XIII.

That night was an almost sleepless one for Pauline, and during the next

morning she was in straits of keen contrition. Theoretically she

despised her aunt, but in reality she despised far more her own loss of

control. Her self-humiliation was so pungent, indeed, that when, at

twelve o'clock on this same day, Courtlandt's card was handed to her,

she felt a strong desire to escape seeing him, through the facile little

falsehood of a "not at home." But she concluded, presently, that it

would be best to face the situation at once, since avoidance would be

simply postponement. Courtlandt was as inevitable as death; he must be

met sooner or later.

She met him. She did not expect that he would offer her his hand, and

she made no sign of offering her own. He was standing near a small

table, as she entered, and his attention seemed much occupied with some

exquisitely lovely roses in a vase of aerial porcelain. He somehow

contrived not wholly to disregard the roses while he regarded Pauline.

It was very cleverly done, and with that unconscious quiet which stamped

all his clever doings.

"These are very nice," he said, referring to the roses. He had a pair of

tawny gloves grasped in one hand, and he made an indolent, whipping

gesture toward the vase while Pauline seated herself. But he still

remained standing.

"Yes," she replied, as we speak words automatically. "They are rare

here, but I know that kind of rose in Paris."

"Did your future husband send them?" asked Courtlandt. His composure was

superb. He did not look at Pauline, but with apparent carelessness at

the flowers.

"Yes," she said; and then, after a slight pause, she added: "Mr.

Kindelon sent them."

Courtlandt fixed his eyes upon her face, here. "Wasn't it rather

sudden?" he questioned.

"My engagement?"

"Your engagement."

"Sudden? Well, I suppose so."

"I didn't expect it quite yet."

She gave a little laugh which sounded thin and paltry to her own ears.

"That means you were prepared for it, then?"

"Oh, I saw it coming."

"And Aunt Cynthia has told you, no doubt."

"Yes. Aunt Cynthia has told me. I felt that I ought to drop in with my

congratulations."

Pauline rose now; her lips were trembling, and her voice likewise, as

she said:--

"I do hope that you give them sincerely, Court."

"Oh, if you put it in that way, I don't give them at all."

"Then you came here to mock me?"

"I don't know why I came here. I think it would have been best for me

not to come. I thought so when I decided to come. Probably you do not

understand this. I can't help you, in that case, for I don't understand

it myself."

"I choose to draw my own conclusions, and they are kindly and friendly

ones. Never mind how or what I understand. You are here, and you have

said nothing rude yet. I hope you are not going to say anything rude,

for I haven't the heart to pick a quarrel with you--one of our old,

funny, soon-healed quarrels, you know. I am too happy, in one way, and

too repentant in another."

"Repentant?"

"Yes. I said frightful things yesterday to Aunt Cynthia. I dare say she

has repeated them."

"Oh, yes, she repeated every one of them."

"And no doubt with a good deal of wrathful embellishment!" here

exclaimed Pauline, bristling.

"Do you think they would bear decoration? Wouldn't it be like putting a

cupola on the apex of the Trinity Church steeple?"

"Not at all!" cried Pauline. "I might have said a great deal worse!

Oceans and continents lie between Aunt Cynthia and myself! And I told

her so!"

"Really? I thought you were at pretty _close_ quarters with each other,

judging from her account of the row."

"There was no _row_!" declared Pauline, drawing herself up very finely.

"What did she accuse me of saying, please?"

"Oh, I forget. She said you abused her like a pickpocket for not liking

the man you're engaged to."

Pauline shrugged her shoulders, in the manner of one who thinks better

of the angry mood, and handsomely abjures it. "Positively, Courtlandt,"

she said, "I begin to think you had no purpose whatever in coming here

to-day."

His sombre brown eyes began to sparkle, though quite faintly, as he now

fixed them upon her. "I certainly had one purpose," he said. She saw

that his right hand had thrust itself into the breast of his coat, as

though it searched there for something. "I wanted to show you this, as I

imagined that you don't see the horrid little sheet called 'The Morning

Monitor,'" he proceeded.

"'The Morning Monitor'!" faltered Pauline, with a sudden grievous

premonition, as she watched her cousin draw forth a folded newspaper.

"No, I never heard of it."

"It has evidently heard of you," he answered. "I never read the vilely

personal little affair. But a kind friend showed me this issue of

to-day. Just glance at the second column on the second page--the one

which is headed 'The Adventures of a Widow'--and tell me what you think

of it."

Pauline took the newspaper with unsteady hand. She sank into her chair

again, and began to read the column indicated. The journal which she now

held was one of recent origin in New York, and it marked the lowest ebb

of scandalous newspaper license. It had secured an enormous circulation;

it was already threatening to make its editor a Croesus. It traded, in

the most unblushing way, upon the curiosity of its subscribers for a

knowledge of the peccadilloes, imprudences, and general private

histories of prominent or wealthy citizens. It was a ferret that

prowled, prodded, bored, insinuated. It was utterly lawless, utterly

libellous. It left not even Launcelot brave nor Galahad pure. It was one

of those detestable opportunities which this nineteenth century,

notwithstanding a thousand evidences of progress, thrusts into the hands

of cynics and pessimists to rail against the human nature of which they

themselves are the most melancholy product. It had had suits brought

against it, but the noble sale of its copies rendered its heroic

continuation possible. Truth, crushed to earth, may rise again, but

scurrilous slander, in the shape of "The Morning Monitor," remained

capably erect. It fed and throve on its own dire poison.

Pauline soon found herself reading, with misty eyes and indignant

heart-beats, a kind of baleful biography of herself, in which her

career, from her rash early marriage until her recent entertainment of

certain guests, was mercilessly parodied, ridiculed, vilified. These

pages will not chronicle in any unsavory details what she read. It was

an article of luridly intemperate style, dissolute grammar, and gaudy

rhetoric. It bit as a brute bites, and stung as a wasp stings, without

other reason that that of low, dull spleen. It mentioned no other name

than Kindelon's, but it shot from that one name a hundred petty shafts

of malign innuendo.

"Oh, this is horrible!" at length moaned Pauline. She flung the paper

down; the tears had begun to stream from her eyes. "What shall I do

against so hideous an attack?"

Courtlandt was at her side in an instant. He caught her hand, and the

heat of his own was like that of fever.

"Do but one thing!" he said, with a vehemence all the more startling

because of his usual unvaried composure. "Break away from this folly

once and forever! You know that I love you--that I have loved you for

years! Don't tell me that you don't know it, for at the best you've only

taught yourself to forget it! I've never _said_ that I loved you before,

but what of that? You have seen the truth a hundred times--in my sober

way of showing it! I've never thought that you returned the feeling; I

don't even fancy so now. But I'm so fond of you, Pauline, that I want

you to be my wife, merely liking and respecting me. I hate to shame

myself by even speaking of your money, but you can sign that all away to

some hospital to-morrow, if you please--you can get it all together and

throw it into the North River, as far as I am concerned! Send Kindelon

adrift--jilt him! On my soul I beg this of you for your own future

happiness more than anything else! I don't say that it will be a square

or right thing to do. But it will save you from the second horrible

mistake of your life! You made one, that death saved you from. But this

will be worse. It will last your lifetime. Kindelon isn't of your

_monde_, and never can be. There is so much in that. I am not speaking

like a snob. But he has no more sense of the proprieties, the nice

externals, the way of doing all those thousand trifling things, which,

trifling as they are, make up three-quarters of actual existence, than

if he were an Indian, a Bedouin, or a gypsy! Before Heaven, Pauline, if

I thought such a marriage could bring you happiness, I'd give you up

without a murmur! I'm not fool enough to die, or pine, or even mope

because of any woman on the globe not caring for me! But now, by giving

me the right to guard you--by making me so grateful to you that only the

rest of my life can fitly show my gratitude, you will escape calamity,

distress, and years of remorse!"

It had hardly seemed to her, at first, as if Courtlandt were really

speaking; this intensity was so entirely uncharacteristic of him; these

rapid tones and spirited glances were so remote from his accustomed

personality. Yet by degrees she recognized not alone the quality of the

change, but its motive and source. She could not but feel tenderly

toward him then. She was a woman, and he had told her that he loved her;

this bore its inevitable condoning results.

And yet her voice was almost stern as she now said to him, rising, and

repelling the hand by which he still strove to clasp her own,--

"I think you admitted that if I broke my engagement with Ralph Kindelon

it would not be--I use your own words, Court--the square or right thing

to do.... Well, I shall not do it! There, I hope you are satisfied."

He looked at her with a surpassing pain. His hands, while they hung at

his sides, knotted themselves. "Oh, Pauline," he exclaimed, "I am _not_

satisfied!"

She met his look steadily. The tears in her eyes had vanished, though

those already shed glistened on her cheeks. "Very well. I am sorry. I

love Ralph Kindelon. I mean to be his wife."

"You meant to be Varick's wife."

"It is horrible for you to bring that up!" she cried. "Here I commit no

mistake. He is a man of men! He loves me, and I love him. Do you know

anything against him--outside of the codes and creeds that would exclude

him from one of Aunt Cynthia's dancing-classes?"

"I know this against him; he is not true. He is not to be trusted. He

rings wrong. He is not a gentleman--in the sense quite outside of Aunt

Cynthia's definition."

"It is false!" exclaimed Pauline, crimsoning. "Prove to me," she went

on, with fleet fire, "that he is not true--not to be trusted. I dare you

to prove it."

He walked slowly toward the door. "It is an intuition," he said. "I

can't prove it. I could as soon tell you who wrote that villainous thing

in the newspaper there."

Pauline gave a laugh of coldest contempt. "Oh," she cried, "in a moment

more you will be saying that _he_ wrote it!"

Courtlandt shook his head. The gesture conveyed, in some way, an

excessive and signal sadness.

"In a moment more," he answered, "I shall be saying nothing to you. And

I don't know that I shall ever willingly come into your presence again.

Good-by."

Pauline gave no answer, sinking back into her seat as he disappeared.

Her eye lighted upon the fallen newspaper while she did so. Its

half-crumpled folds made her forget that her cousin was departing. She

suddenly sprang up again, and caught the sheet from the floor. A fire

was blazing near by. She hurried toward the grate, intending to destroy

the printed abomination.

But, pausing half-way, she once more burst into tears. A recollection

cut her to the heart of how futile would be any attempt, now, to destroy

the atrocious wrong itself. That must live and work its unmerited ill.

"And to this dark ending," she thought, with untold dejection, "has come

my perfectly honest ambition--my fair and proper and wholesome plan!"

And then, abruptly, her tearful eyes began to sparkle, while a bright,

mirthless smile touched her lips.

"But I can at least have my retort," she decided. "_He_ will help

me--stand by me in this miserable emergency. I will send for him,--yes,

I will send for Ralph at once! He will do just as I dictate, and I know

what I _shall_ dictate! Miss Cragge wrote that base screed, and Miss

Cragge shall suffer accordingly!"