm Titian coloring framed against the dark

plush of the portiere, and her white gown falling about her in

graceful folds, of a statuesque simplicity almost severe, but from

which her youth and rounded curves emerged all the more triumphant.

Her heart beat fast and there was a deep burning color in her cheeks,

but she held herself erect, with the proud little turn of the head

that seemed to come to her by nature.

The tall dark man who was turning over the leaves of a magazine at the

end of the room, looked up as she entered and gazed at her for a

moment in silence. Their eyes met; for an instant he seemed to

hesitate. Then he rose and walked slowly towards her.

"You must let me introduce myself, Miss Van Vorst," he said, and his

voice was like his movements, very deliberate, yet it was clear-cut

and pleasant in tone. "My name is Gerard. Mrs. Van Antwerp told me I

should have the pleasure of taking you in to dinner."

He spoke so quietly and naturally, and seemed to accept the situation

with such absolute indifference, that whatever awkwardness it might

have contained for a young girl nervous over her first dinner, was

instantly removed. Elizabeth felt grateful, and yet perversely a

little piqued that this grave, dark man should place her at a

disadvantage, that he should be perfectly at home and know exactly

what to do, when she was nervous and flustered. But that kind

Providence which had endowed Elizabeth with so many good gifts had

given her among others a power to cover inward perturbation with a

brave show of self-possession.

"I'm terribly early," she was able to say now, quite lightly and

easily, though still with that uncomfortable beating of the heart. "My

aunts are very old-fashioned, and insist on punctuality as one of the

cardinal virtues."

"In which they are quite right, I think," said Mr. Gerard, smiling.

"But when you know Mrs. Van Antwerp well, you will have learned that

it is the one virtue in which she is utterly lacking."

"I--I don't know her very well," Elizabeth admitted, regretting

somewhat that she could not assert the contrary. "I have never even

been here before," she added, glancing about the room, whose

stateliness was a little overpowering.

"Really! Then wouldn't you--a--like to come into the conservatory and

look at the flowers?" suggested Mr. Gerard, who seemed to have charged

himself with the duties of host. "Oh, you needn't wait for Mrs. Van

Antwerp," he added, smiling, as Elizabeth hesitated. "I know the time

when she went to dress, and can assert with confidence that she won't

be down for another half-hour."

So Elizabeth found herself led, somewhat against her will, into the

famous conservatory, of whose beauties she had often heard; but with

which, it must be confessed, she was less occupied than with the man

by her side, at whom she cast furtive glances from beneath her long

lashes. He was tall--decidedly taller than herself, though she was a

tall woman, and rather broadly built than otherwise. His dark,

smooth-shaven face, which had lighted up pleasantly when he smiled,

was in repose rather heavy and impassive, with an ugly, square chin,

that seemed to indicate an indomitable will, of a kind to pursue

tenaciously whatever he might desire. In contradiction to this, his

eyes, except when a passing gleam of interest or amusement brightened

their sombre depths, had a weary indifferent look, as if there were

nothing in the world, on the whole, worth desiring.

"And this is the man," thought Elizabeth, "whom I am expected to

amuse. He doesn't look as if it would be an easy task. But no doubt

Mrs. Bobby has given him the same charge about me, and he is trying,

conscientiously, to obey. That's why he's taken me in here to show me

the sights, the way they do to the country visitors." Her heart leaped

rebelliously at the thought, even while she was saying aloud

mechanically: "'What a fine azalea!' I wonder if I look like a

countrified production. My gown isn't, at least; but then--he wouldn't

appreciate that fact. It probably would be the same to him, if it came

out of the Ark; he isn't the sort of man to notice, one way or the

other. I don't believe he cares for women--no, nor they for him. He's

not at all good-looking, and he must be--thirty-five"--she ventured

another glance. "Oh, that, at least. His hair is quite gray on the

temples. 'Yes, those orchids are beautiful. I never saw anything like

them.' I must do my duty and admire properly; he thinks me very

unsophisticated, no doubt. I don't think I like him. Did Mrs. Bobby

think it would amuse me to--amuse him? But perhaps he is thinking the

same thing about me." And she stole another glance at his face, but

could not read, in his half-closed eyes and unmoved expression, any

indication of his real feelings.

They had made the round of the conservatory, when suddenly he stopped.

"Don't you--want a flower for your gown," he asked. He looked about

him reflectively. "Let me see," he said. "You would like it to be

white." Elizabeth wondered how he knew that. After a moment's

hesitation, he chose a white rose and gave it to her. She fastened it

carefully in her gown, where its green leaves formed the only touch of

color.

"How does it look?" she asked innocently, and raised her eyes to his,

where unexpectedly they encountered an odd gleam, of something that

seemed neither wholly interest nor yet amusement, and that made her

look down again quickly, while the warm color mantled in her cheeks.

It was a moment before he answered her.

"It looks well," he said then, quietly, "and suits your gown." And

they sauntered back slowly to the drawing-room.

Mrs. Bobby came hurrying in by the opposite door, fastening as she

went the diamond star in her black lace.

"My dear child," she said, kissing Elizabeth, "what must you think of

me! It is all Bobby's fault for taking us such a long drive, and I see

he is not down yet either, the wretch! But Julian has been

entertaining you, so it is all right. I'm afraid though that he has

been taking away my character unmercifully, telling you that I am

always late, and other pleasing things of the kind."

Gerard's smile again softened his face. "Do me justice, Eleanor," he

said. "You know I don't say worse things of my friends behind their

backs than I do to their faces."

She laughed. "I should be sorry for them if you did," she returned.

"But here," she went on, as voices were heard in the hall, "here, in

good time, are the Rector and his wife. What a blessing they didn't

arrive sooner!"

The words had hardly left her lips before the Rector and his wife were

ushered in, the latter uttering voluble apologies for being late, and

laying all the blame on the erratic behavior of the village hackman,

who feeling an utter contempt for people who did not keep their own

carriages, reserved the privilege of calling for them at what hour he

pleased. The theme of his unpunctuality was so engrossing that the

Rector's wife would have enlarged on it for some time, had she not

caught sight of Elizabeth, and in her surprise subsided into a chair

and momentary silence. And then strolled in Bobby Van Antwerp, fair,

well-groomed, amiable, and mildly bored at the prospect of

entertaining his neighbors; and immediately afterwards followed the

Hartingtons, still more bored at the prospect of being entertained;

after which they all went in to dinner, and Elizabeth found herself

seated between the Rector and Gerard.

"You live here all the year round, don't you?" the latter said to her,

somewhere about the third course, when he had given utterance to

several other conventional remarks, and she had grown accustomed to

the multiplicity of forks at her plate, and had decided that the light

of wax candles, beaming softly under rose-colored shades, was

eminently becoming to every one. She looked at him now with an odd

little challenge in her eyes, called forth, in spite of herself, by

the wearied civility of his conversational efforts.

"Yes, I live here all the year round," she said, in her clear,

flute-like voice. "I--I'm a country girl, you see."

He smiled. "You are to be congratulated, I think."

"Do you think so?" asked Elizabeth, in genuine surprise.

"Why, yes, I love the country; don't you," he said tranquilly.

She was silent for a moment, her eyes resting absently on the graceful

erection of ferns in the centre of the table, which rose, like a fairy

island, from a lake of glass. "It's not a conventional thing to say,"

she answered at last, slowly "but if you want the truth"--

"I always want the truth," said Gerard.

"Well, then, I don't think I do care for the country," she said. "I've

had too much of it. I--there are times when I detest it." She spoke

with sudden vehemence, and she met his wondering gaze with eyes that

were curiously hard.

Gerard's face clouded. "You don't care for the country," he said,

slowly, "and yet you live here all the year round?"

"Ah, that's the very reason," she said, lightly. "People always tell

you that you don't appreciate your blessings; but how can you

reasonably be expected to, when you don't have any voice in choosing

them?"

"If you did, you probably wouldn't like them any better," he retorted.

"And it would be more annoying to think that you had had a voice in

the matter and had chosen wrong."

"Perhaps," said Elizabeth, "but I should like to make the experiment."

And she stared again thoughtfully at the feathery forms of the ferns.

"Well, if you had your choice," said Gerard, lazily, "what would you

choose as an improvement on the present state of things?"

She turned towards him with a slight start. "What should I choose,"

she said, slowly "as an improvement on my life just now?"

"Yes, if you had a fairy Godmother," suggested Gerard.

"With unlimited power?" questioned Elizabeth.

He laughed. "Well, not quite that, perhaps," he said, "but--a fairy

Godmother who could give you a good deal. A very charming one, too,"

he added, in a low voice.

Elizabeth knit her brows and pouted out her full lips, in apparently

deep reflection. "If I had a fairy Godmother," she said, musingly,

"and she were to give me three wishes--three, you know, is the magic

number in the fairy tales--why, I should choose first of all, I think,

a season in town"--

"Which you might tire of in a month," suggested Gerard.

"Not at all," said Elizabeth, decidedly, "because my second wish would

be for the capacity to be always amused."

"And do you really think," said Gerard, "that you would like that--to

go through life as if it were a sort of opera bouffe?"

"Why not?" said Elizabeth. "I'm a frivolous person. I confess I like

opera bouffe."

"For an evening, perhaps," said Gerard, "but after a time you'd get

tired of it--oh, yes, I'm sure you would--and you'd begin to think"--

"Ah, no, I shouldn't," she interrupted him, eagerly "for that's what

my third wish should be. I should ask for the power never to think.

Thought--thought is horrible." She spoke the last words very low, more

to herself than him, and broke off suddenly, as an odd, frightened

look crept into her eyes. Gerard watched her in some perplexity.

"This girl," he said to himself "who must be, I suppose, somewhere

about twenty, and has seen, according to Eleanor, nothing of the

world, talks sometimes like a thoughtless child, and sometimes like a

woman of thirty, and an unhappy one at that. I can't quite make her

out." Aloud he said, in an odd, dry voice that he had not hitherto

used towards her, "Now that you have pretty well in theory at least,

reduced yourself to the level of a brainless doll, why not ask, now

that you are about it, for the power not to feel? Then you would

really be a complete automaton, and nothing on earth could have power

to hurt you."

Elizabeth had grown very pale, and her hands were tightly locked

together under the table. "Ah," she said, wearily "I've exhausted my

three wishes. And, besides, it's too much to ask. No fairy Godmother,

I'm afraid, could give one the power not to feel."

"Be thankful for that," he said, quickly. "A woman who has no capacity

for suffering is--is--would be unspeakably repellant."

"Would she?" said Elizabeth, dreamily. "I should think, for my part,

that she would be rather enviable." She sat staring absently before

her, and Gerard did not try to break the silence. In a moment Mrs.

Hartington on his other side claimed his attention, and Elizabeth was

not sorry. She felt vaguely resentful towards him for having made her

think of unpleasant things, which she had resolved not to do that

evening. The dinner went on, and she helped herself mechanically to

dish after dish which was pressed upon her. The Rector turned to her

and made a few labored remarks, adapted as he thought to her youthful

intelligence, and she answered them absently. Bobby Van Antwerp told,

in a languid way, a funny story for the benefit of the table, and the

conversation grew general for awhile. Dinner was nearly over when

Gerard said, turning to her with a pleasant smile:

"I'm not a prophet, and yet I am going to venture on a prediction. In

a little while, I think, you'll find your fairy Godmother, and have

your season in town, though I don't know if the other things will be

thrown in; and then some time in the course of it, I'll ask you if you

are satisfied, and you'll tell me perhaps, that you are sick of it

all, and are pining for the country, the green fields, and--a--the

view of the river"--

He stopped as Elizabeth interrupted him flippantly. "Oh, no, never,"

she cried. "I'd prefer city streets to green fields any day, and as

for the river--I've looked at it all my life, and I'm afraid I've

exhausted its possibilities." She was quite herself again, her cheeks

were pink; she looked up at him with laughing eyes. "Confess that you

think me terribly frivolous," she said; "confess that you disapprove

of me entirely."

"On the contrary," said Gerard, with rather a cold smile "I think

there is a good deal to be said for your point of view--and as for

disapproval, that's a priggish sensation that I hope I don't allow

myself to feel towards any one. Wait till I see you in town," he went

on, more genially "and then perhaps we'll agree better."

"Ah, but you never will see me in town," she said, sadly.

"Never?" he returned, slightly raising his eye-brows. "That's rather a

rash prediction. I think I may have the pleasure of meeting you there

before very long. You see I believe in fairy Godmothers," he added,

lightly, as Mrs. Bobby gave the signal, and, rising, he pushed back

Elizabeth's chair.

She paused for a moment, as she gathered up in one hand the soft white

folds of her gown. "I wish your faith could perform miracles," she

said. And then she followed dreamily in the wake of the well-worn

black satin gown, which had been seen, on many another festive

occasion, on the broad back of the Rector's wife.

"He does disapprove of me," the girl thought to herself. "He would

have liked me better if I were a little bread-and-butter miss, in

white muslin and blue ribbons, who babbled of green fields and taught

a class in Sunday school. That's the kind of woman he admires. He

thinks me hard and flippant, but--I don't care. At least he dropped

that weary, society manner. It is something to have inspired him with

an emotion of some sort, even if it happens to be disapproval."

_Chapter XIV_

The Rector's wife, after the first surprise, was very glad to see

Elizabeth. It made her feel more at home, and she drew her down now

eagerly, beside her on the sofa by the fire, whose warmth on that

autumn evening modified the somewhat chill atmosphere of the state

drawing-room.

"My dear Elizabeth, I never expected to see you here." Increased

respect mingled with the surprise in her tone. Elizabeth had certainly

gone up several degrees in her estimation. "It's quite an honor to be

asked--the Courtenays never are, I know, though don't repeat that I

said so. Of course we are asked every year, as is only due, you know,

to the Rector's position, my dear; but almost always the children are

ill, or something goes wrong, and it's three years now since we've

been able to come. It was unfortunate our being late this time. Do you

think Mrs. Bobby was much annoyed?" The Rector's wife lowered her

voice anxiously, as she for the first time waited for a response.

"Oh, no," Elizabeth was able truthfully to assure her. "I'm sure she

wasn't annoyed."

"Well, to be sure, the Hartingtons were later"--in a tone of

relief--"but these great swells can do as they please. You look very

nice, Elizabeth, very nice indeed. I never saw that dress before. It

must be pleasant to have something new occasionally"--and the Rector's

wife gave a gentle sigh. "You see I have had the color changed on this

dress--red, I think, makes it look quite different, and it is warm and

pretty for the autumn. Don't repeat this, Elizabeth, but I wore the

same dress here the last time I came to dinner four years ago--only

then it was trimmed with pale blue. It was summer, you see, so it

looked cool. Do you suppose Mrs. Bobby would remember?"

"Oh, I don't suppose Mrs. Bobby cares"--Elizabeth began absently "much

about dress," she added, hastily. She was looking vaguely about her,

wondering as the familiar voice meandered on, if she were really at

dinner at the Van Antwerps', or prosaically seated as she had so often

been before, in the Rectory parlor.

Mrs. Hartington, a large fair woman, very splendidly dressed, had

seized upon Mrs. Bobby and was talking to her on a sofa at the other

end of the room.

"So you have taken up the Van Vorst girl," she was saying, as she

surveyed Elizabeth through her lorgnette. "She is really quite pretty,

and--a--not bad form. That gown of hers is effective--it's so simple.

I wonder how she learned to dress herself, here in the country."

"Oh, she's learned more than that, Sybil, I imagine," said Mrs. Bobby,

in level tones. "I think her very good form, and extremely pretty. Her

coloring is very picturesque, and quite natural." This very

innocently, without a glance at the conspicuously blonde hair which

her friends said had not been bestowed on Sybil Hartington by nature.

"She inherits it from her mother, I suppose--a red-haired bar-maid,

wasn't she?" said Mrs. Hartington, again subjecting Elizabeth to a

prolonged scrutiny. "After all, she lacks distinction," she announced,

dropping her lorgnette and turning to more important subjects.

Mrs. Bobby did not enjoy that half-hour after dinner; neither,

perhaps, did Elizabeth, who had heard several times already the

account of the attack of measles from which the Rectory children had

lately recovered, and was glad when the men appeared in the midst of

it. But if she had expected Mr. Gerard to come up to her to resume

their conversation, as perhaps she had, in spite of her consciousness

of his disapproval, she was destined to be disappointed. Gerard did

give her one long look, as she sat in the full glow of the firelight;

but he turned almost immediately and spoke to Mrs. Hartington, who

had, indeed, the air of confidently expecting him to do so. It was

Bobby Van Antwerp who sauntered up to Elizabeth, hospitably intent on

making her feel at home.

"It was awfully good of you to come to-night, Miss Van Vorst. These

dinner-parties in the country are stupid things, but, after all, it's

a way of seeing something of one's neighbors. I think you're too

unsociable here, as a rule. It's a bore of course to take one's horses

out at night, but if one always thought of that, one would never go

anywhere."

"I'm sure," Elizabeth said sincerely, "I was very glad to come. A

dinner-party is a great event to me."

"Ah, well, it is dull here for a young girl," said Bobby, kindly. "My

wife finds it very dull; but she knows I'm fond of the old place, and

she comes to please me. You and she must try to amuse each other. You

know, between ourselves"--lowering his voice--"Eleanor doesn't always

take to people; it has made some of our neighbors around here feel

rather sore--I'm afraid. But she does take to you, and so I hope we

shall see a great deal of you."

Elizabeth smiled and murmured her thanks, wondering greatly to find

herself thus singled out from the rest of the Neighborhood; and just

then Mrs. Bobby came up and took her hand.

"Come," she said, "I want you to play for me. I'm so fond of music,

and I've heard that you play beautifully."

"Ah, but I don't," Elizabeth protested; but still she allowed herself

to be led to the piano, without undue reluctance. And then that grand

piano, with the name of the maker had been tempting her to try it ever

since dinner-time.

After all, it is doubtful if Mrs. Bobby cared so very much for music;

but it is possible she knew of some one else who did. Elizabeth had a

gift which had come to her, Heaven knows how!--a gift in which far

greater pianists are sometimes lacking--the power to throw herself

into what she played and to infuse into it something of her own

personality. Her playing seemed no mere, mechanical repetition of what

she had been taught, but the unstudied, spontaneous expression of her

own thoughts and feelings. As she passed at Mrs. Bobby's request from

one thing to another, mingling more set compositions with fragments

from operas and songs of the day, the conversation between Mrs.

Hartington and Gerard slackened, and he glanced more and more

frequently towards the piano.

"Music is rather a bore--isn't it--after dinner this way," drawled

Mrs. Hartington, noticing this fact.

"I don't think I agree with you. I'm fond of music," said Gerard, and

after awhile he found an opportunity to saunter over to the piano,

where Elizabeth sat playing, a little absently now, bits from Wagner.

She started and looked up, blushing slightly, as Gerard asked her if

she could play the Fire-music.

"I--it is a long time since I have tried it," she began, impelled by

some vague instinct to refuse, and then she stopped, and almost

unconsciously her fingers touched the keys, as she caught a look that

seemed to compel obedience. He smiled.

"Please play it," he said, and though the tone was caressing, there

lurked in it a half perceptible note of command. She felt it, as she

began to play, and he stood listening, his grave eyes fixed upon her

face. "A severe judge," she thought to herself with a proud little

thrill of rebellion. And then, as she played on, she forgot this

thought, and the fear of his criticism; forgot the strange room, and

the strange people, and the fact that she was dining at the Van

Antwerps'; forgot everything but the eyes fixed upon her, and played

as she had never played before.

Elizabeth had always put the best of herself into her music, her

finest qualities of brain and soul. But now she put into it something

of which she before was hardly conscious, a force and depth and fire,

which stirred inarticulately within her, and found expression in the

throbbing Wagnerian chords. All the magic of the fairy spell thrilled

beneath her touch, as it rose and fell and wove itself in and out

amidst the clash of conflicting motives, while Brünnhilde sank ever

deeper into slumber, and the flames leaped and danced and played about

her sleeping form, and there lurked no premonition in her maiden

dreams of that fatal, all-engrossing love, which was yet to awaken her

from the serenity of oblivion. Then, as the rippling cadence died

away, Elizabeth hesitated for a moment, striking furtive harmonies,

till she passed at length into the poignant sweetness, the passionate

self-surrender of the second act of Tristan, and so on to the

Liebestod, with its swan-song of triumphant anguish, of love supreme

even in death. With the last sobbing chord, Elizabeth's hands fell

from the keys, and she sat staring straight before her, with eyes that

were unusually large and dark.

"Upon my word she _can_ play," said Bobby Van Antwerp, and looked, for

him, slightly stirred. "She has temperament," Mrs. Hartington coldly

responded and again honored Elizabeth with a prolonged stare. "My dear

child," exclaimed Elizabeth's hostess, "I had no idea you could play

like that." The only person who said nothing was the man for whom she

had played. He stood motionless by the piano, and his face was white

and set. When the applause of the others had ceased, and Elizabeth,

blushing now and smiling, looked up at him in involuntary surprise at

his silence as if from a dream, he started and then, recovering

himself, he spoke mechanically a few conventional words of thanks, and

without comment on her performance, turned abruptly away.

Elizabeth still sat, a trifle dazed, at the piano, her hands tightly

clasped in her lap. Her cheeks were burning painfully and she bit her

lip to keep back the tears that sprang unbidden to her eyes. She

seemed to have fallen suddenly from the clouds back to earth. After a

moment she rose and went over to her hostess to say farewell.

"Don't go," Mrs. Bobby entreated, holding her hand, "I really haven't

seen anything of you."

"I must go, thank you," Elizabeth said, quietly. "William,"--this was

the gardener, who on state occasions officiated as coachman--"will be

furious if he is kept waiting."

She felt a sudden eagerness to be gone, and Mrs. Bobby admitted the

force of her excuse and parted with her reluctantly. Both Bobby and

Gerard escorted her into the hall, but it was Gerard who placed her

in the carriage, and yet, as he did so, said not a word further of

seeing her again.

"He probably doesn't wish to," thought Elizabeth, "now that he has

done his duty to the last." The reflection was the only unpleasant one

that she brought away from an otherwise successful evening.

Gerard sauntered back into the drawing-room, and stood leaning against

the mantel-piece, gazing with thoughtful eyes into the fire, while, as

it leaped and flickered, and sent out glowing tongues of flame, a

woman's face looked up at him framed in her shimmering hair, and the

magic of the fire-music still rang in his ear, mingled with the more

passionate strains of Tristan, the deeper tragedy of Liebestod.

He had been standing thus a long time when Mrs. Bobby came and stood

beside him. The other guests had left and Bobby had gone off to his

den.

"Well," she said tentatively, glancing up smiling into his face,

"well, Julian, what did you think of her?"

He started and looked at her blankly for a moment. "Think of--whom,

Eleanor?" he asked.

"You know whom I mean--Elizabeth Van Vorst."

Gerard's eyes wandered back to the fire, where they rested for a

moment absently. "I think," he said at last slowly, and as if weighing

his words with more than his wonted deliberation, "I think there's too

much red in her hair."

"Too much red in her hair," Mrs. Bobby repeated blankly; then

recovering herself: "But there isn't any, Julian, or very little. I

call her hair golden, not red."

"Look at it in the fire-light," Gerard insisted imperturbably, "and

you will see that it's a deep red."

"Well, and if it is," said Mrs. Bobby--"not that I admit for a moment

that you are right--but if it is, red hair is all the fashion

nowadays."

"No doubt," said Gerard. "It's a matter of taste. But for myself I

never see a red-haired woman"--He stopped, but went on presently with

an effort. "I never see a red-haired woman, that I don't instinctively

avoid her. Yes, it's a--a superstition, if you will. I feel that she

will be dangerous, somehow or another, perhaps to herself, and

certainly to others." A note of unwonted feeling thrilled his voice.

He broke off suddenly and stared again into the fire.

Mrs. Bobby sat and watched him in silence. "And so," she said to

herself, "_that_ woman's hair was red."

"You see," said Gerard, presently, looking at her with a smile, "I've

shown the confidence I repose in you by confessing my pet

superstition. Miss Van Vorst's hair is not _very_ red, I admit, except

in some lights, but still it's--it's red enough to be dangerous; and

that fact, and certain other little things I've noticed about her,

incline me to--to avoid her. She puzzles me; I can't quite make her

out. Still, she is certainly a girl whom a great many men would--would

admire. I'm no criterion, I believe."

"I hope not, I'm sure," said Mrs. Bobby, ruefully "for the sake of

most of the women I know. My dear Julian, I despair of ever getting

you married."

"My dear Eleanor, if you would only stop trying. Your efforts are, if

you will excuse my saying so, a little too transparent. Do you suppose

that I imagined this evening that your unpunctuality was entirely

accidental?"

"Imagine what you will, you marvel of astuteness," said Eleanor,

composedly. "I certainly did not intend to hurry down while I knew

Elizabeth to be in such good hands, as I admit yours to be, in spite

of certain faults which I hope marriage will improve. And that's why I

don't relax my efforts, as you call them, while there is such a

superfluity of nice girls in the world, and such an insufficiency of

nice men to deserve them. But I'm disappointed about--about Elizabeth

Van Vorst," she went on, musingly. "I thought--I don't know why,

Julian--but I thought that you would like her."

Gerard started. "I never said that I--didn't like her," he observed.

"No, but your remarks seemed to point in that direction. Now I like

her very much. Indeed, to return your confidence with another,

Julian"--she looked up with a smile--"I was thinking, if Bobby

approves, of asking her to spend the winter with me.

"I knew that," he returned, calmly, "and I approve of the plan highly.

It will be a pleasant change for her, as she doesn't seem exactly

satisfied with her surroundings; and for you it will be a--a"--he

paused, apparently in search of an appropriate word--"an interesting

study," he concluded.

She looked up in surprise. "A--a study," she repeated.

"Yes, a study--to see what a girl like that, with the somewhat odd

antecedents that you told me about once, and some contradictory

characteristics that I think she has--to see how she develops in the

storm and stress of a New York season. I--I think you will find it

quite interesting, Eleanor."

"I'm glad you think so," she returned, softly. "But--how about

yourself, Julian? Couldn't you--just on general psychological

principles--condescend to take an interest in it, too?"

A shadow fell on Gerard's face. "Oh, for myself," he said, carelessly,

"I'm not easily interested in things nowadays, and above all

not--thank Heaven! not in women." He paused. "All the same," he added,

"you have the best wishes--for the success of your protégée." And with

this he bade her good-night, and left her.

She sat for a long time without moving, and watched the fire flicker

and die away.

"On the whole, I'm rather glad her hair is red--in certain lights at

least," she observed at last, apparently to the smouldering embers.

"It--it makes the study still more interesting."

_Chapter XV_

When Eleanor Van Antwerp had uttered the words "If Bobby approves,"

she had given voice to a purely conventional formula; for when, in the

eight years of their married life, had Bobby not approved of anything

that she might chance to desire? She did not suppose for a moment that

he would object to her asking Elizabeth Van Vorst, or any one under

the sun, to spend the winter, and when, the next morning, she paid him

a visit in his den, where he was supposed to be transacting important

business, and proved to be enjoying a novel and a cigar, she was

still, as she asked his permission to carry out her new plan, merely

paying a graceful concession to the perfunctory and outworn theory of

his supremacy. Bobby listened placidly, puffing at his cigar, his

clear-cut, clean-shaven profile, outlined against the window-pane

seeming absolutely impassive in the gray light of the autumn day. But

when she concluded, and was waiting, all aglow with her own

enthusiasm, for his answer, he turned his blue eyes towards her with

an unusually thoughtful look.

"Well," she said, impatiently, as he still declined to commit himself,

"what do you think?"

"What do I think," he repeated, slowly, "of your asking Elizabeth Van

Vorst to spend the winter?"

"Why, yes, I don't want to do it, dear, of course, unless you

approve."

"Well, then," said Bobby, calmly, "if you ask my candid opinion, I

think it would be a mistake. I--I'd rather you didn't Eleanor, really

I would."

"Bobby," Eleanor Van Antwerp stared at her husband in incredulous

amazement. "Bobby, you don't mean to say that you don't want me to ask

her?"

"That's about it." Bobby paused and reflectively knocked the ashes

from his cigar. "You see," he went on, argumentatively "this is the

way I look at it. The girl is good-looking, and all that, and it's

very nice for you to see something of her up here, and I'm only too

glad, for it's awfully sweet of you, darling, to come here on my

account, and I've always been sorry that there wasn't some woman whom

you could be friends with. But to ask a girl to spend the winter, and

introduce her to people, is--is a responsibility; and if you want to

ask any one--why, I'd rather it were some girl whom I know all

about--that's all."

It was not often that Bobby made such a long speech. His wife could

hardly hear him to the end of it. "But, my dear Bobby" she exclaimed,

breaking in upon his last words, "you know all about Elizabeth Van

Vorst!"

"Do I," said Bobby, quietly. "I know that her father was a fool, and

that her mother was--worse. Perhaps it would be better if I didn't

know quite so much, Eleanor."

"For Heaven's sake, don't harp on what happened centuries ago," cried

Mrs. Bobby, who had not been born in the neighborhood. "I've always

thought it a shame the way people here snub that poor girl. People

can't help what their fathers and mothers were like. If mine were

fairly respectable, I'm sure it's no credit to me."

"None at all," Bobby assented, "but still you'd feel rather badly if

they were not. It's a natural feeling, Eleanor. I'm not a crank about

family, but on general principles, I think a girl whose mother was a

lady is more apt to behave herself than one whose mother was--well,

quite the reverse."

"And on general principles," said Eleanor, quickly "I agree with you,

but I think Elizabeth Van Vorst the exception that proves the rule."

"Then I would rather," said Bobby, tranquilly, "that it were proved

under some one else's auspices than yours."

"But that doesn't seem likely, under the circumstances," exclaimed his

wife, impatiently. "Really, Bobby, you disappoint me. I never supposed

you had such narrow-minded ideas. The girl has been very well brought

up by those dear old aunts, and she is perfectly well-bred. And I'm

sure there is plenty of good blood in the family as well as bad. The

Schuyler Van Vorsts are their cousins, and lots of old Dutch families.

I dare say, if we went far enough back, we'd find ourselves related

to them, too."

"I dare say," said Bobby, resignedly, "if we went far enough back,

we'd find ourselves related to a lot of queer people. But we don't,

thank Heaven! have to ask them to visit us."

"Ah, well, I see you are hopelessly opposed to my plan," said Mrs.

Bobby, changing her tactics, "and of course, dear, as I told you

before, I wouldn't think of asking any one unless you approve."

"Oh, I don't really care," said Bobby, somewhat taken aback by this

sudden surrender. "Ask any one you please. You know I never interfere

with your plans. Only don't blame me if they turn out badly--that's

all."

"Ah, but they never do," cried Mrs. Bobby, "at least this one won't,

I'm sure. I really have set my heart on it, Bobby," she went on,

pleadingly. "The truth is, though I don't often speak of it, going out

has been a weariness, and that big house in town seems horribly empty

since--since the baby died." Her lip trembled and she paused for a

moment, while Bobby turned and stared fixedly out of the window at the

brilliantly-tinted leaves that a chill east wind was whirling

inexorably to the ground. "I thought," she went on presently, in a

voice that was not quite steady, "that if I had some one with me to

make the house seem a little brighter--some young girl whom I could

take with me on the same old round that I'm so sick of--why, I could

look at life through her eyes, and it would seem more worth while. But

of course Bobby," she concluded, earnestly, "I wouldn't for the world

do anything to which you really object."

"My dear Eleanor," said Bobby, turning round at this and speaking for

him quite solemnly. "You know I don't object to anything in the world

that could make you happy."

And so Mrs. Bobby had her own way.

It was on Saturday that this conversation took place; and on Sunday

afternoon they all walked over to the Homestead--Mrs. Bobby, her

husband and Gerard. Elizabeth had been prepared for their coming, by a

whisper from Mrs. Bobby after church; and tea was all ready for them

with Miss Joanna's cakes, and a fire that was welcome after the cold

out-doors, where the bleak east wind was still robbing the trees of

their glory and ushering in prematurely the dull grayness of November.

Mrs. Bobby was not satisfied till she could draw Elizabeth to a

distant sofa, and deliver the invitation which she felt, in her

impetuous fashion, she could not withhold for another day.

But though the first of Elizabeth's wishes was thus fulfilled with a

promptness most unusual outside of fairy tales, she did not accept

with the enthusiasm that might have been expected. For a moment,

indeed, her eyes sparkled, her cheeks glowed with delight. And then of

a sudden the color faded, her eyes fell, she shrank back as if

frightened at the idea.

"I--I--it's awfully sweet of you, Mrs. Van Antwerp," she said, low and

hurriedly, "but I--I can't go--I wish I could, but I can't.

Don't--don't ask me." It was almost as if she had said, "Don't tempt

me." Poor Mrs. Bobby, whose intentions were so good, was exceedingly

puzzled and not a little piqued.

"Oh, well, if you don't care to come," she said, coldly, in the

great-lady manner which she seldom assumed, "of course I shall not

urge you. I shouldn't have mentioned the subject, if I had not thought

from what you said the other day, that you were really anxious to come

to town."

"So I was, so I am--for some reasons; but for others--Dear Mrs. Van

Antwerp," the girl pleaded, "don't think me ungrateful. I should love

to come beyond anything, but--but I can't. It doesn't seem right," she

added, more firmly.

"Doesn't seem right," repeated Mrs. Bobby, wondering, "You mean on

your aunts' account. You think it wouldn't be right to leave them?"

"Yes," Elizabeth assented, as if relieved at being furnished with an

excuse of some sort, however feeble, "I don't think it would be right

to leave them."

"But that is nonsense," cried Mrs. Bobby. "They will miss you

terribly, of course, but it will be no worse than when you were at

school, and they would be the first to wish you to go, I'm sure."

Elizabeth was quite sure of it, too. Mrs. Bobby, reading this

conviction in her eyes, and all the more anxious for the success of

her plan, now that it met with so many unexpected obstacles, went on

to expatiate on the delights of a season in town, and all the

possibilities that life can offer, to one who has youth, talent and

beauty. Elizabeth listened eagerly with dilating eyes, which she only

once withdrew from Mrs. Bobby's face, to glance across to the other

end of the room, where Mr. Gerard was leaning forward in an attitude

of respectful interest, as he talked to Miss Cornelia. For a moment

Elizabeth's eyes rested, half absently perhaps, on the strong lines of

his face, while the irrelevant thought passed through her mind: "I

wonder what he would think." Then, quick as lightning, the answer

followed. "I don't care," she said, under her breath, and drew herself

up with a little flash of defiance.

She turned towards Mrs. Bobby. "Do you really want me?" she asked,

caressingly.

"Should I have asked you, if I didn't," laughed Mrs. Bobby,

triumphant, as she saw that victory was hers.

Elizabeth told the news to her aunts as soon as the visitors had left.

Their delight was what she had expected. They were eager in approving

her decision, and in assuring her that she should have all the pretty

gowns that the occasion required, sustained by the conviction, which

occurred simultaneously to the minds of both, that their old black

silks, which they had foolishly thought of as shabby, would do

admirably another winter. It would be the height of extravagance, as

Miss Cornelia afterwards observed to replace them.

"It's just what we have always wished for you," she cried, her little

curls all a'flutter with joyful excitement, "and so unexpected--quite

like a fairy-tale."

"Yes," Elizabeth assented, "quite like a fairy-tale. There's only one

difference," she added to herself, as she left the room, "from every

well-regulated fairy-tale that I ever heard of. The fairy Godmother,

coach and four, are just a little--too late."

_Chapter XVI_

"My dear Elizabeth," said Mrs. Bobby, "I regret to say it, but you

really are growing terribly spoiled."

The winter was far advanced when Mrs. Bobby made this remark. With

Lent growing every day nearer, the whirl of gaiety grew ever faster

and more furious. It was not often that Mrs. Bobby and her guest had

an opportunity for private conversation. But to-night, as it happened,

they had merely been out to dinner, and having returned at an

unusually early hour, Elizabeth came into Mrs. Bobby's boudoir in her

long white dressing-gown, and sat brushing out her masses of wavy

hair, while she and her hostess discussed the evening's entertainment,

and other recent events of interest.

Mrs. Bobby's eyes rested upon Elizabeth with all the satisfaction with

which a connoisseur regards some beautiful object of which he has been

the discoverer. Elizabeth's beauty, Elizabeth's conquests, formed to

Mrs. Bobby just then a theme of which she never tired. Nor did she

fail to make them the text for various sermons that she delivered to

Bobby about this time, on the subject of her own wisdom, and his utter

failure as a prophet.

"Confess, Bobby, that my plans turn out well," she would say, "and

that I'm not such a fool as you thought me."

"Why, I never," Bobby would protest, "thought you anything of the

kind." But she would go on unheeding:

"It would have been a shame for that girl to be buried in the country,

and I do take some credit to myself for having rescued her from such a

fate. But after that, all the credit is due to Elizabeth. I did what I

could, of course, to launch her successfully, but when all is said and

done, a girl has to sink or swim on her own merits. Elizabeth takes to

society as a duck does to water; it's her natural element. And talk of

heredity! There are not many girls with the most aristocratic mothers

who can come into a room with the air that she has, as if she didn't

care two straws whether any one spoke to her or not, and then of

course every one does. Now explain to me, Bobby, if you can, where the

girl gets that air."

"I suppose," said Bobby, "if I believed implicitly in heredity (which

I am not at all sure that I do) I'd account for it by your own remark

that she has plenty of good blood as well as bad."

"Oh, yes," said Mrs. Bobby, incredulously, "you can always make a

theory fit in somehow."

But though Mrs. Bobby exulted in that air of indifference with which

Elizabeth accepted, as if it were a mere matter of course, all the

devotion offered up at her feet, she was beginning to realize that the

most admirable qualities can be carried too far. And thus it was that

she upbraided her this evening with being unreasonably spoiled, and

not sufficiently appreciating the good things which had fallen to her

lot.

"I don't know what you want me to do," Elizabeth said, quietly, when

she had listened for some moments to this rather vague accusation.

"I'm sure I go everywhere that I'm asked, and that, you must admit, is

saying a good deal; I talk to all the men who talk to me, and that

again you must admit, means a great deal of conversational effort;

and--and I make no distinctions between them whatever, and do my duty

on all occasions. I really don't know what more you can expect."

"But that," exclaimed her hostess, "is exactly what I complain of. You

go everywhere you are asked--yes, and you never express a preference

for any particular place; you talk to the men who talk to you, and you

make no distinctions--no, for apparently it's all the same to you,

whether it's this man or the other."

"Not quite," said Elizabeth, placidly, "for one man amuses me and

another doesn't. But beyond that, I don't--thank Heaven! I don't

care." She broke off suddenly, and she drew her comb with unwonted

vehemence through her hair.

"I don't know why you should thank Heaven," said Mrs. Bobby, watching

her narrowly, "for a fact that is quite abnormal in a girl of your

age, who has some of the nicest men in town in love with her. There

are times when I think you are quite heartless, and yet--with that

hair, and those eyes, and the way you throw yourself into your music,

you seem to have abundance of temperament. On the whole, Elizabeth,

you are a puzzling combination. What was it Mr. D'Hauteville said of

you--that you reminded him of a lake of ice in a circle of fire?"

"Mr. D'Hauteville," said Elizabeth, yawning, "is fond of glittering

similes. This one sounds well, but doesn't bear close consideration.

The fire, I should think, under the circumstances, would dissolve the

ice."

"Perhaps it will," said Mrs. Bobby, "when the right time comes."

"Which will be never," said Elizabeth, with decision. Her hostess

smiled as one who has heard such things said before.

"After all," she resumed, after a pause, returning to the grievance

which had first started the conversation, "I could forgive you

everything else, but this indifference about your picture. One would

think that when a great artist asks as a special favor to paint your

portrait, you might at least have the decency to go to look at it,

when it is on exhibition, and all New York is talking about it."

"That's the very reason," said Elizabeth, "why it strikes me as rather

bad taste for me to stand in rapt contemplation before it, while a lot

of people are jostling me, and making remarks about my eyes, and hair,

and mouth, as if it were I on exhibition, and not Mr. ----'s picture."

"Well, it _is_ you whom they want to see," said Mrs. Bobby. "The New

York public doesn't care much for art, but it does take an interest

in the people whom it reads about in the papers--a weakness that we

needn't quarrel with, since it has made the Portrait Show a success,

and given us so many thousands for our hospital."

"Well, at least," said Elizabeth, "I have done my duty in contributing

my portrait to the good cause; so don't ask me to be present in actual

flesh and blood, and above all not to face such a crowd as there was

the other day, when we tried to look at it and my gown was nearly torn

off my back in the process."

"You could go early," suggested Mrs. Bobby, "as I did the other day.

You have no idea how much better it looks in that light than it did at

the studio."

"I am very tired of it, in any light," said Elizabeth. "People have

talked to me so much about it. But, if you insist upon it I will go--I

will go early. There are some of the other portraits too that I should

like to look at, if I can do so in peace." And with this concession,

the conversation was allowed to drop for a moment.

It was Elizabeth who resumed it, speaking slowly and tentatively, with

many lapses, and eyes carefully turned away from her friend. "You

talk," she said, "a great deal of my successes, and I suppose, in a

way, I ought to be--satisfied. And of course I am," she added,

hastily. "People have been very nice to me. I--I couldn't ask for

anything more. And yet--there is one person--I don't know if you have

noticed it--one person with whom I am a distinct failure, who I think

almost dislikes me, and that is--your friend Mr. Gerard."

"What, Julian," said Mrs. Bobby, in a tone that was absolutely devoid

of expression. "You think he--doesn't like you?"

"I am quite sure of it," said Elizabeth.

"But why," questioned Mrs. Bobby, in apparent bewilderment. "What

reason have you for thinking so?"

"A great many, but any one of them would be enough. To begin with, he

never speaks to me if he can possibly help himself. His avoidance of

me is quite pointed--you surely must have noticed it?" She fixed her

eyes anxiously upon Mrs. Bobby.

"I"--Mrs. Bobby checked the impulsive words that rose to her lips.

"Julian is--is very peculiar," she said in a non-committal tone. "I

don't think he cares for women."

"Perhaps not; but still I have seen him talk to them--in a bored sort

of way, it is true. But to me he never talks, in any way whatsoever."

"He never has a chance. You are always surrounded."

"He would have the same chance as the others. No, it isn't that. He

disapproves of me; I can feel it, as he looks at me through those

dark, half-shut eyes of his, and it gives me an uncomfortable sense of

wickedness. He thinks me flippant, and vain, and frivolous, and I am

when he is there, or I seem so. When he is listening, I say all the

horrid, cynical, heartless things I can think of. I have to say them,

somehow. It is fate. It began the first night that I met him--it was

in the country, do you remember?" She paused and again looked

questioningly at Mrs. Bobby.

"Yes," the latter answered softly, "I remember."

"I was rather excited that night--it was the first time I had ever

been out to dinner. I talked in a flippant sort of way about hating

the country, and longing to go out, and wanting to be always amused.

It was very _young_, I suppose." Elizabeth spoke with all the

superiority of a girl half-way through her first season towards her

more unsophisticated self of a few months before. "He didn't like it.

The sort of woman whom he admires knows her catechism, and is

satisfied with that situation in life where it has pleased Providence

to place her. I shocked him; he has never got over it. He showed me,

that very evening, how he disliked me--it was so pointed that it was

almost rude. You asked me--do you remember? to play." She stopped.

"I remember," said Mrs. Bobby again softly. "I never heard you play so

well."

"I never have--since. I seemed to have, just for the moment, some

strange power over the keys--such feelings come to one, you know,

sometimes. And then, when I stopped--he had asked me for the

Fire-music--I felt, somehow, that he was fond of music--he _is_ fond

of it, passionately fond--but when I stopped, he looked at me blankly

for a moment, till he suddenly remembered what was expected of him,

and thanked me in a cold sort of way and walked off. And--I shouldn't

think so much of that; but since then he has never--never once asked

me to play, though he has often heard other people ask me."

"I have noticed," said Mrs. Bobby, quietly, "that you will never play

when he is in the room."

"I couldn't," said Elizabeth, "it would have such a dampening effect

to feel that there was one person in the room who disliked it, who, no

matter how well I played, would always preserve his critical attitude.

"You see that I am reduced to the unflattering alternative that it is

myself that he objects to or my playing. But it is the same with

everything. There is my picture, for instance. He is the only person I

know who has said nothing to me about it, has probably not even seen

it."

"That must be rather a relief," said Mrs. Bobby, placidly, "since you

are so tired of the subject."

"If I am," said Elizabeth, "that is no reason why he shouldn't go

through the conventional formula of telling me that he has seen the

picture, and adding something civil about it, as the most ordinary

acquaintances never fail to do."

"No, of course," Mrs. Bobby agreed softly, "the most ordinary

acquaintances never would. But perhaps he doesn't consider himself

exactly that."

"Whatever he considers himself," said Elizabeth, with some heat, "he

is not exempt from the common rules of civility. But I suppose he

doesn't really admire the picture, and is too painfully truthful to

pretend to the contrary." And then she stopped and laughed a little

at her own vehemence, but without much spirit. "It really is very

illogical," she admitted, "I don't care for Mr. Gerard's admiration,

it would probably bore me extremely to have it; and yet--it's not

pleasant to be so absolutely--ignored."

Mrs. Bobby was watching her with an odd little gleam in the dark eyes

that were almost hidden by her long, curling lashes. "I will tell

you," she said, "what it is that he doesn't like. It isn't you, or

your playing, or your conversation; it's your hair."

"My hair!" Elizabeth took up mechanically one of her long shining

locks and passed it through her fingers. "I may have been inordinately

vain," she remarked after a pause, "but I never supposed before that

there was much the matter with my hair."

"Nor would most people, I imagine. But he has some odd ideas, and

among them, it seems, is a prejudice--a superstition, as he calls

it--against red hair."

"But mine isn't red," said Elizabeth, quickly.

"Of course not," said Mrs. Bobby. "He is color blind, as I told him.

But there's no use in arguing the point with him. He insists that your

hair is red enough to--to be dangerous--those are his words, and he

avoids you in consequence. He has had some unfortunate experience in

the past, I should imagine, which has given him this prejudice. There,

my dear, I shouldn't have told you," Mrs. Bobby went on, leaning back

in her chair, and still watching Elizabeth narrowly through

half-closed lids, "if I didn't know, of course, that it can make no

real difference to you what Julian thinks."

"Of course not," Elizabeth made answer mechanically with dry lips, as

she still drew her comb absently through the offending hair.

"You have so many admirers," Mrs. Bobby continued serenely, "it can't

matter very much that one person should hold aloof. And then I

shouldn't care about Julian's opinion, for he never admires any woman.

Ever since that unfortunate experience, which happened, I think, when

he was very young, he has been a confirmed cynic, avoiding all young

girls, and horribly afraid of being married for his money. I really

despair now of his ever falling in love; I have talked up almost every

girl in town to him, and all in vain. No, even you, Elizabeth, spoiled

as you are, couldn't expect to make a conquest of Julian."

"I don't know what I should expect," said Elizabeth, rather coldly,

"but I certainly don't wish to. It would hardly be worth while." She

rose, with one long look in the glass, and moved wearily towards the

door. "I am so very tired, dear," she said. "I think I will say

good-night."

"Good-night," said Mrs. Bobby, cheerfully. "Sleep well--you need

to--and don't waste another thought on that tiresome creature,

Julian."

"Oh, I'm not likely to," Elizabeth responded, with rather a pale

smile. "I'm much too tired."

And yet she did think of him more than once, as she stood before her

mirror, arranging her hair into two heavy braids, which reached below

her waist, and repeating to herself that, as Mrs. Bobby had said, it

could matter little about the one dissenting voice in the general

chorus of admiration which had attended her triumphant career. In

spite of which assurance, her last thoughts as she fell asleep might

have been somewhat surprising to those who, having watched that career

entirely from the outside, regarded her as the most fortunate being in

the world.

Elizabeth's aunts were on the whole, more to be envied than the girl

herself that winter. There was no alloy in their happiness, no

under-current of dissatisfaction, even though they wore their old

black silks, and Miss Joanna's friend, the butcher, was heard to

complain somewhat bitterly of her sudden parsimony in regard to joints

of meat. What did it matter? They would have dressed cheerfully in

sackcloth and lived on bread and water, for the sake of such glowing

accounts of Elizabeth's triumphs as Mrs. Bobby constantly transmitted,

or of the girl's own brilliant letters which seemed to breathe the

radiant satisfaction of a mind without a care.

Elizabeth's aunt at Bassett Mills also watched her career, which was

chronicled at that time in the papers. Poor Aunt Rebecca, after a hard

day's work, reading her niece's name, and possibly a description of

her costume in the list of guests at some smart festivity, would look

up, awe-struck, at Amanda. "Only to think," she would say, with the

old contradictory note, half pride, half jealousy "to think that it

should be Malvina's girl!"

But Amanda, still pale and wasted from the fever with her hair quite

long and very soft and wavy, would give an odd, furtive look from her

light eyes and say nothing.

_Chapter XVII_

It was early at the Portrait Show. It was so early that what few

people were already there had the place practically to themselves.

There were only three or four in the large room at the head of the

stairs, which at a later hour of the afternoon was invariably crowded,

and where was hung that picture which had attracted so much attention,

partly from the great fame of the artist, still more, perhaps, from

the beauty of the subject.

A young girl in a long, white gown of some soft, clinging stuff, stood

against the background of a dark green velvet curtain. There was no

relief to the dead whiteness of the gown, and the roses that she held

were white; all that brilliancy of color, for which this great artist

is famous, he had expended upon the deep red-gold tints of the hair,

the vivid scarlet of the lips, the warm creamy tones of the skin, as

they were thrown into full relief by the dark background. The painter

had lingered, with all the skill at his command, on the rounded,

dimpled curves of the neck and arms, nor had he forgotten the haughty

little turn of the head, which gave a characteristic touch to the

picture. Seen at a glance, it was aglow with life and color, very

human, very mundane, the embodiment of health and bloom. A study in

flesh-tints, one critic had carelessly pronounced it, and nothing

more. It was only when you looked at the eyes that you caught a

discordant note, which, if you dwelt upon it, contradicted the joyous

effect of the rest; a look, a latent shadow which the great artist had

either surprised or imagined, and transferred perhaps unconsciously to

his canvas, where, if you saw it at all, it held you with a haunting

sense of mystery, the fascination of an unsolved problem. "What does

it mean," a man said to himself that afternoon, "and did ---- really

put it in, or do I, with my usual superstition, imagine it? Am I the

only person who sees it, or do others?"

Two young girls, who jostled up against him just then evidently did

not.

"Portrait of Miss Van Vorst," said one, reading from her catalogue,

"by ----." She passed the artist's name without recognition, as she

delightedly pressed her companion's arm. "Say, Mamie, that's Elizabeth

Van Vorst, you know, the beauty. I've seen lots about her in the

papers."

"You don't say so?" returned the other, who was apparently less

up-to-date. "I thought she must be one of the swells, but I didn't

know the name. She's pretty isn't she?--but doesn't her nose turn up

too much?--and I don't think much of her dress, it's so kind of

simple."

The man who had been standing when they came up in front of the

picture, turned frowning aside, and found himself face to face with

the original. For an instant each stared at the other in silence, and

it might have been noticed by a careful observer that the man was at

once the more disconcerted and the less surprised of the two.

"So I see you have achieved fame," he said, recovering himself almost

immediately and smiling, as he glanced at the two girls who were still

criticizing Elizabeth's features, all unconscious that the subject of

their remarks was within hearing.

"Yes, fame," she returned, lightly "of a kind that you despise." She,

too, was quite herself again--that flippant, frivolous self, at least,

which he had always the power to awaken.

"I suppose I'm a crank," he admitted. "I really don't like to hear my

friends talked about, by their first name by people who have read

about them in the papers."

"Oh, that," she said, carelessly "is a necessary penalty of fame."

"Which you share with a variety actress," he returned. "I realize more

and more that I'm hopelessly behind the age. Look at those two girls,"

he went on, glancing at them with some animosity.

"They have spent, I should imagine, their little all on the admission

fee and the catalogue; they don't care two straws for the portraits as

portraits, and they have never spoken to the originals, but they are

wildly interested in them because they represent to them the magic

word 'society,' and they will go away and talk about them as if they

knew them intimately."

Elizabeth laughed softly. "Ah," she said "let them be. They're getting

their money's worth; don't grudge it to them. So far as I'm

concerned, they may pull my face to pieces as much as they please. I

know how it is--I've stood on the outside, too, of a thing, and tried

to imagine that I was in it."

"Do you think they'd be happier," asked Gerard, "if they were?"

"Ah, that depends," she returned, oracularly, stroking down the long

fur of her muff.

"Tell me how you find it yourself," said Gerard. He looked about the

room. "The place is comfortably empty," he said. "Have you been around

yet, or would you--a--like to sit down awhile?"

She hesitated. "I have been in several of the rooms," she said. "I

came early on purpose. Eleanor is lunching somewhere, but she is to

meet me here at three."

"Then suppose you--a--rest till she comes?" he suggested, as he led

the way to a sofa which had been placed for the accommodation of weary

sight-seers in the centre of the room. "It's a long while since I've

had a talk with you. ('And whose fault is that,' thought Elizabeth.)

This isn't a bad place to talk in, and if you've been around once,

you've had enough of it for the time being."

"I am glad to rest for a few minutes," Elizabeth admitted.

She threw open the revers of her coat, and sank back in her seat as if

physically tired. Gerard looked at her. She was exquisitely dressed.

Her dark green velvet and furs set off the fairness of her skin, her

large feathered hat suited her picturesque style. The subtle

atmosphere of fashion, of distinction, lurked in every fold of her

gown, in every movement and gesture. Three months had sufficed to

endow her with it. They had also sufficed--or was this again the

result of his imagination?--to take away the first freshness of her

beauty. She looked brilliant, but a trifle worn; her color had faded,

there were lines of weariness about the mouth, and deep black rings

under the eyes.

"You don't look well," he said, abruptly. She smiled. ("I might have

known that he would say that," she said to herself.)

"I know it," she returned, quietly. "The maid woke me up, as she

generally does, with strong coffee. I refused at first to be waked. I

haven't been to bed at a reasonable hour for weeks, and I'm so

countrified that I show the ill effects of it."

"You shouldn't go out so much," said Gerard. "What is Eleanor thinking

of that she allows it? You--you will be ill if this keeps up." He

spoke almost angrily.

"Yet what difference would it make to him?" thought Elizabeth. "He is

very unaccountable. Why should he look at my picture, thinking no

doubt all the time how ugly my hair is? I don't want his advice--I

won't have it. Oh, it's all in a good cause," she said lightly, aloud.

"I complain sometimes, but I wouldn't stay at home, really, for the

world. It's all too delightful. I may be tired, but at least I'm not

bored."

"It has all come up to your expectations, then?" said Gerard. "You

like it better than--a--the river view?"

"Ah, if you had looked at that view as many years as I have, you

wouldn't need to ask the question."

"And you are always amused?" he went on. "That was the next wish,

wasn't it? You see I'm putting you through the category, as I

threatened to do once, and I expect only the truth for an answer. Are

you always, every day and all day long, thoroughly amused?"

She met his gaze unflinchingly. "Don't I--seem to be?" she asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I've wondered--sometimes. You certainly

ought to be," he declared.

"Then," she said "you may take it for granted that I am."

"And the third wish," he said, musingly, "follows naturally on the

other. You never, in this whirl of gaiety--never, I suppose, get a

chance to think?"

"Not a moment," she returned, triumphantly. "All my time is occupied,

I'm glad to say, in being amused. That's hard work, too, sometimes,

but then--the game is worth the candle."

"Well," he said "you are, I admit, a very fortunate young woman, and

you have my congratulations. There are not many people whose wishes

are fulfilled, as quickly and absolutely as yours have been."

"No," she said, with sudden thoughtfulness "that is very true." She

sat for a moment staring straight before her, with the look in her

eyes which had puzzled and haunted him in the pictured eyes at which

he had looked awhile before. "Do you know," she said at last, speaking

very low and hesitatingly, "it's very absurd, but it--sometimes it

frightens me a little. Do you remember in Greek history--or was it

mythology?--there was a king who had every wish fulfilled, till he

grew at last to feel that it--was dangerous; he offered up sacrifices

to the gods, he tried to escape but it was all of no use. Everything

went well with him, till at last--his fate overtook him. And so I

think, sometimes--mine will."

"Your fate?" Gerard repeated, utterly taken aback and puzzled.

"Yes, the penalty," she said, quickly "of having too much. I have an

odd idea sometimes that there is--there must be some misfortune in

store for me; that I shall pay for all this yet in some terrible way

which no one expects. Oh, it's perfectly absurd, I know, but still

I--I can't help it." She had turned of a sudden very white, and she

stared up at Gerard with a frightened, mute appeal in her eyes, like

that of some dumb animal or a child.

To him she seemed all at once very young and helpless, a being to be

soothed and protected; very different from the gay, self-possessed

young woman of a few minutes before. "My dear child," he said, very

gently, yet with a note of authority, and laying his hand ever so

lightly on the delicately gloved hand that rested on her muff "you're

nervous and over-wrought. You couldn't otherwise have such a morbid

idea. This eternal going-out has got on your nerves. I wish you would

promise me to stay at home for a day or two. You will, won't you?" he

asked, persuasively.

"Yes, I--I will," she said, mechanically, and still looking very

white. "I'm over-tired, as you say."

"And now don't talk," he went on, peremptorily. "I'll get you a glass

of water, and then I want you to sit quietly here, and not say a word,

till you are better."

She shook her head. "I'm quite well, and I don't want anything," she

protested, but he brought the glass of water and made her drink it,

and then watched her anxiously, while the color slowly came back to

her face, and her eyes lost their strained, appealing look. They sat

in silence; he would not let her speak, and as time passed, a great

calm insensibly stole over her, a feeling of peace, of security, such

as she had not known in all those weeks of fevered gaiety. She was

conscious vaguely of a wish that she might sit thus always, saying

nothing, alone with him--all the more alone as it seemed for the crowd

that was beginning to surge into the room, with a murmur that broke

faintly upon her ear, like the sound of the sea a long way off.

The wish was, perhaps, the result of fatigue. She was no sooner fully

conscious of it than she rose to her feet.

"Shall we walk through the rooms now?" she said. "It's more than time

for Eleanor to be here. Oh, I'm all right now, thank you"--she met

his question smilingly. "I don't know what was the matter--it was

very silly. You see I boasted unwisely about never thinking, since I

have such foolish thoughts; but I won't again. Look, there is a

picture of Gertrude Trevor. A good likeness, isn't it? But you've seen

it before, perhaps?"

"No," said Gerard, absently. "I haven't seen any of them before." They

walked on slowly through the rooms, and she did the honors, pointing

out the pictures, as it was apparently his first visit. They did not

seem to interest him greatly.

"Have you really never been here before?" she asked at length. She

could not have explained what induced her to put the question.

He answered it absently. "Why, yes, every day"--and then suddenly

stopped and turned his eyes full upon her, while that strange light

gleamed in their sombre depths which she had surprised once or twice

before and had interpreted many different ways, which now set her

heart beating wildly, and made her wish her question unspoken. "Every

day," he repeated, quietly, "about this time, or earlier, since--since

the thing began."

"Then why--why"--The words died away on her lips. They had reached the

head of the great staircase, and the crowd came streaming up, a

confused mass, to which she paid no heed. She had again the feeling of

being alone, quite alone, in the midst of it all, while involuntarily

their eyes met, and his were all aglow with a fire which she had never

before seen in them, or imagined; a fire that dazzled and bewildered,

and filled her with a strange, unreasoning joy, as it burned away the

barriers of doubt and indifference, till for one short, breathless

moment, which she could have counted with her heart-beats she read his

inmost soul.

"I only looked at one picture," he said.

And then with the words the spell which held her seemed broken, and

the crowd closed in about her, with a sound like the roar of the sea

very near at hand, and she looked down the great staircase, and saw

Mrs. Bobby coming towards them.

_Chapter XVIII_

"My dear," said Mrs. Bobby, "I'm so sorry to be late. Luncheon was

interminable. Why, Julian, who would have expected to see you here?"

She gave him her hand demurely, with softly shining eyes. Neither her

surprise nor her contrition seemed to ring quite true.

Gerard's dark eyes were again half closed beneath their heavy lids. He

looked, if a trifle pale, more impassive than usual.

"I don't know why my presence here should cause so much surprise," he

said. "Most people come here, don't they, some time or another. It's

a--a meeting-place, isn't it?"

"It seems to have been on this occasion," Mrs. Bobby murmured under

her breath. A young man had just stopped and spoken to Elizabeth, and

the words might have referred to him. Gerard smiled.

"Won't you come and look at some of these pictures?" he asked. "I want

to talk to you."

"You awaken my curiosity."

They walked slowly along the gallery which skirted the hall, too deep

in conversation to pay much heed to the pictures which hung along

their way. Elizabeth's eyes followed them, the while she was

repeating mechanically "Yes, the portraits are extremely fine."

"But not one," the young man declared, with blunt gallantry "to

compare with yours. It's by all odds the most beautiful picture here."

"Do you really think so?" said Elizabeth, gently. "I'm very glad." She

had heard the sentiment, rather differently put, perhaps a hundred

times. Yet it seemed now to have all the charm of novelty.

The young man, a very slight acquaintance, charmed to have called up

that glow of pleasure to her face, redoubled his efforts to entertain

her. He was sorry when Mrs. Bobby returned with Gerard, and bore her

off. "She was delighted when I said that about her picture," he

thought, "there's nothing like flattering a girl, if you know how to

do it delicately."

"We really must be going, Elizabeth," said Mrs. Bobby, consulting her

engagement-book. "We have at least a dozen visits, and we promised,

you know, to go to Mr. D'Hauteville's musicale."

"That reminds me that I did too," said Gerard. "I'm glad you spoke of

it."

"We shall see you there, then," said Mrs. Bobby, as he placed them in

the carriage, and they drove off. "I am feeling utterly crushed," she

continued, turning to Elizabeth, and looking under the circumstances,

very cheerful. "Julian has been giving me a terrible lecture. He

thinks me, I see very clearly, quite unfit to have the care of you. He

says that you are not as strong as you seem, that I have been dragging

you around--entirely for my own pleasure, apparently--from one thing

to another till you are quite worn out, and that you will be ill if I

don't take care. He has quite frightened me. But there, Elizabeth, you

don't look so very tired, after all."

She certainly did not. There was color in her cheeks, a light in her

eyes that was at once brilliant and soft. All the lines drawn by

sleepless nights had, for the moment at least, disappeared.

"You don't look badly," Mrs. Bobby repeated. "You look, in fact,

infinitely better than when I saw you this morning."

"I feel better," Elizabeth admitted. "Just for a moment, at the

Portrait Show, I did feel tired and depressed, and he--Mr. Gerard got

alarmed about me, but it was nothing. I am quite well now. And the

portraits are really very interesting. I am glad you persuaded me to

look at them again, Eleanor."

"I thought you might be repaid," said Mrs. Bobby, serenely. "What did

you think of your own picture? Doesn't it look better in that light?"

Elizabeth's face was turned away, so that Mrs. Bobby could only see

the rounded outline of her cheek and one small, shell-like ear. "Yes,

I--I thought it looked better," she said, in a low voice. "Perhaps you

were right. It must have been the--the light of the studio that made

me feel--disappointed in it, somehow."

"Oh, there is everything in the light in which you look at things,"

assented Mrs. Bobby, cheerfully. And with this profound remark, the

two women sank into silence, while the carriage rolled swiftly up the

Avenue, stopping occasionally, as the footman left cards. To

Elizabeth, as she sat gazing out of the window, the prosaic brown

stone houses, and the more pretentious ones of marble which broke the

monotony here and there, and the brilliant shops, which had intruded

themselves like parvenus among their quieter and more aristocratic

neighbors--all these familiar objects stood out in a softened

perspective, which endowed them with lines almost of romance. The

wide, commonplace streets had an unwonted charm, the people who walked

on them wore an air of curious happiness, merely, no doubt, at finding

themselves alive in this beautiful world. Yes, as Mrs. Bobby had so

wisely observed, "there is everything in the light in which you look

at things."

"I wonder if Mr. D'Hauteville's musicale will be pleasant," Elizabeth

observed dreamily, as they neared Carnegie Hall. The remark was purely

perfunctory. Pleasant? Of course it would be pleasant--she hadn't a

doubt of it.

"There will be a lot of queer people there--musical, literary, and

that sort of thing," said Mrs. Bobby, vaguely. "Some men with long

hair will play, and the women, no doubt, will wear wonderful æsthetic

gowns. If Julian were not to be there, I should not dream of going. My

prophetic instinct tells me that we shall not know a soul."

"But won't that be rather amusing," suggested Elizabeth.

"Well, theoretically, yes," said Mrs. Bobby, in rather a doubtful

tone, "but, practically, I'm afraid I prefer people whom I know, and

who have the conventional amount of hair and lack of brains. Let me

confess the truth to you, Elizabeth. I'm not really Bohemian--I only

pretend to be so at odd moments, when I want to tease Bobby, or shock

the Neighborhood. There isn't at heart, I believe, a more conventional

little society wretch than I. However, as you say, that sort of thing

is amusing--for one afternoon; and Julian will be there, and protect

us from the celebrities and tell us who they all are."

Julian was fortunately on hand when they arrived, but the room was

filled for the most part with people who looked very much like any one

else, and only a few were sufficiently long-haired and eccentric to

justify Mrs. Bobby's prediction of their being celebrities of some

sort. The host, who came forward to meet them, was a well-known

musician, a man with an intellectual face and dreamy eyes, which

lighted up as he welcomed them with eager cordiality; but he could do

no more for the present than seat them and give them programmes, for

the music was about to begin.

It was a charming studio, well up near the top of Carnegie Hall, and

like most studios, it was artistically furnished. The polished floor

was strewn with rich rugs, the walls were covered in every nook and

cranny, with plaques, and pictures, and rare tapestries, and strange

Eastern weapons. A grand piano took up the whole of one corner, and in

another a toy staircase seemed to have been placed entirely for

ornament, till it was utilized as a seat by some picturesque-looking

girls in large hats. From the broad casemented window near which

Elizabeth sat, she could see an expanse of roofs and chimneys, far

down from the dizzy height, and beyond them the river, and further

still the winter sunset, fading in cold blues and greens and violets,

on a still colder sky. Her eyes rested there with dreamy satisfaction.

She had no wish to look back into the room, to where Gerard was

standing close to them, on the other side of Mrs. Bobby. She was still

living on the memory of that moment--was it an hour or was it years

ago?--that long look of which the reflected light was still glowing on

her face, and in her dreamy eyes. She had no wish to renew it; the

recollection was sufficient, for awhile at least. Yet she was glad to

know that he was there.

Mrs. Bobby meanwhile, having embarked on her trip to Bohemia, was

disappointed to find it comparatively tame.

"I don't see any one I know," she said to Gerard, as the piano solo

came to an end. "They look, most of them, depressingly commonplace.

But they must be extraordinary in some way, or they wouldn't be here.

Tell us who they are, Julian, and introduce them to us if you think we

would like them."

"Why, there are some musical lights," he answered, rather absently

"who, I hope, are going to perform for our benefit, and there are a

few ordinary music-lovers like myself, and some literary people--whom

I don't know that you would care about."

"You think us too frivolous, I see," said Mrs. Bobby. "But you don't

realize how clever I can be if I try, and as for Elizabeth, she knows

a lot more than she seems to know."

"Does she?" asked Gerard with a smile, and he glanced across at

Elizabeth, who still would not meet his eyes. "She looks very

innocent," he said, musingly, after a pause. "I should be sorry to

think of her as--concealing anything."

A little pang, a thought sharp like a stone, struck Elizabeth for an

instant. It was the first rift in the lute. She put it resolutely away

from her.

"You think me too stupid, I see," she said "to have any knowledge to

conceal."

He had no time to answer before some woman began to sing. She had a

beautiful voice, and Elizabeth listened, yet chiefly conscious, all

the while, of the fact that Gerard had managed to shift his position,

and was standing directly behind her.

"I never thought you stupid," he said, under cover of the applause, in

a low voice that no one but she could hear, "no, nor ignorant; but I

have sometimes thought you frivolous, and flippant, and--and a little

hard. You seem, I sometimes think, to take pleasure in showing these

qualities to me. Why is it, I wonder?"

"I--I don't know," she murmured, in the same low voice, and gazing

straight before her. "You--somehow you seem to compel it. You ought to

be grateful, I think. At least you know the worst of me."

She spoke these words with an absolute unconsciousness of their

falseness; and even as they died away on her lips, she glanced across

the room and saw Paul Halleck standing in the door-way.

That old mythological king whom some vague reminiscence of her

school-days had conjured up in Elizabeth's mind, he who had every wish

fulfilled, till he grew at last to dread his own prosperity--was it, I

wonder, in some such moment of foreboding that the final crash came,

or was it when his fears were lulled and his senses stilled, by some

delicious, over-powering sense of happiness that shut out for the

moment all unpleasant thoughts? This, at all events, was the way in

which fate overtook Elizabeth.

Paul Halleck stood in the door-way, having apparently just arrived.

His blue eyes were wandering about the room. They did not fall, as

yet, upon Elizabeth.

She did not faint, or cry out, or make herself in any way conspicuous.

She turned deathly white, and her heart, which had been beating faster

for Gerard's presence, seemed suddenly to stop entirely, as though a

piece of ice had been laid on it. And then, in a moment, her heart

began to beat again, though faintly. She drew a long breath. Gerard,

who was standing directly behind her, could not see her face beneath

the shadow of her large hat, yet he felt instinctively that something

was wrong.

"Do you feel faint again?" he asked, anxiously, thinking to himself

that she was really far from well. "Can I get you anything?"

"No, thank you," said Elizabeth. "I felt faint for a moment, but it

is over." It took all the strength that she possessed to speak these

words so clearly and distinctly. In making the effort she was not

conscious of any plan of deception. She was merely bearing up,

instinctively, to the end.

She never doubted that it _was_ the end. It had fallen at last--that

sword of Damocles, which she had learned to dread as the winter wore

on, of which she had always been vaguely conscious even in her gayest

moments, and had only forgotten, quite forgotten, in that short,

delicious hour when she had allowed herself to float off in a dream of

happiness never to be realized, from which she was awakened so soon

and so rudely. And yet, though it was over, she was not sorry that she

had dreamed it. It had been very sweet, worth even, she thought, the

bitterness of the awakening.

Meanwhile the musicale progressed. A man with long, floating hair and

fingers of steel thundered out a piano solo. Elizabeth shut her eyes

and leaned back in her chair. How fortunate that there was so much

music to prevent conversation! But at the first pause she opened her

eyes and looked up at Gerard.

"I was wrong when I told you that you know the worst of me," she said,

faintly. "You'll know it, soon."

"What a terrible prospect!" said Gerard, bending over her and the

jesting words had a soft intonation, which thrilled her like a caress.

"I really don't think I can stand it--quite."

Had she intended to tell him the truth? The moment was not

propitious. The music had stopped, and there was a murmur of

conversation all over the room. People began to move about, and in the

general shifting of position, Paul Halleck, for the first time, caught

sight of Elizabeth.

She had had some vague, childish idea of what would happen when he saw

her. She had pictured him in her unreasoning terror, as stepping

forward before them all and claiming her as his wife, like a scene in

a play. Nothing of the kind took place. She saw at once how absurd her

expectations had been. Paul merely started and looked at her,

recognition and it seemed, pleasure sparkling in his eyes; but with a

sudden, uncontrollable impulse, she turned her own eyes away, as if

she did not know him.

"Do you see that man in the door-way?" said Gerard, who, standing as

he was behind her could not note the changes in her face,--"that

handsome fellow with the light curls? He has a very fine voice, and

has just been engaged as soloist at St. Chrysostom's."

"Indeed. Is he to sing this afternoon?" She brought out the question

with difficulty.

"I hope so," said Gerard. "I'd like you to hear him. But perhaps you

know him," he went on. "He is looking at you as if he expected you to

bow."

"No," said Elizabeth. "I don't know him." She told him this, her

second lie that afternoon, without deliberate intention, in sheer lack

of presence of mind. It was a piteous, involuntary staving-off of the

inevitable. The next moment that fascination which leads us to our own

undoing made her look in Paul's direction, and this time she could not

avoid his eager gaze and bent her head mechanically.

"After all, I believe I must have met him somewhere," she said

hastily. Mrs. Bobby, who for the last quarter of an hour, had been

determinedly ignoring them both, apparently giving her whole attention

to the music and the people, now turned towards them.

"Who is that handsome man who bowed to you, Elizabeth?" she asked. "I

never saw him before."

"His name is Halleck. I--I knew him in the country," said Elizabeth,

who had no natural talent for deception and entangled herself at once

in contradictory statements. Gerard's face darkened, and he glanced

across at Halleck, whose eyes were fixed on Elizabeth with a look that

seemed, to the jealous, fastidious man by her side, an intolerable

presumption; a look that was not only one of admiration, but, or

Gerard imagined so, held in it a curious touch of proprietorship.

"Confound the fellow," chafed Gerard--he who would fain have kept the

woman he loved, as he certainly would have kept her picture, shut out

from all profane eyes, even admiring ones. "He looks at her as if he

had discovered her and she belonged to him. Where can she have met

him, and why did she say she hadn't."

Mrs. Bobby, too, looked across at Paul.

"He is certainly very good-looking," she said. "And do you mean to

tell me, my dear, that such an Adonis flourished in our Neighborhood,

and I never saw him. Pray, where did you keep him hidden?"

Before Elizabeth could reply, and to her great relief, D'Hauteville

came up with the long-haired musician, whom he introduced to them, and

who proved to be, at last, one of the celebrities upon whom Mrs. Bobby

had counted. In the diversion that ensued Halleck seemed forgotten.

But a few minutes later, he sat at the piano and sang songs by

Schubert and Franz, which she had heard him sing before, at the time

when she had thought his voice the most beautiful voice in the world.

Now, as she listened it left her cold. She had changed so much, and

he--no, he had not changed. His voice was not so wonderful as she had

thought it, but still it was a fine barytone voice. His art no longer

seemed to her remarkable, but it had, if anything, improved, and he

was as handsome as ever, in his fair, effeminate style. It was not the

voice nor the art that was lacking. It was the answering thrill in

herself. It was not his beauty which had failed him, it was she who no

longer cared for it.

His success with the audience was instantaneous. Even Mrs. Bobby was

impressed. "Your friend sings well," she whispered to Elizabeth, "and

yet his hair is short. You may introduce him to me if you get a

chance."

And this chance immediately presented itself, as Paul, amid the

applause that followed his song, walked over to Elizabeth and quietly

shook hands with her. It was the moment that she had dreaded all the

time that he was singing, yet now that it had come, she met it in

apparent unconcern, and smiling, though with white lips.

"I thought at first," Paul said, "that you had quite forgotten me."

"Oh, no," she said, "my memory is not so short." Then she turned and

introduced him to Mrs. Bobby, and went on herself quietly talking to

Mr. D'Hauteville. Nothing could have been more simple. Not even Julian

Gerard, who from a distance watched their meeting, could have imagined

any secret understanding between them.

The handsome young singer made a very favorable impression upon Mrs.

Bobby, who went so far as to ask him to call, in that impulsive way of

hers, which sometimes led to consequences that she regretted. In this

case she realized, almost as soon as the words had left her lips, that

she had done a rash thing, or what Bobby would consider rash. Still,

the invitation was given and eagerly accepted, even though Elizabeth,

standing cold and indifferent, said not a word to second it. By this

time the music was over. They were about to leave, when some one

claimed Mrs. Bobby's attention, and she turned aside for a moment.

Paul seized the opportunity, for which he had been anxiously waiting,

to whisper in Elizabeth's ear.

"Darling, don't go. I must see you for a moment."

"You can't speak to me here," she said, impatiently, trying to escape

from him.

"But I must see you. Can't you see that I must?"

"You have done without it," said Elizabeth, without turning her head,

"some time."

"Because I couldn't help myself."

"There is such a thing as writing," she said, in the same low, bitter

tone. Yet even as she spoke her conscience misgave her. It was not his

neglect that she resented so bitterly, it was his return. But Paul,

not understanding this was rather flattered than otherwise by the

reproach.

"Darling, I will explain when I see you," he said, hurriedly. "There's

no time now. Meet me to-morrow morning--at the Fifty-ninth street

entrance to the Park, at eleven o'clock."

"To-morrow! Impossible! I have a hundred things to do."

"Ah, but you must," he pleaded. "I must see you. Darling you look so

beautiful--fifty times more beautiful than before."

"Hush," said Elizabeth. "How dare you? Some one will hear you."

"Give me a chance of seeing you, then," he said. "It is necessary. You

will meet me--will you not?--to-morrow morning?"

"If you insist upon it--yes."

"At the west entrance of the Park--you understand?"

"Oh, yes," said Elizabeth impatiently, and hastened to rejoin Mrs.

Bobby, who was waiting at the door.

Julian Gerard came up gloomily. The whispered conference had not

escaped his notice.

"We shall see you to-night at the Lansdownes' ball," said Mrs. Bobby.

"It is the night for it, isn't it, Elizabeth? I never can keep track

of these things."

Gerard looked reproachfully at Elizabeth. "You promised me," he said,

"that you would stay at home for a night or two."

She smiled back at him with the old touch of wilfulness. "Did I really

make such a rash promise," she said, lightly. "Ah, I'm afraid I can't

keep it--not to-night. I must be amused. A quiet evening would be

unendurable." Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes glittered with

feverish gaiety, there was an odd, strained note in her voice. Mrs.

Bobby looked at her in some perplexity, then she glanced up

deprecatingly at Gerard.

"It is her first season, you see Julian," she said, as if in apology.

"You can't expect her to give up things."

"No," he repeated, mechanically. "I can't expect her to--give up

things." He fell back silently, in increased gloom. Elizabeth glanced

towards him involuntarily as she left the room.

"Now," she said to herself, "I have disappointed him again and he

won't come near me this evening. But it is better so--far, far

better," she repeated to herself, with a little sob, as she followed

her hostess to the carriage.

_Chapter XIX_

The next day was unexpectedly mild. Winter, after reigning supreme,

made sudden and treacherous overtures to approaching spring. The air

in the Park was almost balmy, and the drives were gay, as though it

were much later in the season, with carriages and riders and bicycles

galore; yet the warm sunlight falling incongruously on sere, brown

grass and bare branches, seemed but to emphasize their dreariness and

the fact that winter had not really surrendered, and was only biding

his time and the advent of the March winds, to make his power felt all

the more strongly. Pedestrians, realizing this, refused to be

inveigled out, even by the spring-like air, and there was no one to

notice the young man and the young woman who sat on a bench in one of

the secluded walks near Eighth avenue; the young woman, simply dressed

in a dark tailor-made gown, with a small black hat pushed well over

her face, which showed beneath it very pale and set, with hard lines

about the mouth; the young man staring at her in bewilderment, a look

of distress in his handsome blue eyes.

"And so," he said, "you don't love me any longer?" It had taken him

some time to grasp this fact, which still seemed to him

incomprehensible.

"No," she said, in a low, determined voice, "I don't love you any

longer. I don't know if I--ever did. I was so young, I had never seen

any men, I didn't know what I was doing. You flattered me; it was

interesting, romantic. But if I had loved you, really loved you"--she

stopped for an instant. "If I had really loved you," she repeated "do

you think I could have hesitated--that day at Cranston? Do you think I

could have let you go--without me? Why, I should have followed

you--don't you see that I would?--to the end of the world." The color

rushed into her face, there was a ring in her voice that he never

heard before--no, not even in those early days, when she had sat at

his feet, and worshipped him as a genius. Then, as he looked at her,

he realized for the first time that he had lost her. The discovery

was, for many reasons, unwelcome.

"Well, if you didn't love me," he said, hoarsely, "you certainly made

me believe that you did. Elizabeth, you have treated me abominably. I

didn't wish to leave you--do me the justice to admit that--it was your

own doing entirely."

"I know it." She bent her head submissively. "I don't blame you for

anything; not even for--forgetting me."

"I didn't forget you," he interrupted her, flushing hotly, and

repeating assertions which she had heard already, and interpreted by

that knowledge of his character, which she had acquired too late to be

of value. She put them aside now with a gesture of weariness.

"What's the use," she said, "of going over that again, I have said

already, I don't reproach you. We can't either of us--can we?--afford

to throw stones. And yet, if you had not stopped writing"--She paused

for a moment with knitted brows, as she seemed to weigh one

possibility against another, in a sort of inward trial of her own

conduct. An instinctive mental honesty, however, carried the day. "I

don't know that that would have made any difference," she said. "I was

very unhappy because you--had forgotten me, and that made me want to

come to town, all the more; but--if I had been happy, and sure that

you loved me, I should have come, I think, all the same. And no matter

how I had felt, or what I had done, I should have known, sooner or

later--oh, I couldn't but realize it--what a--what a terrible mistake

we had made." She put out her hands in a sudden, despairing gesture,

which hurt his vanity.

"Elizabeth, do you really mean that?"

"Yes," she said, in a low, monotonous voice, and staring straight

before her with hard, hopeless eyes. "Yes, I mean it. I have been

realizing it, little by little, all these months. And yet I put it

away--I wouldn't think of it--till one day it forced itself upon me. I

knew, all at once, that I--I dreaded your coming back, I hoped you

never would--it was when I was enjoying myself, when I was thinking

how delightful life was. And then, after that, the fear of your coming

was always there--I could never get rid of it for any length of time,

till just for a while--yesterday"--Her voice faltered, and for the

first time the softening tears sprang to her eyes. "Oh, I can't help

it," she cried out, "if I'm hard. When I think how happy I

was--wildly, absurdly happy, just for a little while, and then to

think how--how miserable I am now."

She stopped, half strangled with her sobs, and Paul sat staring at her

in moody silence. He was clear-sighted enough now to grasp the truth.

Such violent grief, he told himself, could have but one explanation.

There was, there must be, some other man.

Yet the conviction made him only the more determined not to give her

up. True, there had been a time, not long before, when he would have

done so only too gladly; when he would have welcomed an opportunity to

free himself from an irksome bond, which he regretted quite as much as

she did. But now, since his return, when he heard her spoken of

everywhere as one of the beauties of the season, when he saw her in

D'Hauteville's studio in her velvet and furs, her whole appearance

redolent of grace and charm, and that nameless distinction which

Gerard had noticed, and which impressed the young musician even more

deeply; when he saw her thus a hundred times more desirable, his

fickle heart succumbed anew, with a sudden throb of joy, at the

thought of the secret tie between them. She was his, this young

princess, whom he had chosen when she was a mere Cinderella; he had

but to hold out his hand and she would come to him. For he never

doubted that she _would_ come. Her first coldness he had looked upon

as mere girlish pique at his neglect, a proof of her affection. Now,

a sadder and a wiser being, he had learned that the privilege of

forgetfulness is not confined to men alone.

Yet the situation, unflattering though it was, had its advantages,

which dawned upon him gradually, while Elizabeth still sobbed. He rose

and paced up and down in front of her, thinking the matter over. After

all, a wife was the last thing that he wanted--just then, when his

career was opening out before him in unexpectedly brilliant colors. He

realized perfectly the value of his own good looks, and the loss of

prestige that marriage would involve. Matrimony is a mistake for an

artist--he had told himself this many times in the last few months.

And yet, having once made the mistake, having won this beautiful girl

for his wife, how could he give her up. There was the chance that she

might change her mind again, and return to her first love. Then it was

sweet to feel that she was in his power, that he could at any time

bring her to terms by threatening to publish the fact that she had

concealed all this time. True, the marriage might be dissolved--he had

not much doubt himself that it could be; but either this plan did not

occur to Elizabeth, or she dreaded the inevitable gossip and

publicity. At all events, it was not his place, he thought, to suggest

it to her. He held the mastery of the situation, and he was determined

to improve it to the uttermost. And having arrived at this conclusion,

he suddenly stopped before her and spoke in a tone of unwonted

resolution.

"Listen to me, Elizabeth," he said. "I don't know why you are making

this scene. In what has the situation changed since--let us say, last

week? I don't ask you to acknowledge our marriage at once--indeed it

is impossible for me to do so, as I am not--worse luck--in a position

just now to support a wife."

Elizabeth, in her surprise, stopped crying and stared up at him

blankly. "You don't want the marriage acknowledged?" she repeated,

utterly taken aback.

"Not just now," said Paul, calmly. "It would be as inconvenient for

me, as it seems to be for you. No, all I ask is for you to see me

occasionally, to think of me more kindly, and in time--perhaps in

time, dearest, you will care for me again as you used to."

He went on to dilate on this hope. Elizabeth's tears as she listened,

ceased. A feeling of relief stole over her, the reaction which follows

so often upon violent distress. "In time," Paul said. Ah, yes, her

heart answered, there is no knowing what wonders time may accomplish.

It might even--who could tell?--find a way for her out of this

terrible perplexity.

Yet the thought was illogical. Of what use was it to put off the evil

day? There was a side of her nature which was brave and

straightforward, which detested false pretences and evasions, and all

the net-work of deception in which her secret had already involved

her; which called out upon her boldly to tell the truth, since every

day that she kept it hidden only made the final disclosure more

difficult. But there was another side which counselled compromise,

which shrank from facing the inevitable, which lived only in the

present and refused to take thought for the future. And finally there

was a side which did not reason, which simply remembered the look in a

man's eyes, when he had spoken to her the day before of her picture.

How would it be if he knew the truth? Would he make allowances for

her, would he be magnanimous enough to forgive? Ah, no, he had judged

her harshly for no apparent reason. Such a discovery would put an end

entirely to all his faith in her.

For she felt instinctively how it would strike him--this impulsive

action of a thoughtless girl, who had rushed into marriage as if it

were a mere farce, and taken upon herself, lightly, the most solemn

vows, only to repent of them quite as readily. He would pronounce her

hopelessly light and fickle, he would never believe that she was

capable of any deeper feeling. His presentiment, distrust--whatever it

was that had kept him from her--would be justified, and--and there

would be the end of it. And the best thing that could happen, that

stern inner voice called out.

But she would not listen to it--not yet, at least. She must see him

once or twice first, probe his feelings a little more surely, prepare

him a little, perhaps, to judge her more gently.... Some time--very

soon, perhaps,--she would tell him herself, but--not now, not now....

Her head ached, she was physically exhausted, and Paul was waiting,

impatiently, for her decision. She had an engagement, too, for

luncheon--she remembered that mechanically.... In this matter-of-fact

world of ours, the every-day and the tragic incidents of life jostle

one another so closely.

"I--I must go," she murmured, confusedly. "I've been here too long. We

can talk about all this another time."

"But you consent," he said eagerly. "You wish to keep it secret,

awhile longer? That is the agreement for the present?"

She hesitated for a moment. "Yes," she said at last, "that is the

agreement, till--till I have time to think it over. And now I must

go." She drew out the little jeweled watch that Mrs. Van Antwerp had

given her, among other valuable things, at Christmas. "I am going out

to luncheon, and I am supposed at present to be in my room, recovering

from last night's ball."

"What a gay person you are!" Paul said, regarding her complacently.

"Ah, Elizabeth, if you wanted to be nice, you could help me a great

deal in my profession."

"Help you?" she repeated, staring at him blankly.

"Yes, in a social way," he explained. "It always helps an artist to be

taken up by swell people. There's your friend Mrs. Van Antwerp--can't

you--there's a good girl--persuade her to do something for me?"

"I heard her ask you to call," she returned, coldly.

"Yes, but she could do more than that," he said. "She could, for

instance, have me sing and ask people to hear me. I need a start, I

need patrons among society people; and that is exactly, my dear girl,

what you can get me."

They were walking slowly by this time towards the entrance of the

Park, and suddenly she turned and faced him with one of those flashes

of defiance, which he rather admired. "Let me understand," she said,

quickly, and a pale, cold gleam lighted up her white face, like the

glint of steel upon marble. "You want me to--to get you invitations,

to persuade people to ask you to sing? This is the--the price of your

silence?"

He shrugged his shoulders, not much disturbed by the scorn in her

voice. "If you choose to put it so plainly--yes," he said. "After all,

it is not much to ask, and you ought, one would think, to be glad if

you can help me."

She walked on beside him in gloomy silence. "It's not much to ask,"

she said, in a low, bitter voice, "but it involves--have you thought

of that?--my seeing you constantly."

"And is that so terrible?" he asked, reddening.

"It's not pleasant," she said, shortly "but I suppose I must--submit.

I'm in your power; you can ask what you please." They had reached the

entrance of the Park, and she turned to him, as if to dismiss him. "I

promise, then," she said. "I'll do what I can to help you--socially,

and in return you must promise to treat me as you would any other

acquaintance--not force me to meet you again, or let people suppose

that there is anything between us. Do you agree to that?"

"I suppose I must," he said, disconsolately, "though it's a harder

condition, by far, than mine."

Again that cold, scornful gleam flashed across her face.

"Oh, you'll resign yourself to it," she said. "It's much more to the

point to get--the invitations. I'll see that my side of the bargain is

fulfilled." She drew down her veil, glancing anxiously across the wide

Square, where street-cars, bicycles and wagons all converge from

different directions and in inextricable confusion. "Don't come any

further with me," she said. "I don't wish people to see us together."

She left him abruptly as she spoke, and he stood for a moment and

watched her cross the Square and take a car at the corner. He was not

quite satisfied with the interview; she had been too independent, too

scornful. It hurt his pride. But the situation was full of

possibilities. He felt that his rash marriage had been a stroke of

genius.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, was making her way home, with a feeling of

tremulous relief, much as if she had escaped unexpectedly from

shipwreck, with at least a plank to cling to, and bear her perhaps to

ultimate safety. Yet how slight that plank was she might have

realized, had she known that Julian Gerard, as he entered the Park on

horseback, had seen her walk down one of the side paths, with the man

who, only a day before, had aroused his jealous suspicions.

"And she said she didn't know him," he thought, with a fierce throb of

pain, and rode on, frowning, into the Park.

_Chapter XX_

"My dear Julian," wrote Mrs. Bobby Van Antwerp to Mr. Gerard a week

later, "you are, I think, neglecting us shamefully. What has become of

you? If you are inclined to perform a charitable action, do come in to

tea to-morrow afternoon. You don't generally, I know, patronize such

mild functions, but we are to have a little music"--

"A little music?" mused Gerard, knitting his brows and thrusting out

his under lip, as the note dropped from his hand. "That means, of

course, that young Halleck. It's something new for Eleanor to go in

for music. But it's _her_ doing, of course. I suppose she really cares

for the fellow. And yet what a pity--what a pity that she should throw

herself away like that!" He sat gazing absently before him, his pen in

his hand, while the work upon which he had been engaged when Mrs.

Bobby's note arrived--an article for a scientific magazine--remained

without the finishing touches he had intended to bestow.

He had not seen Elizabeth since that morning in the Park.

He had carefully refrained from going where he might see her. He had

denied himself, once for all, that unprofitable and mysterious

pleasure of watching her across the ball-room, while he leaned inertly

against the wall, or talked, in his weary way, to some woman to whom

he felt himself indebted. No, thank Heaven, he had been warned in

time; there was no danger of his being made a fool of a second time.

His mind wandered back across the gulf of years, to that other woman

whom he had loved so desperately once, whose shadow still stood

between him and the happiness which seemed, now and again, within his

grasp. He thought of the mad infatuation, the bitter disillusion, the

restless travelling to and fro, the final settling down into cynical

indifference.... and then long afterwards, when the indifference had

grown into a habit, and he dreaded nothing more than to have it

disturbed, he had met this girl who had exercised upon him from the

first a curious effect, half repellant, half attractive, and wholly

baffling and alarming, whose hair he had objected to because it was

"too red" and who played the piano with a force and fire and passion,

which stirred his heart as he had resolved it should never be stirred

again.

Gerard had always intended to marry, but he proposed, in spite of the

efforts of Eleanor Van Antwerp and other anxious friends, to take his

time about it. He had his ideal of the sort of wife he wanted--a being

as different as possible from his first love, and almost as tiresome a

compound of all the domestic virtues as that mythical personage whom

Hannah More's hero had once gone in search of. But, unlike that

estimable individual, he had fallen in love with a woman far removed

from his ideal, of doubtful antecedents which he liked no better than

Bobby Van Antwerp, of qualities the reverse of domestic, and the type

of hair and coloring which he had long illogically, but none the less

strongly, associated with a certain lack of moral sense.

Yet though Gerard could not help his feelings, he could certainly

control his actions, and he was determined to keep away from Elizabeth

Van Vorst--more especially now since there seemed to be some

unaccountable understanding between her and that young Halleck.

Yet that very fact made him the more anxious to see her, and find out

for himself how far his suspicions were justified. "Good Heavens,"

thought Gerard, getting up and pacing restlessly to and fro "how can

she care for a fellow like that--so second-rate, so superficial, such

a--such a cad? What is Eleanor thinking of to have him at the house?

Some one really ought to give her a hint--not I; but--some one." ...

The end of it all was that he strolled into Mrs. Van Antwerp's

drawing-room that afternoon, his usual air of well-bred impassiveness

unmoved by the sight of Paul Halleck seated at the piano, and the

cynosure of several pairs of admiring feminine eyes.

Elizabeth's eyes were not among them. She was in a back room pouring

tea. But Gerard had no sooner assured himself of her being thus

harmlessly employed, than his jealous heart suggested that there was

something sinister in such apparent indifference.

He wandered into the other room as soon as he decently could. She was

seated at the tea-table, for the moment, entirely alone. Seen thus off

guard, for she did not at first perceive Gerard, there was something

indefinably weary and listless in her attitude. She was paler even

than she had been that day at the Portrait Show, and the lines beneath

her eyes were not black, but purple. It would have gone ill with her

reputation as a beauty had it been put to the vote that afternoon. But

it was Gerard's peculiarity, his misfortune perhaps, that she appealed

to him most at times when to the world at large she was looking her

worst. He stood watching her for a moment. Presently she looked up.

She caught sight of him. Instantly the warm, lovely color rushed into

her cheeks, only to retreat, and leave her paler than before--but not

till he had seen it.

His manner was very gentle as he approached her and asked for a cup of

tea. She poured it out mechanically, with a hand that trembled.

"We have not seen you lately," she said, with eyes carefully riveted

on the tea-things. "Eleanor was wondering--what had become of you."

"Indeed! It was very kind of her to give me a thought." Gerard stirred

his tea absently. "I was busy," he said "with an article I had

promised for a magazine."

"Ah! You write a great deal, don't you?" Elizabeth looked up with

some interest. "I should like to see some of your articles, if I may."

He smiled. "You don't know what you're asking. You'd find them very

dull."

"What, because I'm so dull myself?" she asked, with a flash of spirit.

"I told you once before," he said, in the tone that he had used to her

at the studio "that I didn't think you--that."

"Ah, but you think me other things that are--worse."

"As what, for instance?" he asked, smiling.

"Oh frivolous, and vain, and heartless. A lot of horrid things."

"I only said you _seemed_ so."

"Ah, then you think I'm better than I seem?" she asked, flippantly,

yet with a swift inward pang.

He seemed to consider. "I think you are very--incomprehensible," he

said at last.

She bent down over the tea-things, so that he could not see her face.

"Oh, that's only," she said, in a low voice "because you haven't the

key to the enigma. If you had it"--She paused. "You might not like the

things you understood," she concluded.

Gerard put down his untasted cup. "I'm willing to take the risk," he

said, deliberately.

He waited, as if for an answer, but none came. She appeared to busy

herself with the tea-things. In the next room Paul Halleck began to

sing the Evening Star song. It seemed to Gerard that Elizabeth turned

a shade paler than she had been before.

"He has a fine voice," he said, when the song was finished. "Don't you

think so?"

She started. "Yes, I--I think so," she said, mechanically.

"I was surprised a little at Eleanor's going in for music," Gerard

went on. "It isn't her line, generally."

"No, it isn't her line," Elizabeth repeated, in the same mechanical

tones. Suddenly she met his eyes defiantly. "I asked her to have him

here," she said.

"Ah, you asked her?" Gerard drew his breath quickly. "I _thought_ he

was a--a friend of yours."

"You thought so?" she returned quickly, and then in a low voice, as if

she dreaded the answer: "Why?"

"Why?" He repeated her question as if it surprised him. For a moment

he seemed to hesitate; then, as if forming a sudden resolution: "I

thought so," he said, steadily, and looking her straight in the face

"for one thing, because I saw you walking in the Park with him one

morning."

"Ah, you--you saw me?" She seemed to gasp for breath. Then, with a

quick, impetuous movement, she pushed the tea-things away from her.

"And so," she said, turning to him suddenly, her cheeks flushed, her

eyes sparkling "you--you put the worst construction upon that, you

think more ill of me than ever?"--

He had turned very pale, but still his voice was steady. "I don't

know why I should think ill of you, for such a simple thing as that.

But if there is any secret about it"--he fixed his eyes upon her

coldly, haughtily--"if the meeting was not intended to be known, why

I--I'm sorry I should have seen it. Of course I should not mention

it--to any one else."

She flushed a little, then grew pale, before the scorn in his eyes.

"There is--there is no secret," she said, in a low voice. "You can

mention it--to whom you please."

"I confess I was a little surprised," he went on, without heeding her,

and this time a note of keen anxiety pierced through the studied

quietness of his voice, his gaze softened, as if imploring her to give

him the explanation which he had no right to demand. "I was a little

taken aback," he said, "because I understood you to say--the day

before--that you hardly knew him."

"Yes, I--I remember." She leaned back in her chair, staring before her

with hard, bright eyes. "When I told you that," she said, slowly "I--I

lied."

It gave him a keen shock to hear her pronounce the word. He did not

speak, and she looked up at him presently with a little, deprecating

smile. "Now," she said, softly "I've shocked you, haven't I?"

He was silent for a moment. "No," he said, at last "not that; but--I'm

sorry. I don't like to think of you as--misstating anything, even if

the matter is of no importance."

She had taken up a teaspoon, and was playing with it absently. "I

don't know," she said, slowly "why you should care."

"Don't you?" He turned his eyes away. "I wish to Heaven I didn't," he

said, low and fiercely. The words were not intended for her, but she

heard them and again the warm, beautiful color rushed into her cheeks.

An answer trembled on her lips, but she struggled not to say it;

struggled against the desire to bring that glow to his face, that

light to his eyes, which she knew so well lay dormant, beneath the

heavy lids. She knew, ah, she knew. While he stayed away she had her

misgivings, but now that she saw him again, she read his heart, even

as she had done at the Portrait Show. She had only to be herself, her

best self, and she held him captive, he could not escape. Yet,

paradoxically, her better instincts urged upon her to show him her

worst side, to say the things which hurt and shocked him.

While she hesitated, people came crowding in from the next room. In

the confusion that ensued, Gerard was forced away from the table. He

fell back against the wall, and watched Elizabeth while, with

instinctive self-command, she fulfilled the different demands made

upon her. He saw Halleck go up to her gaily, flushed with his success,

and bending over her, murmur a few jesting words, which she heard

without a smile. Gerard could have killed him for the air of

proprietorship which was even more pronounced than at the musicale.

But she--how did she like it? He scanned her face eagerly. There was

no softness there, no answering gleam of pleasure; rather a dull,

dogged look of submission, which seemed to cover, or Gerard deceived

himself, an instinctive shrinking, a powerless resentment.

"She doesn't care for him," he thought, with a quick, sharp sense of

relief. "And yet--she has to be civil to him, she has to do things to

help him. Why, for Heaven's sake, why?" He wandered into the other

room, tormenting himself with this question, and found his hostess

there.

"What do you think of my new protegé?" she asked, detaining him as he

took his leave.

"What, Halleck? Oh, he sings very well," he returned, absently.

"I never before posed as a patron of rising musicians," she went on,

"but Elizabeth knew him, it seems, in the country, and asked if I

would mind helping him a little. She's so fond of music, you know."

She spoke quite innocently. Gerard gave her a quick, searching glance.

Apparently she suspected nothing. Yet she was a woman of quick

perceptions. Perhaps, after all, it was he who was mistaken; his

jealous, suspicious nature had led him into unnecessary torture. No

wonder she had met his doubt with defiance, had not deigned to justify

herself, or to dispel a distrust which he had no right to display. In

the sudden, glad, unreasoning reaction, he was ready to heap all

manner of insulting epithets upon himself.

"I think your efforts will be repaid," he said, inclined in his relief

to be generous. "Halleck has a fine voice. I shouldn't wonder if he

were quite a success."

"It was very nice of you to come in," she said. "You have been such a

recluse lately. What have you been doing?"

"Oh, the whirl of excitement in which I've been living was too much

for me," he declared "and so I've given up society for awhile, and am

going in for hard study by way of rest."

"Good gracious! That sounds very impressive," she said. "I'm almost

afraid to suggest, under the circumstances, that you should take a

seat in our box at the opera to-night. And yet I wish you would,

Julian, just by way of doing me a favor, for some people I've asked

are not coming, and Bobby is away, and Elizabeth and I will be quite

alone."

He smiled. "I don't think there's much chance of your being alone very

long," he said. Yet he promised at last to take one of the vacant

seats, though he had refused several other invitations for that

evening. Mrs. Bobby's eyes sparkled as if she had achieved a victory.

"Julian is coming to-night," she announced to Elizabeth, when the

musicale was over and the last guest had departed.

"Is he?" Elizabeth spoke without apparent interest, as she sank, with

a weary look, into a chair in front of the fire.

"You are tired. Would you rather not go to-night?"

"Oh, no"--with a languid gesture. "Music doesn't tire me!"