It was in vain that I protested that I had no secrets and knew nothing

about fellows or scrapes. She knew better, she said, for no girl could

go through any school and not know something about them unless she were

a greater softie than I looked to be.

“I was always getting into a scrape, or out of one,” she said, “and it

was such fun. Why, I never learned a blessed thing,—I didn’t go to

learn, and I kept the teachers so stirred up that their lives were a

burden to them, and I know they must have made a special thank-offering

to some missionary fund when I left. And yet I know they liked me in

spite of my pranks. And to think you were stuffing your head with

knowledge at Wellesley all the time, and I never knew it, nor Grant

either! I tell you he don’t like it any better than I do. And Aunt

Kizzy’s excuse, that you would have neglected your studies if you had

known he was at Harvard, is all rubbish. That was not the reason. Do you

know what the real one was?”

I said I did not, and with a little laugh she continued, “You _are_ a

softie, sure enough;” then, pushing me a little from her, she regarded

me attentively a moment, and continued, “Do you know how very, very

beautiful you are?”

I might have disclaimed such knowledge, if something in her bright,

searching eyes had not wrung the truth in part from me, and made me

answer, “I have been told so a few times.”

“Of course you have,” she replied. “Who told you?”

“Oh, the girls at Wellesley,” I answered, beginning to feel uneasy under

the fire of her eyes.

“Humbug!” she exclaimed. “I tell you, girls don’t count. I mean boys.

What boy has told you you were handsome? Has Grant? Honor bright, has

Grant?”

The question was so sudden that I was taken quite aback, while conscious

guilt, if I can call it that, added to my embarrassment. It was three

weeks since Grant came home, and in that time we had made rapid strides

towards something warmer than friendship. We had ridden and driven

together for miles around the country, had played and sung together, and

walked together through the spacious grounds, and once when we sat in

the summer-house and I had told him of my father’s and mother’s death

and my life in Meadowbrook and Wellesley, and how lonely I had sometimes

been because no one cared for me, he had put his arm around me, and,

kissing my forehead, had said, “Poor little Dorey! I wish I had known

you were at Wellesley. You should never have been lonely;” and then he

told me that he had seen me twice in Boston, once at a concert and once

in a street-car, and had never forgotten my face, which he thought

beautiful, and that he had called me his Lost Star, whom he had looked

for so long and found at last. And as he talked I had listened with a

heart so full of happiness that I could not speak, although with the

happiness there was a pang of remorse when I remembered what Aunt Keziah

had said about my not trying to win Grant’s love. And I was not trying;

the fault, if there were any, was on his side, and probably he meant

nothing. At all events, the scene in the summer-house was not repeated,

and I fancied that Grant’s manner after it was somewhat constrained, as

if he were a little sorry. But he had kissed me and told me I was

beautiful, and when Thea put the question to me direct, I stammered out

at last, “Ye-es, Grant thinks I am handsome.”

“Of course he does. How can he help it? And I don’t mind, even if we are

engaged.”

“Engaged!” I repeated, and drew back from her a little, for, although I

had suspected the engagement, I had never been able to draw from my

aunts any allusion to it or admission of it, and I had almost made

myself believe that there was none.

But I knew it now, and for a moment I felt as if I were smothering,

while Thea regarded me curiously, but with no jealousy or anger in her

gaze.

“You are surprised,” she said at last. “Has neither of the aunts told

you?”

“No,” I replied, “they have not, but I have sometimes suspected it. And

I have reason to think that such a marriage would please Aunt Kizzy very

much. Let me congratulate you.”

“You needn’t,” she said, a little stiffly. “It is all a made-up affair.

Shall I tell you about myself?” And, drawing me close to her again, she

told me that at a very early age she became an orphan, with a large

fortune as a certainty when she was twenty-one, as she would be at

Christmas, and another fortune coming to her in the spring, if she did

not marry Grant, and half in case she did. “It’s an awful muddle,” she

continued, “and you can’t understand it. I don’t either, except that one

of my ancestors, old Amos Hepburn, of Keswick, England, made a queer

will, or condition, or something, by which the Mortons will lose their

home unless I marry Grant, which is not a bad thing to do. I have known

him all my life, and like him so much; and it is not a bad thing for him

to marry me, either. Better do that than lose his home.”

“Would he marry you just for money?” I asked, while the spot on my

forehead, which he had kissed, burned so that I thought she must see it.

But she was brushing her long hair and twisting it into braids, and did

not look at me as she went on rapidly: “No, I don’t think he would marry

me for my money unless he liked me some. Aleck wouldn’t, and Grant

thinks himself vastly superior to Aleck, whom he calls a bore and a

crank; and perhaps he is, but he is very nice,—not handsome like Grant,

and not like him in anything. He has reddish hair, and freckles on his

nose, and big hands, and wears awful baggy clothes, and scolds me a good

deal, which Grant never does, and tells me I am fast and slangy, and

that I powder too much. He is my second cousin, you know, and stands

next to me in the Hepburn line, and if I should die he would come in for

the Morton estate, unless he finds the missing link, as he calls it,

which is ahead of us both. I am sure you will like him, and I shall be

so glad when he comes. I am not half as silly with him as I am without

him, because I am a little afraid of him, and I miss him so much.”

As I knew nothing of Aleck, I did not reply, and after a moment, during

which she finished braiding her hair and began to do up her bangs in

curl-papers, she said, abruptly, “Why don’t you speak? Don’t you

tumble?”

“What _do_ you mean?” I asked, and with very expressive gestures of her

hands, which she had learned abroad, she exclaimed, “Now, you are not so

big a softie as not to know what _tumble_ means, and you have been

graduated at Wellesley, too! You are greener than I thought, and I give

it up. But you just wait till I have coached you awhile, and you’ll know

what tumble means, and a good many more things of which you never

dreamed.”

I said I did not like slang,—in short, that I detested it,—and we were

having rather a spirited discussion on the subject, and Thea was talking

in anything but a whisper, when suddenly there came a tremendous knock

on the door, which in response to Thea’s prompt “_Entrez_” opened wide

and disclosed to view the awful presence of Aunt Kizzy in her night-cap,

without her false piece, felt slippers on her feet, a candle in her

hand, and a look of stern disapproval on her face as she addressed

herself to me, asking if I knew how late it was, and why I was keeping

Thea up.

“She is not keeping me up. I am keeping her. I asked her to come in

here, and when she said we should disturb you I told her we would

whisper, and we have until I was stupid enough to forget myself. I’m

awfully sorry, but Doris is not to blame,” Thea explained, generously

defending me against Aunt Kizzy, towards whom she moved with a graceful,

gliding step, adding, as she put her arm around her neck, “Now go back

to bed, that’s a dear, and Doris shall go too, and we’ll never disturb

you again. I wonder if you know how funny you look without your hair!”

I had never suspected Aunt Kizzy of caring much for her personal

appearance, but at the mention of her hair she quickly put her hand to

her head with a deprecatory look on her face, and without another word

walked away, while Thea threw herself into a chair, shaking with

laughter and declaring that it was a lark worthy of De Moisiere.

* * * * *

Four weeks have passed since I made my last entry in my journal, and so

much has happened in that time that I feel as if I were years older than

I was when Thea came, and, as she expressed it, “took me in hand.” I am

certainly a great deal wiser than I was, but am neither the better nor

the happier for it, and although I know now what _tumble_ means, and all

the flirtation signs, and a great deal more besides, I detest it all,

and cannot help feeling that the girl who practices such things has lost

something from her womanhood which good men prize. Old-maidish Thea

calls me, and says I shall never be anything but a _softie_. And still

we are great friends, for no one can help loving her, she is so bright

and gay and kind. As for Grant, he puzzles me. I have tried to be

distant towards him since Thea told me of her engagement, and once I

spoke of it to him and asked why he did not tell me himself. I never

knew before that Grant could scowl, as he did when he replied, “Oh,

bother! there are some things a fellow does not care to talk about, and

this is one of them. You and Thea gossip together quite too much.”

After that I didn’t speak to Grant for two whole days. But he made it up

the third day in the summer-house where he had kissed me once, and would

have kissed me again, but for an accident.

“Doris,” he said, as he took my face between his hands and bent his own

so close to it that I felt his breath on my cheek,—“Doris, don’t quarrel

with me. I can’t bear it. I——”

What more he would have said I do not know, as just then we heard Thea’s

voice near by calling to Aleck Grady, who has been in town three weeks,

stopping at the hotel, but spending most of his time at Morton Park, and

I like him very much. He seems very plain-looking at first, but after

you know him you forget his hair and his freckles and his hands and

general awkwardness, and think only how thoroughly good-natured and kind

and considerate he is, with a heap of common sense. Thea is not quite

the same when he is with us. She is more quiet and lady-like, and does

not use so much slang, and acts rather queer, it seems to me. Indeed,

the three of them act queer, and I feel queer and unhappy, although I

seem to be so gay, and the house and grounds resound with laughter and

merriment all day long. Aleck comes early, and always stays to lunch, if

invited, as he often is by Thea, but never by Aunt Kizzy, who has grown

haggard and thin and finds a great deal of fault with me because, as she

says, I am flirting with Grant and trying to win him from Thea.

It is false. I am not flirting with Grant. I am not trying to win him

from Thea, but rather to keep out of his way, which I cannot do, for he

is always at my side, and when we go for a walk, or a ride, or a drive,

it is Aleck and Thea first, and necessarily Grant is left for me, and,

what is very strange, he seems to like it, while I——Oh, whither am I

drifting, and what shall I do? I know now all about the Morton lease and

the Hepburn line, for Aunt Kizzy has told me, and with tears streaming

down her cheeks has begged me not to be her ruin. And I will not, even

if I should love Grant far more than I do now, and should feel surer

than I do that he loves me and would gladly be free from Thea, who

laughs and sings and dances as gayly as if there were no troubled hearts

around her, while Aleck watches her and Grant and me with a quizzical

look on his face which makes me furious at times. He has talked to me

about the missing link and the family tree, which he offered to show me,

but I declined, and said impatiently that I had heard enough about old

Amos Hepburn and that wretched condition, and wished both had been in

the bottom of the sea before they had done so much mischief. With a

good-humored laugh he put up his family tree and told me not to be so

hard on his poor old ancestor, saying he did not think either he or his

condition would harm the Mortons much.

I don’t know what he meant, and I don’t know anything except that I am

miserable, and Grant is equally so, and I do not dare stay alone with

him a moment, or look in his eyes for fear of what I may see there, or

he may see in mine.

Alas for us both, and alas for the Hepburn line!

CHAPTER XI.—THE AUTHOR’S STORY.

THE CRISIS.

It came sooner than the two who were watching the progress of affairs

expected it, and the two were Kizzy and Dizzy. The first was looking at

what she could not help, with a feeling like death in her heart, while

the latter felt her youth come back to her as she saw one by one the

signs she had once known so well. She knew what Grant’s failure to marry

Thea meant to them. But she did not worry about it. With all her fear of

Keziah, she had a great respect for and confidence in her, and was sure

she would manage somehow, no matter whom Grant married. And so in her

white gown and blue ribbons she sat upon the wide piazza day after day,

and smiled upon the young people, who, recognizing an ally in her, made

her a sort of queen around whose throne they gathered, all longing to

tell her their secret, except Doris, who, hearing so often from her Aunt

Keziah that she was the cause of all the trouble, was very unhappy, and

kept away from Grant as much as possible. But he found her one afternoon

in the summer-house looking so inexpressibly sweet, and pathetic, too,

with the traces of tears on her face, that, without a thought of the

consequences, he sat down beside her, and, putting his arms around her,

said:

“My poor little darling, what is the matter, and why do you try to avoid

me as you do?”

There was nothing of the coquette about Doris, and at the sound of

Grant’s voice speaking to her as he did, and the touch of his hand which

had taken hers and was carrying it to his lips, she laid her head on his

shoulder and sobbed:

“Oh, Grant, I can’t bear it. Aunt Kizzy scolds me so, and I—I can’t help

it, and I’m going to Meadowbrook to teach or do something, where I shall

not trouble any one again.”

“No, Doris,” Grant said, in a voice more earnest and decided than any

she had ever heard from him. “You are not going away from _me_. You are

mine and I intend to keep you. I will play a hypocrite’s part no longer.

I love _you_, and I do not love Thea as a man ought to love the girl he

makes his wife, nor as she deserves to be loved; and even if you refuse

me I shall not marry her. It would be a great sin to take her when my

whole soul was longing for another.”

“Grant, are you crazy? Don’t you know you must marry Thea? Have you

forgotten the Hepburn line?” Doris said, lifting her head from his

shoulder and turning towards him a face which, although bathed in tears,

was radiant with the light of a great joy.

Had Grant been in the habit of swearing, he would probably have

consigned the Hepburn line to perdition. As it was, he said:

“Confound the Hepburn line! Enough have been made miserable on account

of it, and I don’t propose to be added to the number, nor do I believe

much in it, either. Aleck does not believe in it at all, and we are

going to look up the law without Aunt Kizzy’s knowledge. She is so

cursed proud and reticent, too, or she would have found out for herself

before this time whether we are likely to be beggared or not. And even

if the lease holds good, don’t you suppose that a great strapping fellow

like me can take care of himself and four women?”

As he had never yet done anything but spend money, it seemed doubtful to

Doris whether he could do anything or not. But she did not care. The

fact that he loved her, that he held her in his arms and was covering

her face with kisses, was enough for the present, and for a few moments

Aunt Kizzy’s wrath and the Hepburn line were forgotten, while she

abandoned herself to her great happiness. Then she remembered, and,

releasing herself from Grant, stood up before him and told him that it

could not be.

“I am not ashamed to confess that I love you,” she said, “and the

knowing that you love me will always make me happier. But you are bound

to Thea, and I will never separate you from her or bring ruin upon your

family. I will go away, as I said, and never come again until you and

Thea are married.”

She was backing from the summer-house as she talked, and so absorbed

were she and Grant both that neither saw nor heard anything until,

having reached the door, Doris backed into Thea’s arms.

“Hello!” was her characteristic exclamation, as she looked curiously at

Doris and then at Grant, who, greatly confused, had risen to his feet,

“And so I have caught you,” she continued, “and I suppose you think I am

angry; but I am not. I am glad, as it makes easier what I am going to

tell you. Sit down, Grant, and hear me,” she continued authoritatively,

as she saw him moving towards the doorway, opposite to where she stood,

still holding Doris tightly. “Sit down, and let’s have it out, like

sensible people who have been mistaken and discovered their mistake in

time. I know you love Doris, and I know she loves you, and she just

suits you, for she is beautiful and sweet and fresh, while I am neither;

I am homely, and fast, and slangy, and sometimes loud and forward.”

“Oh, Thea, Thea, you are not all this,” Doris cried.

But Thea went on: “Yes, I am; Aleck says so, and he knows, and that is

why I like him so much. He tells me my faults straight out, which Grant

never did. He simply endured me because he felt that he must, until he

saw you, and then it was not in the nature of things that I could keep

him any longer. I have seen it, and so has Aleck; and this morning,

under the great elm in the far part of the grounds, we came to an

understanding, and I told the great, awkward, ugly Aleck that I loved

him better than I ever loved Grant; and I do,—I do!”

She was half crying, and breathing hard, and with each breath was

severing some link which had bound her to Grant, who for once felt as

awkward as Aleck himself, and stood abashed before the young girl who

was so boldly declaring her preference for another. What could he say?

he asked himself. He surely could not remonstrate with her, or protest

against what would make him so happy, and so he kept silent, while

brushing the tears from her eyes, she continued, “I don’t know when it

began, or how, only it did begin, and now I don’t care how ugly he is,

nor how big his feet and hands are. He is just as good as he can be, and

I am going to marry him. There!”

She stopped, quite out of breath, and looked at Doris, whose face was

very white, and whose voice trembled as she said:

“But, Thea, have you forgotten the _lease_?”

“The lease!” Thea repeated, bitterly. “I hate the very name. It has

worked so much mischief, and all for nothing, Aleck says, and he knows,

and don’t believe it would stand a moment, and if it does we have

arranged for it, and should the Morton estate ever come to me through

Aunt Kizzy’s foolish insistence, I shall deed it straight back to her,

or to you and Grant, which will be better. It is time old Amos Hepburn

was euchred, and I am glad to do it. Such trouble as he has brought to

your grandfather, your father, and to me, thrusting me upon one who did

not care a dime for me!”

“Thea, Thea, you are mistaken. I did care for you until I saw Doris, and

I care for you yet,” Grant said, and Thea replied:

“In a way, yes. But you were driven to it by Aunt Kizzy, and so was I.

Why, I do not remember a time when I did not think I was to marry you,

and once I liked the idea, too, and threw myself at your head, and

appropriated you in a way which makes me ashamed when I remember it.

Aleck has told me, and he knows, and will keep me straight, while you

would have let me run wild, and from a bold, pert, slangy girl I should

have degenerated into a coarse, second-class woman, with only money and

the Morton name to keep me up. You and Doris exactly suit each other,

and your lives will glide along without a ripple, while Aleck’s and mine

will be stormy at times, for he has a will and I have a temper, but the

making up will be grand, and that I should never have known with you. I

am going to tell Aunt Kizzy now, and have it over. So, Grant, let’s say

good-bye to all there has been between us, and if you want to kiss me

once in memory of the past you can do so. Doris will not mind.”

There was something very pathetic in Thea’s manner as she lifted her

face for the kiss which was to part her and Grant forever, and for an

instant her arms clung tightly around his neck as if the olden love were

dying hard in spite of what she had said of Aleck; then without a word

she went swiftly up the walk, leaving Grant and Doris alone.

CHAPTER XII.—DORIS’S STORY.

THE MISSING LINK.

How can I write when my heart is so full that it seems as if it would

burst with its load of surprise and happiness? Grant and I are engaged,

and so are Thea and Aleck, and of the two I believe Thea is happier than

I, who am still so stunned that I can scarcely realize what a few hours

have brought to me,—Grant, and—and—a fortune! And this is how it

happened.

Grant was saying things to me which I thought he ought not to say, when

Thea came suddenly upon us and told us she loved Aleck better than she

did Grant, whom she transferred to me in a rather bewildering fashion,

while I accepted him on condition that Aunt Kizzy gave her consent. She

did not appear at dinner that night, and the next morning she was

suffering from a severe headache and kept her room, but sent word that

she would see Thea and Grant after breakfast. This left me to Aleck, who

came early and asked me to go with him to the summer-house, where we

could “talk over the row,” as he expressed it. Love had certainly

wrought a great change in him, softening and refining his rugged

features until he seemed almost handsome as he talked to me of Thea,

whom he had fancied from the time he first saw her.

“She is full of faults, I know,” he said, “but I believe I love her the

better for them, as they will add variety to our lives. She and Grant

would have stagnated, as he did not care enough for her to oppose her in

any way. Theirs would have been a marriage of convenience; ours will be

one of love.”

And then he drifted off to the Morton lease and Hepburn line and family

tree.

“You have never seen it, I believe,” he said, taking from his pocket a

sheet of foolscap and spreading it out upon his lap. He had offered to

show it to me before, but I had declined examining it. Now, however, I

affected to be interested, and glanced indifferently at the sheet, with

its queer looking diagrams and rows of names, which he called branches

of the Hepburn tree. “I have not made it out quite ship-shape, like one

I saw in London lately,” he said, taking out his pencil and pointing to

the name which headed the list, “but I think you will understand it. You

have no idea what a fascination there has been to me in hunting up my

ancestors and wondering what manner of people they were. First, here is

Amos Hepburn, the old curmudgeon who leased that property to your

grandfather ninety years ago. He married Dorothea Foster, and had three

daughters, Octavia, Agrippina, and Poppæa.”

“Octavia, Agrippina, and Poppæa,” I exclaimed. “What could have induced

him to give these names to his daughters?”

“Classical taste, I suppose,” Aleck said. “No doubt the old gentleman

was fond of Roman history, and the names took his fancy. If he had had a

son he would probably have called him Nero. Poppæa, the youngest, is my

maternal ancestress. I inherit my beauty from her.”

Here he laughed heartily, and then went on:

“Agrippina, the second daughter, was Thea’s great-grandmother, and

called no doubt after the good Agrippina, and not the bad one, who had

that ducking in the sea at the hands of her precious son. As to the

eldest daughter, she ought to have felt honored to be named for the poor

little abused Empress Octavia; and then it is a pretty name.”

“Yes, indeed,” I said, “and it is _my_ middle name, which my grandmother

and my great-grandmother bore before me.”

“That’s odd,” he rejoined, looking curiously at me. “Yes, very odd.

Suppose we go over Thea’s branch of the tree first, as that is the

oldest line to which a direct heir can be found, and consequently gives

her the Morton estate. First, Agrippina Hepburn married John Austin, and

had one child, Charlotte Poppæa, who married Tom Haynes, and bore him

one daughter, Sophia, and two sons, James and John. This John, by the

way, I have heard, was the young man whom Miss Keziah wished your Aunt

Beriah to marry, and failing in that she wished your father to marry

Sophia. But neither plan worked, for both died, and James married

Victoria Snead, of Louisville, and had one daughter, Dorothea Victoria,

otherwise Thea, my promised wife, and the great-great-grandaughter of

old Amos Hepburn. As I, although several years older than Thea, am in

the third and youngest branch of the tree, I have no claim on the Morton

estate; neither would Thea have, if I could find the missing link in the

first and oldest branch, that of Octavia, who was married in Port Rush,

Ireland, to Mr. McMahon, and had twins, Augustus Octavius, and Octavia

Augusta. You see she, too, was classically inclined, like her father.

Well, Augustus Octavius died, and Octavia Augusta married Henry Gale, a

hatter, in Leamington, England, and emigrated to America in 18—, and

settled in New York, where all trace of her is lost. Nor can I by any

possible means find anything about her, except that Henry Gale died, but

whether he left children I do not know. Presumably he did, and their

descendants would be the real heirs to the Morton property, if that

clause holds good. Do you see the point? or, as Thea would say, do you

tumble?”

He repeated his question in a louder tone, as I did not answer him, but

sat staring at the unfinished branch of the Hepburn tree. I did tumble

nearly off the seat, and only kept myself from doing so entirely by

clutching Aleck’s arm and holding it so tightly that he winced a little

as he moved away from me, and said: “What’s the matter? Has something

stung you?”

“No,” I replied, with a gasp, and a feeling that I was choking, or

fainting, or both.

I had followed him closely through Agrippina’s line, and had felt a

little bored when he began on Octavia’s, but only for an instant, and

then I was all attention, and felt my blood prickling in my veins and

saw rings of fire dancing before my eyes, as I glanced at the names, as

familiar to me as old friends.

“Aleck,” I whispered, for I could not speak aloud, “these are all my

ancestors, I am sure, for do you think it possible for two Octavias and

two McMahons to have been married in Port Rush and had twins whom they

called Octavia Augusta and Augustus Octavius, and for Augustus to die

and Octavia to marry a Mr. Gale, a hatter, in Leamington, and emigrate

to New York?”

It was Aleck’s turn now to stare and turn pale, as he exclaimed:

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” I said, “that my great-grandmother’s name was Octavia, but I

never heard that it was also Hepburn, or if I did I have forgotten it. I

know, though, that she married a McMahon and lived at Port Rush. I know,

too, that Mrs. McMahon had twins, whose names were Augustus Octavius and

Octavia Augusta. Augustus died, but Octavia, who was my grandmother,

first married a Mr. Gale, a hatter, in Leamington, and then came to New

York, where he died. She then went to Boston, married Charles Wilson,

and moved to New Haven, where my mother, Dorothea Augusta, was born, and

where she married my father. I have a record of it in an old English

book, which, after my grandmother’s death, was sent to my mother with

some other things.”

“Eureka! I have found the missing link, _and you are it_! Hurrah!” Aleck

exclaimed, springing to his feet and catching me up as if I had been a

feather’s weight. “I was never more surprised in my life, or glad

either. To think here is the link right in Miss Kizzy’s hands! Wouldn’t

she have torn her hair if Grant had married Thea? By Jove, it would have

been a joke, and a sort of retributive justice, too. I must tell her

myself. But first let’s be perfectly sure. You spoke of a record. Do you

happen to have it with you?”

“Yes, in my trunk,” I said, and, excusing myself for a few moments, I

flew to the house, and soon returned with what had originally been a

blank-book and which my grandmother had used for many purposes, such as

recording family expenses, names of people who had boarded with her, and

when they came, what they paid her, and when they left; dates, too, of

various events in her life, together with receipts for cooking; and

pinned to the last page was an old yellow sheet of foolscap, with the

name of a Leamington bookseller just discernible upon it. On this sheet

were records in two or three different handwritings. The first was the

birth in Leamington of Augustus Octavius and Octavia Augusta, children

of Patrick and Octavia McMahon, who were married in Port Rush, April

10th, 18—. Then followed the death of Augustus and the marriage of

Octavia to William Gale, of Leamington. Then, in my grandmother’s

handwriting, the death of Mr. Gale in New York, followed by a masculine

hand, presumably that of my grandfather, Charles Wilson, who married

Mrs. Octavia Gale in Boston, and to whom my mother, Dorothea Augusta,

was born in New Haven. I remember perfectly well seeing my mother record

the date of her marriage with my father and of my birth on the sheet of

foolscap after it came to her with the other papers from my grandmother,

but when or why it was pinned into the blank-book I could not tell. I

only knew it was there, and that I had kept the book, which I now handed

to Aleck, whose face wore a puzzled look as, opening it at random, he

began to read a receipt for ginger snaps.

“What the dickens has this to do with Cæsar Augustus and Augustus

Cæsar?” he asked, while I showed him the sheet of paper, which he read

very attentively twice, and compared with his family tree. “You _are_

the Link, and no mistake!” he said. “Everything fits to a T, as far as

my tree goes. Of course it will have to be proven, but that is easily

done by beginning at this end and working back to where the branch

failed to connect. And now I am going to tell Miss Morton and Grant.

Will you come with me?”

“No,” I replied, feeling that I had not strength to walk to the house.

I was so confused and stunned and weak that I could only sit still and

think of nothing until Grant’s arms were around me and he was covering

my face with kisses and calling me his darling.

“Aleck has told us the strangest story,” he said, “and I am so glad for

you, and glad that I asked you to be my wife before I heard it, as you

know it is yourself I want, and not what you may or may not bring me.

Aunt Kizzy is in an awful collapse,—fainted dead away when she heard

it.”

“Oh, Grant, how could you leave her and come to me?” I asked,

reproachfully, and he replied, “Because I could do no good. There were

Aunts Dizzy and Brier, and Thea, and Aleck, and Vine, all throwing water

and camphor and vinegar in her face, until she looked like a drowned

rat. So I came out and left them.”

“But I must go to her,” I said, and with Grant’s arm around me I went

slowly to the house and into the room where Aunt Kizzy lay among her

pillows, with an expression on her face such as I had never seen before.

It was not anger, but rather one of intense relief, as if the tension of

years had given way and left every nerve quivering from the long strain,

but painless and restful. Thea was fanning her; Aunt Brier was bathing

her forehead with cologne; Aunt Dizzy was arranging her false piece,

which was somewhat awry; while Aleck was still energetically explaining

his family tree and comparing it with the paper I had given him. At

sight of me Aunt Kizzy’s eyes grew blacker than their wont, while

something like a smile flitted across her face as she said, “This is a

strange story I have heard, and it will of course have to be proved.”

“A task I take upon myself,” Aleck interrupted, and she went on to

catechise me rather sharply with regard to my ancestors.

“It is strange that your father did not find it out, if he saw this

paper.”

“He did not see it, for it was not sent to us until after his death,” I

said, while Aunt Dizzy rejoined, “And if he had it would have conveyed

no meaning to him, as I do not suppose he ever troubled himself to trace

the Hepburn line to its beginning or knew that Mrs. McMahon was a

Hepburn. I have no idea what my great-grandmother’s name was before she

was married. For me, I need no confirmation whatever, but accept Doris

as I have always accepted her, a dear little girl whose coming to us has

brought a blessing with it, and although I am very fond of Thea, and

should have loved her as Grant’s wife, I am still very glad it is to be

Doris.”

She was standing by me now, with her hand on my shoulder, while Aunt

Brier and Thea both came to my side, the latter throwing her arms around

my neck and saying, “And I am glad it is Doris, and that the Hepburn

line is torn into shreds. I believe I hate that old Amos, who, by the

way, is as much your ancestor as mine, for we are cousins, you know.”

She kissed me lovingly, and, putting my hand in Aunt Kizzy’s, said to

her, “Aren’t you glad it is Doris?”

Then Aunt Kizzy did a most extraordinary thing for her. She drew me

close to her and cried like a child.

“Yes,” she said, “I am glad it is Doris, and sorry that I have been so

hard with everybody, first with Beriah, and then with Gerold, whom I

loved as if he had been my own son, and who it seems married into the

Hepburn line and I did not know it. And I have loved you, too, Doris,

more than you guess, notwithstanding I have seemed so cross and cold and

crabbed. I have been a monomaniac on the subject of the Hepburn lease.

Can you forgive me?”

I could easily answer that question, for with her first kind word all

the ill feeling I had ever cherished against her was swept away, and,

putting my face to hers, I kissed her more than once, in token of peace

between us.

That afternoon Aleck started North with his family tree and my family

record, and, beginning at the date of my mother’s marriage, worked

backward until the branch which had been broken with the Gales in New

York was united with the Wilsons of New Haven, “making a beautiful

whole,” as he wrote in a letter to Thea, who was to me like a dear

sister, and who, with her perfect tact, treated Grant as if they had

never been more to each other than friends. Those were very happy days

which followed, and now, instead of being the least, I think I am the

most considered of all in the household, and in her grave way Aunt Kizzy

pets me more than any one else, except, of course, Grant, whose love

grows stronger every day, until I sometimes tremble with fear lest my

happiness may not last. We are to be married at Christmas time, and are

going abroad, and whether I shall ever write again in this journal I

cannot tell. Years hence I may perhaps look at it and think how foolish

I was ever to have kept it at all. There is Grant calling me to try a

new wheel he has bought for me, and I must go. I can ride a wheel now,

or do anything I like, and Aunt Kizzy does not object. But I don’t think

I care to do many things, and, except to please Grant, I do not care

much for a wheel, being still, as Thea says, something of a _softie_.

CHAPTER XIII.—AUNT DESIRE’S STORY.

THE THREE BRIDES.

I am too old now to commence a diary; but the house is so lonely with

only Keziah and myself in it that I must do something, and so I will

record briefly the events of the last few weeks, or rather months, since

the astounding disclosure that Doris and not Thea was the direct heir in

the Hepburn line. Nothing ever broke Keziah up like that, transforming

her whole nature and making her quite like other people and so fond of

Doris that she could scarcely bear to have her out of sight a moment,

and when Grant and Doris were married and gone she cried like a baby,

although some of her tears, let us hope, were for Beriah, who will not

come back to live with us again, while Doris will.

And right here let me speak of Beriah’s little romance, which has ended

so happily. Years ago she loved Tom Atkins, but Kizzy separated them, in

the hope that Brier would marry John Haynes, of the Hepburn line, as

possibly she might have done, for she was mortally afraid of Kizzy. But

John had the good taste to die, and Brier remained in single blessedness

until she was past forty, when Tom, who she supposed was dead, turned up

unexpectedly in Cairo. Grant, who was there at the time, made his

acquaintance and brought a message from him to Brier, who, after

receiving it, never seemed herself, but sat for hours with her hands

folded and a look on her face as if listening or waiting for some one,

who came at last.

It was in November, and the maple-leaves were drifting down in great

piles of scarlet in the park, and in the woods there was the sound of

dropping nuts, and on the hills a smoky light, telling of “the

melancholy days, the saddest of the year.” But with us there was

anything but sadness, for two brides-elect were in the house, Doris and

Thea, who were to be married at Christmas, and whose trousseaus were

making in Frankfort and Versailles. Thea had expressed a wish to be

married at Morton Park on the same day with Doris, and, as her guardian

did not object, she was staying with us altogether, while Aleck came

every day. So we had a good deal of love-making, and the doors which

used to be shut promptly at half-past nine were left open for the young

people, who, in different parts of the grounds, or piazza, told over and

over again the old story which, no matter how many times it is told, is

ever new to her who hears and him who tells it.

One morning when Aleck came as usual, he said to Grant, “By the way, do

you remember that chap, half Arab and half American, whom we met in

Cairo? Atkins was the name. Well, he arrived at the hotel last night,

with that wild-eyed little girl and two Arabian servants, one for him,

one for the child. He used to know some of your people, and is coming

this morning to call, with his little girl, who is not bad-looking in

her English dress.”

We had just come from breakfast, and were sitting on the piazza, Grant

with Doris, and Brier with that preoccupied look on her face which it

had worn so long. But her expression changed suddenly as Aleck talked,

and it seemed to me I could see the years roll off from her, leaving her

young again; and she was certainly very pretty when two hours later, in

her gray serge gown with its trimmings of navy blue, and her brown hair,

just tinged with white, waving softly around her forehead, she went down

to meet Tom Atkins, from whom she parted more than twenty years ago. We

had him to lunch and we had him to dinner, and we had him finally almost

as much as we did Aleck, and I could scarcely walk in any direction that

I did not see a pair of lovers, half hidden by shrub or tree.

“‘Pears like dey’s a love-makin’ from mornin’ till night, an’ de ole

ones is wuss dan de young,” I heard Adam say to Vine, and I fully

concurred with him, for, as if he would make up for lost time, Tom could

not go near Brier without taking her hand or putting his arm around her.

Just what he said to her of the past I know not, except that he told her

of dreary wanderings in foreign lands, of utter indifference as to

whether he lived or died, until in Athens he met a pretty Greek, whom,

under a sudden impulse, he made his wife, and who died when their little

Zaidee was born, twelve years ago. After that he spent most of his time

in Egypt, where he has a palatial home near Alexandria, with at least a

dozen servants. Last winter he chanced to meet Grant at Shepheard’s

Hotel in Cairo, and, learning from him that Beriah was still unmarried,

he decided to come home, and, if he found her as unchanged in her

feelings as he was, he would ask her a second time to be his wife. So he

came, and the vows of old were renewed, and little Zaidee stayed with us

altogether, so as to get acquainted with her new mamma that was to be.

She is a shy, timid child, who has been thrown mostly with Arabs and

Egyptians, but she is very affectionate, and her love for Beriah was

touching in its intensity.

When Thea heard of the engagement she begged for a triple wedding, and

carried her point, as she usually does. “A blow-out, too,” she said she

wanted, as she should never marry but once, and a _blow-out_ we had,

with four hundred invitations, and people from Cincinnati, Lexington,

Louisville, Frankfort, and Versailles. There were lanterns on all the

trees in the park, and fireworks on the lawn, and two bands in different

parts of the grounds, and the place looked the next morning as if a

cyclone or the battle of Gettysburg had swept over it. The brides were

lovely, although Doris, of course, bore off the palm for beauty, but

Thea was exceedingly pretty, while Beriah reminded me of a Madonna, she

looked so sweet and saintly, as she stood by Tom, who, the moment the

ceremony was over, just took her in his arms and hugged her before us

all. Zaidee was her bridesmaid, while Kizzy was Doris’s and I was

Thea’s, and in my cream-colored silk looked, they said, nearly as young

as the girls.

The next morning the newly married people left _en route_ for Europe,

and the last we heard from them they were at Brindisi, waiting for the

Hydaspes, which was to take them to Alexandria. Doris will come back to

live with us again in the autumn, but Brier never, and when I think of

that, and remember all she was to me, and her patience and gentleness

and unselfishness, there is a bitter pain in my heart, and my tears fall

so fast that I have blurred this sheet so that no one but myself can

read it. I am glad she has Tom at last, although her going from us makes

me so lonely and sad and brings back the dreary past and all I lost when

Henry died. But some time, and that not very far in the future, I shall

meet my love, dead now so many years that, counting by them I am old,

but, reckoned by my feelings, I am still young as he was when he died,

and as he will be when he welcomes me inside the gate of the celestial

city, and says to me in the voice I remember so well, “I am waiting for

you, darling, and now come rest awhile before I show you some of the

glories of the heavenly world, and the people who are here, Douglas, and

Maria, and Gerold, and all the rest who loved you on earth, and who love

you still with a more perfect love, because born of the Master whose

name is love eternal.”

CHAPTER XIV.—DORIS’S STORY.

TWO YEARS LATER.

It is just two years since that triple wedding, when six people were

made as happy as it is possible to be in this world, Aunt Brier and Mr.

Atkins, Aleck and Thea, and Grant and myself, on whom no shadow has

fallen since I became Grant’s wife and basked in the fullness of his

love, which grows stronger and more tender as the days go on. He is now

studying hard in a law office in town, determined to fit himself for

something useful, and if possible atone for the selfish, useless life he

led before we were married. We spent a year abroad, going everywhere

with Aleck and Thea, and staying a few weeks in Mr. Atkins’s elegant

villa near Alexandria, where everything is done in the most luxurious

and Oriental manner, and Aunt Brier was a very queen among her subjects.

When the year of travel was ended we came back to Morton Park, where a

royal welcome awaited us, and where Aunt Kizzy took me in her arms and

cried over me a little and then led me to my room, or rather rooms, one

of which was the Glory Hole, which had been fitted up as a boudoir, or

dressing-room, while the large, airy chamber adjacent, where Thea used

to sleep, had also been thoroughly repaired and refurnished, and was

given to us in place of Grant’s old room.

And here this Christmas morning I am finishing my journal, in which I

have recorded so much of my life,—more, in fact, than I care to read. I

wish I had left out a good deal about Aunt Kizzy. She is greatly changed

from the grim woman who held me at arm’s length when I first came from

school, and of whom I stood in fear. We have talked that all over, and

made it up, and every day she gives me some new proof of her affection.

But the greatest transformation in her came some weeks ago, with the

advent of a little boy, who is sleeping in his crib, with a

yellow-turbaned negress keeping watch over him. Aunt Kizzy calls herself

his grandmother, and tends him more, if possible, than the nurse. Grant

laments that it is not a girl, so as to bear some one or two of the

queer names of its ancestors. But I am glad it is a boy, and next Sunday

it will be christened Gerold Douglas, for my father and grandfather, and

Aleck and Thea will stand for it. They have bought a beautiful place a

little out of town and have settled down into a regular Darby and Joan,

wholly satisfied with each Other and lacking nothing to make them

perfectly happy. Aunt Brier and Mr. Atkins are also here, staying in the

house until spring, when they will build on a part of the Morton estate

which Mr. Atkins has bought of Grant. Oriental life did not suit Aunt

Brier, and, as her slightest wish is sacred to her husband, he has

brought her to her old home, where, when Aleck and Thea are with us, we

make a very merry party, talking of all we have seen in Europe, and

sometimes of the Hepburn line, which Aleck says I straightened,—always

insisting, however, that it did not need straightening, and that the

obnoxious clause in the lease would never have stood the test of the

law. Whether it would or not, I do not know, as we have never inquired.

MILDRED’S AMBITION.

CHAPTER I.

MILDRED.

The time was a hot morning in July, the place one of those little

mountain towns between Albany and Pittsfield, and the scene opens in a

farm house kitchen, where Mildred Leach was seated upon the doorstep

shelling peas, with her feet braced against the doorjamb to keep her

baby brother, who was creeping on the floor, from tumbling out, and her

little sister Bessie, who was standing outside, from coming in. On the

bed in a room off the kitchen Mildred’s mother was lying with a

headache, and both the kitchen and the bedroom smelled of camphor and

vinegar, and the vegetables which were cooking on the stove and filling

the house with the odor which made the girl faint and sick, as she

leaned against the door-post and longed, as she always was longing, for

some change in her monotonous life. Of the world outside the mountain

town where she was born she knew very little, and that little she had

learned from Hugh McGregor, the village doctor’s son, who had been away

to school, and seen the President and New York and a Cunarder as it came

sailing up the harbor. On his return home Hugh had narrated his

adventures to Mildred, who listened with kindling eyes and flushed

cheeks, exclaiming, when he finished, “Oh! if I could see all that; and

I will some day. I shall not stay forever in old Rocky Point. I hate

it.”

Mildred was only thirteen, and not pretty, as girls usually are at that

age. She was thin and sallow, and her great brown eyes were too large

for her face, and her thick curly hair too heavy for her head. A mop her

brother Tom called it, when trying to tease her; and Mildred hated her

hair and hated herself whenever she looked in the ten by twelve glass in

her room, and never dreamed of the wonderful beauty which later on she

would develop, when her face and form were rounded out, her sallow

complexion cleared, and her hair subdued and softened into a mass of

waves and curls. Her father, John Leach, was a poor farmer, who,

although he owned the house in which he lived, together with a few acres

of stony land around it, was in one sense a tenant of Mr. Giles

Thornton, the proprietor of Thornton Park, for he rented land enough of

him to eke out his slender income. To Mildred, Thornton Park was a

Paradise, and nothing she had ever read or heard of equaled it in her

estimation, and many a night when she should have been asleep she stood

at her window, looking off in the distance at the turrets and towers of

the beautiful place which elicited admiration from people much older

than herself. To live there would be perfect bliss, she thought, even

though she were as great an invalid as its mistress, and as sickly and

helpless as little Alice, the only daughter of the house. Against her

own humble surroundings Mildred was in hot rebellion, and was always

planning for improvement and change, not only for herself, but for her

family, whom she loved devotedly, and to whom she was giving all the

strength of her young life. Mrs. Leach was a martyr to headaches, which

frequently kept her in bed for days, during which time the care and the

work fell upon Mildred, whose shoulders were too slender for the burden

they bore.

“But it will be different some time,” she was thinking on that hot July

morning when she sat shelling peas, sometimes kissing Charlie, whose fat

hands were either making havoc with the pods or pulling her hair, and

sometimes scolding Bessie for chewing her bonnet strings and soiling her

clean apron.

“You must look nice when Mrs. Thornton goes by,” she said, for Mrs.

Thornton was expected from New York that day, and Mildred was watching

for the return of the carriage, which half an hour before had passed on

its way to the station.

And very soon it came in sight,—a handsome barouche, drawn by two

shining black horses, with a long-coated driver on the box, and Mr. and

Mrs. Thornton and the two children inside,—Gerard, a dark, handsome boy

of eleven, and Alice, a sickly little girl, with some spinal trouble

which kept her from walking or playing as other children did. Leaning

back upon cushions was Mrs. Thornton,—her face very pale, and her eyes

closed, while opposite her, with his gold-headed cane in his hand, was

Mr. Thornton,—a tall, handsome man who carried himself as grandly as if

the blood of a hundred kings was flowing in his veins. He did not see

the children on the doorsteps, until Gerard, in response to a nod from

Mildred, lifted his cap, while Alice leaned eagerly forward and said,

“Look, mamma, there’s Milly and Bessie and the baby. Hello, Milly. I’ve

comed back;” then he said quickly, “Allie, be quiet; and you Gerard, why

do you lift your cap to such people? It’s not necessary;” and in these

few words was embodied the character of the man.

Courteous to his equals, but proud and haughty to his inferiors, with an

implicit belief in the Thorntons and no belief at all in such people as

the Leaches, or indeed in many of the citizens of Rocky Point, where he

owned, or held mortgages on, half the smaller premises. The world was

made for him, and he was Giles Thornton, of English extraction on his

father’s side and Southern blood on his mother’s, and in his pride and

pomposity he went on past the old red farm house, while Mildred sat for

a moment looking after the carriage and envying its occupants.

“Oh, if I were rich, like Mrs. Thornton, and could wear silks and

jewels; and I will, some day,” she said, with a far-off look in her

eyes, as if she were seeing the future and what it held for her. “Yes, I

will be rich, no matter what it costs,” she continued, “and people shall

envy me, and I’ll make father and mother so happy? and you, Charlie”——

Here she stopped, and parting the curls from her baby brother’s brow,

looked earnestly into his blue eyes; then went on, “you shall have a

golden crown, and you, Bessie darling, shall have,—shall have,—Gerard

Thornton himself, if you want him.”

“And I lame Alice?” asked a cheery voice, as there bounded into the

kitchen a ten year old lad, who, with his naked feet, sunny face and

torn straw hat, might have stood for Whittier’s barefoot boy.

“Oh, Tom,” Mildred cried, “I’m glad you’ve come. Won’t you pick up the

pods while I get the peas into the pot? It’s almost noon, and I’ve got

the table to set.”

Before Tom could reply, another voice called out, “You have given Gerard

to Bessie and Alice to Tom; now what am I to have, Miss Prophetess?”

The speaker was a fair-haired youth of seventeen, with a slight Scotch

accent and a frank, open, genial face, such as strangers always trust.

He had stopped a moment at the corner of the house to pick a rose for

Mildred, and hearing her prophecies, sauntered leisurely to the

doorstep, where he sat down, and fanning himself with his big hat, asked

what she had for him.

“Nothing, Hugh McGregor,” Mildred replied, with a little flush on her

cheek. “Nothing but that;” and she tossed him a pea-pod she had picked

from the floor.

“Thanks,” Hugh said, catching the pod in his hand. “There are two peas

in it yet, a big and a little one. I am the big, you are the little, and

I’m going to keep them and see which hardens first, you or I.”

“What a fool you are,” Mildred said, with increased color on her cheek,

while Hugh pocketed the pod and went on: “A crown for Charlie, Gerard

for Bessie, Allie for Tom, a pea-pod for me, and what for you, my

darling?”

“I am not your darling,” Mildred answered quickly; “and I’m going to

be,—mistress of Thornton Park,” she added, after a little hesitancy,

while Hugh rejoined: “As you have given Gerard to Bessie, I don’t see

how you’ll bring it about, unless Mrs. Thornton dies, a thing not

unlikely, and you marry that big-feeling man, whom you say you hate

because he turned you from his premises. Have you forgotten that?”

Mildred had not forgotten it, and her face was scarlet as she recalled

the time the past summer when, wishing to buy a dress for Charlie, then

six months old, she had gone into one of Mr. Thornton’s pastures after

huckleberries, which grew there so abundantly, and which found a ready

market at the groceries in town. In Rocky Point, berries were considered

public property, and she had no thought that she was trespassing until a

voice close to her said, “What are you doing here? Begone, before I have

you arrested.”

In great alarm Mildred had seized her ten quart pail, which was nearly

full, and hurried away, never venturing again upon the forbidden ground.

“Yes, I remember it,” she said, “but that wouldn’t keep me from being

mistress of the Park, if I had a chance and he wasn’t there. Wouldn’t I

make a good one?”

“Ye-es,” Hugh answered slowly, as he looked her over from her head to

her feet. “But you’ll have to grow taller and fill out some, and do

something with that snarly pate of yours, which looks this morning like

an oven broom,” and with this thrust at her bushy hair Hugh disappeared

from the door just in time to escape the dipper of water which went

splashing after him.

“Oven broom, indeed!” Mildred said indignantly, with a pull at the

broom; “I wonder if I am to blame for my hair. I hate it!”

This was Mildred’s favorite expression, and there were but few things to

which she had not applied it. But most of all she hated her humble home

and the boiled dinner she put upon the table just as the clock struck

twelve, wondering as she did so if they knew what such a dish was at

Thornton Park, and what they were having there that day.

CHAPTER II.

AT THORNTON PARK.

Meanwhile the barouche had stopped under the grand archway at the side

entrance of the Park house, where a host of servants was in waiting; the

butler, the housekeeper, the cook, the laundress, the maids, the

gardener and groom and several more, for, aping his English ancestry and

the custom of his mother’s Southern home before the war, Mr. Thornton

kept about him a retinue of servants with whom he was very popular. He

paid them well and fed them well, and while requiring from them the

utmost deference, was kind in every way, and they came crowding around

him with words of welcome and offers of assistance. Mrs. Thornton went

at once to her room, while Alice was taken possession of by her nurse,

who had come from the city the night before, and who soon had her charge

in a little willow carriage, drawing her around the grounds. Gerard, who

was a quiet, studious boy, went to the library, while Mr. Thornton,

after seeing that his wife was comfortable, joined his little daughter,

whose love for her country home he knew, and to whom he said, “I suppose

you are quite happy now?”

“Yes, papa,” she replied, “only I want somebody to play with me. Ann is

too big. I want Milly Leach. She was so nice to me last summer. Can’t I

have her, papa?”

For Alice to want a thing was for her to have it, if possession were

possible, and her father answered her:

“Yes, daughter, you shall have her,” without knowing at all who Milly

Leach was. But Alice explained that she was the girl who lived in the

little red house where Ann had often taken her the summer before to play

with Tom and Bessie. And so it came about that Ann was sent that

afternoon to the farm house with a request from Mr. Thornton that

Mildred should come for the summer and amuse his daughter. Three dollars

a week was the remuneration offered, for he always held out a golden

bait when the fish was doubtful, as he thought it might be in this case.

Mrs. Leach was better, and sitting up while Mildred combed and brushed

the hair much like her own, except that it was softer and smoother,

because it had more care and there was less of it.

“Oh, mother,” she cried, when Ann made her errand known, “can’t I go?

Three dollars a week! Only think, what a lot; and I’ll give it all to

you, and you can get that pretty French calico at Mr. Overton’s store.

May I go?”

“Who will do the work when I’m sick?” Mrs. Leach asked, herself a good

deal moved by the three dollars a week, which seemed a fortune to her.

“I guess they’ll let me come home when you have a headache,” Milly

pleaded, and on this condition it was finally arranged that she should

go to the Park for a time at least, and two days after we saw her

shelling peas and longing for a change, the change came and she started

out on her career in her best gingham dress and white apron, with her

small satchel of clothes in her hand and a great lump in her throat as

she kissed her mother and Bessie and Charlie, and would have kissed Tom

if he had not disappeared with a don’t-care air and a watery look in his

eyes, which he wiped with his checked shirt sleeve, and then, boy-like,

threw a green apple after his sister, hiding behind the tree when she

looked around to see whence it came.

It was a lovely morning, and Thornton Park lay fair and beautiful in the

distance as she walked rapidly on until a familiar whistle stopped her

and she saw Hugh hurrying across the fields and waving his hat to her.

“Hello!” he said, as he came to her side, “I nearly broke my neck to

catch you. And so you are going to be a hired girl. Let me carry that

satchel,” and he took it from her while she answered hotly, “I ain’t a

hired girl. I’m Allie’s little friend; that’s what she said when she

came with Ann last night and we made the bargain, and I’m to have three

dollars a week.”

“Three dollars a week! That is big,” Hugh said, staggered a little at

the price. “But, I say, don’t go so fast. Let’s sit down awhile and

talk;” and seating himself upon a log, with Mildred beside him and the

satchel at his feet, he went on: “Milly, I don’t want you to go to

Thornton Park. Won’t you give it up? Seems as if I was losing you.”

“You never had me to lose,” was the girl’s reply, and Hugh continued:

“That’s so; but I mean that I like you better than any girl I ever knew;

like you just as I should my sister if I had one.”

Here Milly elevated her eyebrows a little, while Hugh went on: “And I

don’t want you to go to that fine place and learn to despise us all, and

the old home by the brook.”

“I shall never do that, for I love father and mother and Tom and Bessie

and Charlie better than I do myself. I’d die for them, but I do hate the

old house and the poverty and work, and I mean to be a grand lady and

rich, and then I’ll help them all, and you, too, if you’ll let me.”

“I don’t need your help, and I don’t want to see you a grand lady, and I

don’t want you to be snubbed by that proud Thornton,” Hugh replied, and

Milly answered quickly, with short, emphatic nods of her head:

“I sha’n’t be snubbed by him, for if he sasses me I shall sass him. I’ve

made up my mind to that.”

“And when you do may I be there to hear; but you are a brick, any way,”

was Hugh’s laughing rejoinder, and as Milly had risen to her feet, he,

too, arose, and taking up the satchel walked with her to the Park gate,

where he said good-bye, but called to her after a minute, “I say, Milly,

I have that pea-pod yet, and _you_ are beginning to wilt, but I am as

plump as ever.”

“Pshaw!” was Mildred’s scornful reply, as she hurried on through the

Park, while Hugh walked slowly down the road, wishing he had money and

could give it all to Milly.

“But I shall never be rich,” he said to himself, “even if I’m a lawyer

as I mean to be, for only dishonest lawyers make money, they say, and I

sha’n’t be a cheat if I never make a cent.”

Meanwhile Milly had reached the house, which had always impressed her

with a good deal of awe, it was so stately and grand. Going up to the

front door she was about to ring, when the same voice which had ordered

her from the berry pasture, said to her rather sharply:

“What are you doing here, little girl?”

“I’m Mildred Leach, and I’ve come to be Allie’s little friend,” Mildred

answered, facing the speaker squarely, with her satchel in both hands.

“Oh, yes; I know, but go to the side door, and say Miss Alice instead of

Allie,” Mr. Thornton replied as he began to puff at his cigar.

Here was _sass_ at the outset, and remembering her promise to Hugh,

Milly gave a vigorous pull at the bell, saying as she did so:

“I sha’n’t call her Miss, and I shall go into the front door, or I

sha’n’t stay. I ain’t dirt!”

This speech was so astounding and unexpected, that instead of resenting

it, Mr. Thornton laughed aloud, and as a servant just then came to the

door, he sauntered away, saying to himself:

“Plucky, by Jove; but if she suits Allie, I don’t care.”

If Mr. Thornton had a redeeming trait it was his love for his wife and

children, especially little Alice, for whom he would sacrifice

everything, even his pride, which is saying a great deal, and when, an

hour later, he found her in the Park with Mildred at her side making

dandelion curls for her, he was very gracious and friendly, asking her

how old she was, and giving her numerous charges with regard to his

daughter. Then he went away, while Mildred looked admiringly after him,

thinking how handsome he was in his city clothes, and how different he

was from her father.

“It’s because he’s rich and has money. I mean to have some, too,” she

thought, and with the seeds of ambition taking deeper and deeper root,

she began her life at Thornton Park, where she soon became a great

favorite, not only with Alice, but with Mrs. Thornton, to whom she was

almost as necessary as to Alice herself.

Regularly every Saturday night her three dollars were paid to her, and

as regularly every Sunday morning she took them home, where they were

very acceptable, for Mr. Leach had not the least idea of thrift, and his

daughter’s wages tided over many an ugly gap in the household economy.

Mrs. Leach had the French calico gown, and Charlie a pair of red shoes,

and Bessie a new white frock, and Tom a new straw hat, but for all that

they missed Mildred everywhere, she was so helpful and willing, even

when rebelling most against her condition, and when in September Mrs.

Thornton proposed that she should go with them to New York, Mrs. Leach

refused so decidedly that the wages were at once doubled, and six

dollars a week offered in place of three. Money was nothing to Mrs.

Thornton, and as what she set her mind upon she usually managed to get,

she succeeded in this, and when in October the family returned to the

city, Mildred went with them, very smart in the new suit Mrs. Thornton

had given her, and very red about the eyes from the tears she had shed

when saying good-bye to her home.

“If I’d known I should feel this way, I believe I wouldn’t have gone,”

she had thought, as she went from room to room with Charlie in her arms,

Bessie holding her hand, and Tom following in the rear, whistling “The

girl I left behind me,” and trying to seem very brave.

On a bench by the brook which ran back of the house Mildred at last sat

down with Charlie in her lap, and looking at the water running so fast

at her feet, wondered if she should ever see it again, and where Hugh

was that he did not come to say good-bye. She had a little package for

him, and when at last he appeared, and leaping across the brook, sat

down beside her, she gave it to him, and said with a forced laugh:

“A splint from the oven broom. You used to ask for one, and here ’tis.”

He knew what she meant, and opening the paper saw one of her dark curls.

“Thanks, Milly,” he said, with a lump in his throat. “I’ll keep it, and

the peas, too, till you come back. When will that be?”

“I don’t know; next summer, most likely; though perhaps I shall stay

away until I’m such a fine lady that you won’t know me. I’m to study

with Allie’s governess and learn everything, so as to teach some time,”

she said.

“Here’s the carriage,” Tom called round the corner, and kissing Charlie

and Bessie and Tom, who did not resist her now, and crying on her

mother’s neck, and wringing her father’s hard hand and saying good-bye

to Hugh, she went out from the home where for many a long year she was

not seen again.

CHAPTER III.

INCIDENTS OF FIFTEEN YEARS.

At first the inmates of the farm house missed the young girl sadly; but

they gradually learned to get on very well without her, and when in the

spring word came that Mrs. Thornton was going to Europe and wished to

take Mildred with her, offering as an inducement a sum far beyond what

they knew the girl’s services were worth, and when Mildred, too, joined

her entreaties with Mrs. Thornton’s, telling of the advantage the

foreign life would be to her, as she was to share in Alice’s

instruction, the father and mother consented, with no thought, however,

that she would not return within the year. When Hugh heard of it he went

alone into the woods, and sitting down near the chestnut tree, where he

and Milly had often gathered the brown nuts together, thought the matter

out in his plain, practical way.

“That ends it with Milly,” he said. “Europe will turn her head, and if

she ever comes home she will despise us more than ever and me most of

all, with my gawky manners and big hands and feet.”

Then, taking from his pocket a little box, he opened it carefully, and

removing a fold of paper looked wistfully at the contents. A curl of

dark-brown hair and a gray pod with two peas inside,—one shriveled and

harder than the other, and as it seemed to him harder and more shriveled

than when he last looked at it.

“It’s just as I thought it would be,” he said, “She will grow away from

me with her French and German and foreign ways, unless I grow with her,”

and for the first time in his life Hugh felt the stirring of a genuine

and laudable ambition. “_I_ will make something of myself,” he said. “I

have it in me, I know.”

The curl and the peas were put away, and from that time forward Hugh’s

career was onward and upward, first to school in Pittsfield, then to

college at Amherst, then to a law office in Albany, and then ten years

later back to Rocky Point, where he devoted himself to his profession

and won golden laurels as the most honorable and prominent lawyer in all

the mountain district. Rocky Point had had a boom in the meantime, and

now spread itself over the hillside and across the pasture land, almost

to the red farm house which stood by the running brook, its exterior a

little changed, as blinds had been added and an extra room with a bow

window, which looked toward the village and the brook. And here on

summer mornings fifteen years after Mildred went away a pale-faced woman

sat, with her hair now white as snow, combed smoothly back from her

brow, her hands folded on her lap, and her eyes turned towards the

window through which she knew the sun was shining brightly, although she

could not see it, for Mrs. Leach was blind. Headache and hereditary

disease had done their work, and when her husband died she could not see

his face, on which her tears fell so fast. For more than two years he

had been lying in the cemetery up the mountain road, and beside his

grave was another and a shorter one, nearly level with the ground, for

it was twelve years since Charlie died and won the golden crown which

Milly had promised him that day when the spirit of prophecy was upon

her.

During all these years Mildred had never come back to the old home which

bore so many proofs of her loving remembrance, for every dollar she

could spare from her liberal allowance was sent to her people. Mrs.

Thornton had died in Paris, where Alice was so far cured of her spinal

trouble that only a slight limp told that she had ever been lame. At the

time of Mrs. Thornton’s death there was staying in the same hotel an

English lady, a widow, who had recently lost her only daughter, a girl

about Mildred’s age, with something of Mildred’s look in her eyes. To

this lady, whose name was Mrs. Gardner, Mildred had in her helpful way

rendered many little services and made herself so agreeable that when

Mrs. Thornton died the lady offered to take her as her companion and

possibly adopted daughter, if the girl proved all she hoped she might.

When this proposal was made to Mr. Thornton he neither assented nor

objected. The girl could do as she pleased, he said, and as she pleased

to go she went, sorry to leave Alice, but glad to escape from the

father, whose utter indifference and apparent forgetfulness of her

presence in his family, had chafed and offended her. Rude he had never

been to her, but she might have been a mere machine, so far as he had

any interest in or care for her. She was simply a servant, whose name he

scarcely remembered, and of whose family he knew very little when Mrs.

Gardner questioned him of them.

“Very poor and very common; such as would be called peasantry on the

continent,” he said, and Mildred, who accidentally overheard the remark,

felt the hot blood stain her face and throb through her veins as she

registered a vow that this proud, cold man, who likened her to a

peasant, should some day hold a different opinion of her.

She was nearly fifteen now, and older than her years with her besetting

sin, ambition, intensified by her life abroad, and as she saw, in the

position which Mrs. Gardner offered her an added round to the ladder she

was climbing, she took it unhesitatingly, and went with her to

Switzerland, from which place she wrote to her mother, asking pardon if

she had done wrong, and enclosing fifty pounds which she had been saving

for her.

“Taken the bits in her teeth,” was Hugh’s comment, when he heard of it,

while Mr. and Mrs. Leach mourned over their wayward daughter, whose

loving letters, however, and substantial gifts made some amends for her

protracted absence.

She had gone with Mrs. Gardner as a companion, but grew so rapidly into

favor that the lady began at last to call her daughter, and when she

found that her middle name was Frances, to address her as Fanny, the

name of the little girl she had lost, and to register her as Miss

Gardner. To this Mildred at first objected as something not quite

honorable, but when she saw how much more attention Fanny Gardner

received than Mildred Leach had done, she gave up the point, and became

so accustomed to her new name that the sound of the old would have

seemed strange to her had she heard it spoken. Of the change, however,

she never told her mother, and seldom said much of Mrs. Gardner, except

that she was kind and rich and handsome, with many suitors for her hand,

and when at last she wrote that the lady had married a Mr. Harwood, and

spoke of her ever after as Mrs. Harwood, the name Gardner passed in time

entirely from the minds of both Mr. and Mrs. Leach, who, being very

human, began to feel a pride in the fact that they had a daughter

abroad, who was growing into a fine lady and could speak both German and

French.

From point to point Mildred traveled with the Harwoods, passing always

as Mrs. Harwood’s adopted daughter, which she was to all intents and

purposes. And in a way she was very happy, although at times there came

over her such a longing for home that she was half resolved to give up

all her grandeur and go back to the life she had so detested. They were

at a villa on the Rhine, not very far from Constance, when she heard of

Charlie’s death, and burying her face in the soft grass of the terrace

she sobbed as if her heart were broken.

“Oh, Charlie,” she moaned, “dead, and I not there to see you. I never

dreamed that you would die; and I meant to do so much for you when you

were older. I wish I had never left you, Charlie, my darling.”

Could Mildred have had her way she would have gone home then, but Mrs.

Harwood would not permit it, and so the years went on until in Egypt she

heard of her father’s death, and that her mother was blind. It was Tom

who wrote her the news, which he did not break very gently, for in a way

he resented his sister’s long absence, and let her know that he did.

“Not that we really need you,” he wrote, “for Bessie sees to the house,

which is fixed up a good deal, thanks to you and mother’s Uncle Silas.

Did you ever hear of him? I scarcely had until he died last year and

left us five thousand dollars, which makes us quite rich. We have some

blinds and a new room with a bay window and a girl to do the work; so,

you see, we are very fine, but mother is always fretting for you, and

more since she was blind, lamenting that she can never see your face

again. Should we know you, I wonder? I guess not, it is so long since

you went away, thirteen years. Why, you are twenty-six! Almost an old

maid, and I suppose an awful swell, with your French and German and

Italian. Bessie can speak French a little. She is eighteen, and the

handsomest girl you ever saw, unless it is Alice Thornton, whose back is

straight as a string. She comes to Thornton Park every summer with

Gerard, and when she isn’t here with Bessie, Bessie is there with her.

Mr. Thornton is in town sometimes, high and mighty as ever, with a face

as black as thunder when he sees Gerard talking French to Bessie, for it

was of him she learned it. I have been away to the Academy several

quarters, and would like to go to college, but shall have to give that

up, now father is dead. Did I tell you I was reading law with Hugh? He

is a big man every way, stands six feet in his slippers, and head and

shoulders above every lawyer in these parts. Why, they sometimes send

for him to go to Albany to try a suit. I used to think he was sweet on

you, but he has not mentioned you for a long time, except when mother

got blind, and then he said, ‘Milly ought to be here.’ But don’t fret;

we get along well enough, and you wouldn’t be happy with us.

“Yours,

“Tom.”

When Mildred read this letter she made up her mind to go home at any

cost, and would have done so, if on her return from Naples she had not

been stricken down with a malarial fever, which kept her an invalid for

months, and when she recovered from it there had come into her life a

new excitement which absorbed every other thought, and led finally to a

result without which this story would never have been written.

CHAPTER IV.

AT THE FARM HOUSE.

It was fifteen years since Milly Leach sat shelling peas on the doorstep

where now two young girls were sitting, one listening to and the other

reading a letter which evidently excited and agitated her greatly. It

was as follows:

“LANGHAM’S, LONDON, MAY —, 18—.

“DEAR ALICE,—You will probably be surprised to hear that I am going to

be married to a Miss Fanny Gardner, whom I first met in Florence. She

is twenty-seven or twenty-eight, and the most beautiful woman I ever

saw, and good as she is beautiful. You are sure to like her. The

ceremony takes place at —— church in London, and after the wedding

breakfast at her mother’s town house we shall go for a short time to

Wales and Ireland and then sail for home.

“I suppose you and Gerard are at the Park, or will be soon, and I want

you to see that everything is in order. We shall occupy the suite of

rooms on the south side of the house instead of the east, and I’d like

to have them refurnished throughout, and will leave everything to your

good taste, only suggesting that although Miss Gardner’s hair is

rather a peculiar color,—golden brown, some might call it,—she is not

a blonde; neither is she a brunette; and such tints as soft French

grays and pinks will suit her better than blue. The wedding day is

fixed for June —. Shall telegraph as soon as we reach New York, and

possibly write you before.

“Your loving father,

“GILES THORNTON.”

“Oh—h,” and the girl who was listening drew a long breath. “Oh—h! Going

to be married,—to Fanny Gardner. That’s a pretty name. She’s English, I

suppose. I guess you’ll like her;” and Bessie put her hand, half

pityingly, half caressingly upon the arm of her friend, down whose

cheeks two great tears were rolling.

“Yes,” Alice replied; “but it is so sudden, and I’m thinking of mother.

I wonder what Gerard will say. There he is now. Oh, Gerard,” she called,

as a young man came through the gate and seating himself upon a lower

step took Bessie’s hand in his and held it while the bright blush on her

lovely face told what he was to her.

“What’s the matter, Allie?” he said to his sister. “You look solemn as a

graveyard.”

“Papa is going to be married,” Alice replied, with a sob.

“Wha—at!” and Gerard started to his feet. “Father married! Why, he is

nearly fifty years old. Let me see,”—and taking the letter from Alice he

read it aloud, commenting as he read. “Twenty-seven or twenty-eight; not

much older than I am, for I am twenty-five; quite too young for me to

call her mother. ‘The most beautiful woman I ever saw.’ He must be hard

hit. ‘Ceremony takes place——’ Why, girls, it’s to-day! It’s past. I

congratulate you, Allie, on a stepmother, and here’s to her health from

her son;” and stooping over Bessie he kissed her before she could

remonstrate.

Just then Hugh McGregor came up the walk, and taking off his straw hat

wiped the perspiration from his face, while he stood for a moment

surveying the group before him with a quizzical smile upon his lips.

Fifteen years had changed Hugh from the tall, awkward boy of seventeen

into the taller, less awkward man of thirty-two, who, having mingled a

good deal with the world, had acquired much of the ease and polish which

such mingling brings. Handsome he could not be called; there was too

much of the rugged Scotch in him for that, but he had something better

than beauty in his frank, honest face and kindly blue eyes, which

bespoke the man who could be trusted to the death and never betray the

trust. He, too, had received a letter from Mr. Thornton, whose business

in Rocky Point he had in charge, and after reading it had gone to

Thornton Park with the news. Finding both Alice and Gerard absent, he

had followed on to the farm house where he was sure they were.

“I see you know it,” he said, pointing to the letter in Gerard’s hand.

“I have heard from your father and came to tell you. Did you suspect

this at all?”

“No,” Alice replied; “he has never written a word of any Miss Gardner. I

wonder who she is.”

“I don’t know,” Hugh answered slowly, while there swept over him the

same sensation he had experienced when he first saw the name in Mr.

Thornton’s letter.

It did not seem quite new, and he repeated it over and over again but

did not associate it with Mildred although she was often in his mind,

more as a pleasant memory now, perhaps, for the feelings of the man were

not quite what the boy’s had been, and in one sense Milly had dropped

out of his life. When she first went away, and he was in school,

everything was done with a direct reference to making of himself

something of which Milly would be proud when she came back. But Milly

had not come back, and the years had crept on and he was a man honored

among men, and in his busy life had but little leisure for thought

beyond his business. It was seldom now that he looked at the dark brown

curl, or the little pea in the pod, hard as a bullet, and shriveled

almost to nothing. But when he did he always thought of the summer day

years ago and the young girl on the steps and the sound of the brook

gurgling over the stones as it ran under the little bridge. And it all

came back to him now, with news of Mr. Thornton’s bride, though why it

should he could not tell. He only knew that Milly was haunting him that

morning with strange persistency, and his first question to Bessie was,

“When did you hear from your sister?”

“Last night. She is in London, or was,—but wrote she was going on a

journey and then was coming home. I shall believe that when I see her.

Mother has the letter, and will be glad to see you,” was Bessie’s reply,

and Hugh went into the pleasant, sunny room where the blind woman was

sitting, with her hands folded on her lap and a listening expression on

her face.

“Oh, Hugh,” she exclaimed, “I am glad you have come. I want to talk to

you.”

Straightening her widow’s cap, which was a little awry, as deftly as a

woman could have done, he sat down beside her, while she continued, as

she drew a letter from her bosom, where she always kept Milly’s last. “I

heard from Milly last night. I am afraid she is not happy, but she is

coming home by and by. She says so. Read it, please.”

Taking the letter he began to read:

“LONDON, May —, 18—.

“DARLING MOTHER:—I am in London, but shall not stay long, for I am going

on a journey, and it may be weeks, if not months, before I can write you

again. But don’t worry. If anything happens to me you will know it. I am

quite well and—oh, mother, I never loved you as I do now or needed your

prayers so much. Pray for me. I can’t pray for myself, but I’d give half

my life to put my arms around your neck and look into your dear, blind

eyes, which, if they could see, would not know me, I am so changed. My

hair fell out when I was so sick in Naples, and is not the same color it

used to be. Everything is different. Oh, if I could see you, and I shall

in the fall, if I live.

“Give my love to Tom and Bessie, and tell Hugh,——No, don’t tell him

anything. God bless you, darling mother. Good-bye,

“From

“MILDRED F. LEACH.”

Hugh’s face was a study as he read this letter, which sounded like a cry

for help from an aching heart. Was Milly unhappy, and if so, why? he

asked himself as he still held the letter with his eyes fixed upon the

words “Tell Hugh——No, don’t tell him anything.” Did they mean that in

her trouble she had for a moment turned to him, he wondered, but quickly

put that thought aside. She had been too long silent to think of him

now; and he was content that it should be so. His liking for her had

been but a boy’s fancy for a little girl, he reasoned, and yet, as he

held the letter in his hand, it seemed to bring Milly very near to him,

and he saw her plainly as she looked when entering Thornton Park that

morning so long ago. “I felt I was losing her then. I am sure of it

now,” he was thinking, when Mrs. Leach asked what he thought of Milly’s

letter, and where he supposed she was going, and what ailed her.

Hugh was Mrs. Leach’s confidant and oracle, whom she consulted on all

occasions, and Tom himself was no kinder or tenderer in his manner to

her than this big-hearted Scotchman, who soothed and comforted her now

just as he always did, and then, without returning to the young people

by the door he went out through the long window of Mrs. Leach’s room and

off across the fields to the woods on the mountain side, where he sat

down upon a rocky ledge to rest, wondering why the day was so

oppressive, and why the words “Tell Hugh” should affect him so

strangely, and why Mildred seemed so near to him that once he put up his

hand with a feeling that he should touch her little hard, brown hand,

browned and hardened with the work she hated so much. It was not often

that he indulged in sentiment of this kind, but the spell was on him,

and he sat bound by it until the whistle from the large shop had called

the workmen from their dinners. Then he arose and went down the mountain

road to his office, saying to himself: “I wonder where she is to-day,

when I am so impressed with a sense of her nearness that I believe she

is thinking of me,” and with this comforting assurance, Hugh was very

patient and kind to the old woman whose will he had changed a dozen

times, and who came to have it changed again, without a thought of

offering him any remuneration for his trouble.

Meantime the group by the door had been joined by Tom, who had grown

into just the kind of man Whittier’s barefoot boy would have grown into

if he had grown at all,—a frank, sunny-faced young man, whom every old

woman and young girl liked, and whom one young girl loved with all the

intensity of her nature, caring nothing that he was poor and one whom

her proud father would scorn as a son-in-law. They were not exactly

engaged,—for Alice said her father must be consulted first, and they

were waiting for him, while Gerard, who could wait for nothing where

Bessie was concerned, was drinking his fill of love in her blue eyes,

with no thought or care as to whether his father would oppose him or

not.

“Hello, you are all here,” Tom said, as he came round the corner and

laid his hand on Allie’s shoulder; then, glancing at her face, he

continued: “Why, you’ve been crying. What’s the matter, Allie?”

“Oh, Tom, papa is married to-day,—to Fanny Gardner, an English girl with

golden-brown hair and only twenty-eight years old and very handsome, he

says. I know I shall hate her,” Alice sobbed, while Tom burst into a

merry laugh.

“Your father married to a girl with golden-brown hair, which should be

gray to match his,—that is a shame, by Jove. But, I say, Allie, I’m glad

of it, for with a young wife at Thornton Park, you will be _de trop_,

don’t you see?” And just as Gerard had done to Bessie so Tom did to

Alice—kissed her pale face, with his best wishes to the bride, who was

discussed pretty freely, from her name to the furniture of her room,

which was to harmonize with the complexion of one who was neither a

blond nor a brunette, but very beautiful.

For the next few weeks there was a great deal of bustle and excitement

at Thornton Park, where Bessie went every day to talk over and assist in

the arrangement of the bridal rooms, which were just completed when

there came a telegram from New York saying that the newly married pair

had arrived and would be home the following day.

CHAPTER V.

THE BRIDE.

A Cunard steamer had landed its living freight at the wharf, where there

was the usual scramble and confusion, as trunks and boxes were opened

and angry, excited women confronted with their spoils by relentless

custom house officers, bent upon doing their duty, unless stopped by the

means so frequently employed upon such occasions. Outside the long

building stood an open carriage in which a lady sat, very simply but

elegantly attired, with money, and Paris, and Worth showing in every

article of her dress, from her round hat to her dainty boots, which

could not be called small, for the feet they covered harmonized with the

lady herself, who was tall and well proportioned, with a splendidly

developed figure, on which anything looked well. There was a brilliant

color in her cheeks, and her brown eyes were large and bright and

beautiful, but very sad as they looked upon the scenes around her

without seeming to see anything. Nor did their expression change when

she was joined by an elderly man, who, taking his seat beside her, said

first to the driver:

“To the Windsor,” and then to her, “I was longer than I thought I should

be; those rascally officers gave me a world of trouble, but we shall

soon be at the hotel now. Are you very tired?”

The question was asked very tenderly, for Giles Thornton was greatly in

love with his bride of a few weeks. He had first met her in Florence,

where she was recovering from the long illness which had lasted for

months and made her weak as a child and almost as helpless. During her

sickness her hair had fallen out, and owing to some unusual freak of

nature it had come in much lighter than it was before and not so curly,

although it still lay in wavy masses upon her head, and here and there

coiled itself into rings around her forehead. The Harwoods were staying

at the same hotel with Mr. Thornton, and it was in the Boboli Gardens

that he first met her as she was being wheeled in an invalid chair by

her attendant.

“Will he know me?” was her first thought when he was presented to her.

But there was no fear of that, for Mildred Leach had passed as wholly

out of his mind as if he had never seen her, and if she had not there

was no danger of his recognizing the girl who had been his daughter’s

companion in this lovely woman whose voice and manner and appearance

were indicative of the refinement and cultivation to which for years she

had been accustomed. To him she was Miss Gardner, an English girl, and

during the half hour he walked by her chair in the gardens, he felt his

heart throb as it had never throbbed since he buried his wife. He had

loved her devotedly and had never thought to fill her place until now

when love did its work at first sight, and when two weeks later the

Harwoods left Florence for Venice and Switzerland, he was with them, to

all intents and purposes Mildred’s lover, although he had not openly

announced himself as such.

To Mrs. Harwood Mildred had said, “Don’t tell him who I am. I prefer to

do that when the time comes. I am going to punish him for calling my

father a peasant when you inquired about him. I heard him. I have not

forgotten.”

And so Mr. Thornton went blindly to his fate, which came one day in

Ouchy in the grounds of the Beau-Rivage, where Mildred was sitting

alone, with her eyes fixed upon the lake and the mountains beyond, and

her thoughts back in the old farm house, with her mother and Bessie and

Tom and Hugh, of whom she had not heard a word for months.

“He has forgotten me,” she said to herself, “and why shouldn’t he? I was

never much to him, and yet”——

She did not get any farther, for there was a footstep near; some one was

coming, and in a moment Mr. Thornton said to her, “Alone, Miss Gardner,

and dreaming? May I dispel the dream and sit beside you a moment?”

Mildred knew then what was before her, as well as she did half an hour

later, during which time Giles Thornton had laid himself and his fortune

at her feet, and what was harder than all to meet, had made her believe

that he loved her. She knew that he admired her, but she had not counted

upon his love, which moved her a little, for Mr. Thornton was not a man

to whom one could listen quietly when he was in earnest and resolved to

carry his point, and for an instant Mildred wavered. It was something to

be Mrs. Giles Thornton, of Thornton Park, and ought to satisfy her

ambition. With all her beauty and social advantages, she as yet had

received no eligible offer. It was known that she had no money, and only

an Italian count and the youngest son of an English earl had asked her

hand in marriage. But both were poor, and one almost an imbecile, from

whom she shrank in disgust. Mr. Thornton was different; he was a

gentleman of wealth and position, and as his wife she would for a part

of the year live near her family. But with the thought of them there

came the memory of an overgrown, awkward boy, whose feet and hands were

so big that he never knew what to do with them, but whose heart was so

much bigger than his feet and hands, that it bore down the scale and Mr.

Thornton’s chance was lost for the time being.

“Hugh may never be anything to me,” she thought, “but I must see him

before I give myself to any one.”

Then turning to Mr. Thornton, she said, “I thank you for your offer,

which I believe is sincere, and that makes it harder for me to tell you

what I must. Do you remember a girl, Mildred Leach, who was your

daughter’s little friend, as she called herself, for she was as proud as

you, and would not be a maid?”

“Ye-es,” Mr. Thornton stammered, as he looked wistfully into the

beautiful face confronting him so steadily. “I had forgotten her

entirely, but I remember now. She left us to go with an English lady, a

Mrs. Gardner. Why, that is Mrs. Harwood,—and,—and,—oh, you are not she!”

“Yes, I am,” was Mildred’s reply, and then very rapidly she told her

story, not omitting her having overheard him liken her parents to

peasants when speaking of them to Mrs. Gardner. “I determined then,” she

said, “that if possible I would one day humble your pride, but if I have

done so, it has not given me the satisfaction I thought it would, and I

am sorry to cause you pain, for I believe you were in earnest when you

asked me to be your wife, which I can never be.”

“No,” he answered slowly, like one who had received a blow from which he

could not at once recover. “No, you can never be my wife; Mildred Leach;

it does not seem possible.”

Then he arose and walked rapidly away, and when the evening boat left

Ouchy for Geneva he was on it, going he cared but little where, if by

going he could forget the past as connected with Mildred Leach.

“I cannot marry her family,” he said many times during the next few

months, when he was wandering everywhere and vainly trying to forget

her, for always before him was the face he had never admired so much as

when he last saw it, flushed and pale by turns, with a wondrous light in

the brown eyes where tears were gathering. “If it were not for her

family, or if I could separate her from them, I would _not_ give her

up,” he had often thought when in the following May he met her again at

the Grand Hotel in Paris, where the Harwoods were stopping.

He could not tell what it was which impressed him with the idea that she

had changed her mind, as she came forward to meet him, saying she was

glad to see him, and adding that Mr. and Mrs. Harwood had gone to the

opera. She seemed very quiet and absent minded at first, and then

rousing herself, said to him abruptly, “You did not stop long enough in

Ouchy for me to inquire after my family. You must have seen them often

since I left home.”

“Yes,—no,” he answered in some embarrassment; “I have of course been to

Thornton Park, but I do not remember much about them. I believe your

father rents, or did rent, some land of me, but am not sure, as my agent

attends to all that.”

“My father is dead,” Mildred answered so sharply as to make him jump and

color painfully, as if guilty of a misdemeanor in not knowing that her

father was dead.

“I beg your pardon. I am very sorry. I,—yes,—am very sorry,” he began;

but she cut him short by saying, “Do you know Hugh McGregor?”

“Oh, yes. I know him well,” and Mr. Thornton brightened perceptibly. “He

is my lawyer, and attends to all my business in Rocky Point; a fine

fellow,—a very fine fellow. Do you know him?”

“Yes,” Mildred replied, while her breath came heavily, “I know him, and

I hear he is to marry my sister Bessie.”

“Oh, indeed,” and as if memory had suddenly come back to him, Mr.

Thornton seemed immensely relieved. “I remember now,—Bessie Leach;

that’s the girl I have sometimes seen with Alice. Gerard taught her

French,—a very pretty girl. And Mr. McGregor is engaged to her? I am

very glad. Any girl might be proud to marry him.”

Mildred made no reply to this, and Mr. Thornton never guessed the dreary

emptiness of her soul as she sat with her hands clasped tightly

together, thinking of the man whom any girl would be proud to marry. A

few months before she would have said that he was nothing more to her

than the friend of her childhood, but she had recently learned her

mistake, and that the thought of seeing him again was one of the

pleasantest anticipations of her home going. There had come to the hotel

a Mr. and Mrs. Hayford from America, who sometimes spent their summers

at Rocky Point, where Mrs. Hayford was once a teacher. As Mildred had

been her pupil, she remembered her at once, after hearing the name, and

would have introduced herself but for a conversation accidentally

overheard between Mrs. Hayford and a friend who had also been at Rocky

Point, and to whom she was retailing the news, first of New York and

then of Rocky Point, where she had spent a few days in April prior to

sailing.

“Do you remember that Hercules of a lawyer, Hugh McGregor, whom you

admired so much?” was asked. “They say he is engaged to Bessie Leach, a

girl much younger than himself, but very pretty,—beautiful, in fact,

and——

Mildred heard no more, but hurried away, with an ache in her heart that

she could not quite define. Tom had intimated that Gerard was interested

in Bessie, and now Hugh was engaged to her. Well, it was all right, she

said, and would not admit to herself how hard the blow had struck her

and how she smarted under it. And it was just when the smart was at its

keenest that Mr. Thornton came again across her path, more in love, if

possible, than ever, and more intent upon making her his wife. He had

fought a desperate battle with his pride and had conquered it, and

within twenty-four hours after meeting her in Paris, she had promised to

marry him, and when her pledge was given she was conscious of a feeling

of quiet and content which she had scarcely hoped for. In his character

as lover Mr. Thornton did not seem at all like the man she had feared in

her childhood, nor if he felt it did he gave the slightest sign that he

was stooping from his high position. She had been very frank with him

and had made no pretension of love. “I will be true to you,” she said,

“and try to please you in everything. I am tired of the aimless life I

have led so many years, and I think Mrs. Harwood is a little tired of me

too. She says I ought to have married long ago, but I could not marry a

fool even if he had a title. I shall be so glad to go home to my

friends, although I am so changed they will never know me.”

Then she added laughingly: “Wouldn’t it be great fun not to write them

who I am and see if they will recognize me?”

She did not really mean what she said, or guess that it harmonized

perfectly with a plan which Mr. Thornton had in mind, and was resolved

to carry out, if possible. If he could have had his wish he would not

have gone to Rocky Point at all, but his children were there and

Mildred’s heart was set upon it, and he must meet the difficulty in some

way. He could marry Mildred, but not her family, and he shrank from the

intimacy which must necessarily exist between the Park and the farm

house when it was known who his wife was. In his estimation the Leaches

were nobodies, and he could not have them running in and out of his

house and treating him with the familiarity of a son and brother, as he

was sure they would do if he did not stop it. If Mildred would consent

to remain incognito while at the Park the annoyance would be prevented,

and this consent he tried to gain by many specious arguments. His real

reason, he knew, must be kept from sight, and so he asked it as a

personal favor, saying it would please him very much and be a kind of

excitement for her.

“Possibly you will be recognized,” he said; “and if so, all right; if

not, we will tell them just before we go to New York in the autumn and

enjoy their surprise.”

He did not add that, once away from Rocky Point, it would probably be

long before he took her there again. He only talked of the plan as a

joke, which Mildred did not quite see. She was willing to keep the

secret until she met them, but to keep it longer was absurd and foolish,

she said, and involved a deception, which she abhorred.

“I accepted you partly that I might be near them and see them every

day,” she said, “and am longing to throw my arms around mother’s neck

and tell her I have come back.”

“And so you shall in time, but humor my whim for once. You will not be

sorry,” Mr. Thornton pleaded, and Mildred consented at last, and felt in

a measure repaid when she saw how happy it made Mr. Thornton, whose real

motive she did not guess.

This was the last of April, and six weeks later Mildred was Mrs. Giles

Thornton, traveling through Scotland and Wales and trying to believe

herself happy in her husband’s love and the costly gifts he lavished

upon her. She had been courted and admired as Fanny Gardner, but the

deference paid her now and her independence were very sweet to her, and

if she could have forgotten Hugh and been permitted to make herself

known to her family, she would have been content at least on the morning

when she left New York and started for Thornton Park.

CHAPTER VI.

MRS. GILES THORNTON.

She was very lovely in all the fullness of her matured beauty as she

stepped from the train at Rocky Point, and with her large bright eyes

swept the crowd of curious people gathered to see her, not one of whom

she recognized. A handsome open carriage from Brewster’s, sent up a few

days before for this occasion, was waiting for them, and with a half bow

to those who ventured to salute her husband, Mildred seated herself in

it and was driven through the well-remembered street, her heart beating

so loudly that she could hear it distinctly as she drew near the top of

the hill from which she knew she would see her old home and possibly her

mother. And when the hill top was reached and she saw the house with its

doors opened wide, and from the upper window of what had been hers and

Bessie’s room a muslin curtain blowing in and out, she grew so white

that her husband laid his hand on hers, and said, “Don’t take it so

hard, darling. You are doing it to please me.”

“Yes, but it seems as if I must stop here,” she answered faintly as she

leaned forward to look at the house around which there was no sign of

life, or stir, except the moving of the curtain and the gambols of two

kittens playing in the doorway where Mildred half expected to meet the

glance of Bessie’s blue eyes and see the gleam of Charlie’s golden hair.

But Charlie was lying on the mountain side, and Bessie, although out of

sight, was watching the carriage and the beautiful stranger in whom she

saw no trace of her sister.

“I’ve seen her,” Bessie said, as she went into her mother’s room, “and

she is very lovely, with such a bright color on her cheeks. And so young

to be Mr. Thornton’s wife! I wonder if she loves him. I couldn’t.”

“No. I suppose you prefer Gerard,” Mrs. Leach replied, while Bessie

answered blushingly, “Of course I do. Poor Gerard! How angry his father

will be when he knows about Tom and me, too. Gerard was going to tell

him at once, but I persuaded him to wait until the honeymoon was over.

Just two months I’ll give him, and during that time I mean to cultivate

Mrs. Thornton and get her on my side. I hope she is not proud like him.

She did not look so.”

Bessie had been at the Park that morning helping Alice give the last

touches to the rooms intended for the bride. These had been finished in

the tints which Mr. Thornton had prescribed. Everything was new, from

the carpets on the floors to the lace-canopied bedstead of brass. There

were flowers everywhere in great profusion, roses mostly of every

variety, and in a glass on a bracket in a corner, Bessie had put a bunch

of June pinks from her own garden, explaining to Alice that her mother

had sent them to the bride, as they were her favorite flowers and would

make the rooms so sweet. Everything was finished at last, and after

Bessie was gone Alice had nothing to do but to wait for the coming of

the carriage which she soon saw entering the Park. Mildred’s face was

very white and her voice trembled as she saw Alice in the distance and

said, “I can’t bear it. I came near shrieking to the old home that I was

Mildred. I must tell Alice. I cannot be so hypocritical. There is no

reason for it.”

“No, no,” and Mr. Thornton spoke a little sternly. “It is too late now,

and you have promised. I wish it and have my reason. Ah, here we are,

and there are Alice and Gerard.”

They had stopped under the great archway at the side entrance where

Gerard and Alice were waiting for them and scanning the bride curiously

as she alighted and their father presented her to them,—not as their

mother, but as “Mrs. Thornton, my wife.”

All Mildred’s color had come back and her face was glowing with

excitement as she took Alice’s hand; then unable to control herself, she

threw her arms around the neck of the astonished girl and burst into a

flood of tears, while Mr. Thornton looked on in dismay, dreading what

might follow. He was himself beginning to think it a very foolish and

unnatural thing to try to keep his wife’s identity from her people, but

he was not a man to give up easily, and once in a dilemma of his own

making he would stay in it at any cost.

“She is very tired and must go to her room,” he said to his daughter,

who was crying herself, and holding Mildred’s hands in her own.

Had Mildred tried she could have done nothing better for her cause than

she had done. Alice had been very doubtful as to whether she should like

her new mother or not, but something in the eyes which looked so

appealingly into hers, and in the tears she felt upon her cheek, and the

clasp of the arms around the neck, disarmed all prejudice and made of

her a friend at once. As for Gerard, he had never meant to be anything

but friendly, and when the scene between the two ladies was over he came

forward with the slow, quiet manner natural to him and said, “Now it is

my turn to welcome Mrs. Thornton, who does not look as if she could have

for a son a great six-footer like me. But I’ll call you mother, if you

say so.”

“No, don’t,” Mildred answered, flashing on him a smile which made his

heart beat rapidly and brought a thought of Bessie, who sometimes smiled

like that.

Leading the way to Mildred’s rooms, Alice said, as she threw open the

door, “I hope you will like them.”

“Like them! They are perfect,” was Mildred’s answer, as she walked

through the apartments, feeling that it must be a dream from which she

would bye-and-bye awaken. “And so many roses,” she said, stopping here

and there over a bowl or cluster of them until, guided by the perfume,

she came upon the pinks her mother had sent to her.

Taking up the glass she held it for an instant while Alice said, “June

pinks, perhaps you do not have them in England. They are old-fashioned

flowers, but very sweet. A friend of mine, Bessie Leach, brought them

for you from her mother, who is blind.”

There was a low cry and a crash as the finger-glass fell to the floor

and Mildred sank into the nearest chair, white as ashes, with a look in

her eyes which startled and frightened Alice.

“It is the heat and fatigue of the voyage. I was very sea-sick,” Mildred

said, trying to smile and recover herself, while Alice went for a towel

to wipe up the water trickling over the carpet, and wondering if Mrs.

Thornton was given to faintings and hysterics like this.

“She don’t look like it,” she thought, as she picked up and carried out

the bits of glass and the pinks which had done the mischief.

When lunch was served Mildred was too ill to go down. A severe headache

had come on, and for a time Alice sat by her couch bathing her forehead

and brushing her hair, which was more a mottled than golden brown, for

it was darker in some places than others, especially when seen in

certain lights and shadows. But this only added to its beauty, and Alice

ran her fingers through the shining mass, admiring the color and the

texture and admiring the woman generally and answering the many

questions which were asked her. Hungry at heart to hear something of her

family, Mildred said to her, “Tell me of your friends. Have you any

here? Girl friends, I mean.”

“Only one with whom I am intimate,” Alice replied, and then as girls

will she went off into rhapsodies over Bessie Leach, and in a burst of

confidence concluded by saying, “You must not tell papa, for he is not

to know it yet, but Bessie is to be my sister. She is to marry Gerard.”

“Marry Gerard!” and Mildred raised herself upon her elbow and shedding

her heavy hair back from her face stared at Alice with an expression in

her eyes which the girl could not understand, and which made her wonder

if her stepmother, too, were as proud as her father and would resent

Gerard’s choice.

This called forth another eulogy upon Bessie’s beauty and sweetness,

with many injunctions that Mildred should not repeat to her husband what

had been told her.

“Nobody knows it for certain but Mr. McGregor and ourselves,” she added,

and then, turning her face away so that it could not be seen, Mildred

said, “Mr. McGregor? That is your father’s attorney. Is he a married

man?”

The question was a singular one, but Alice was not quick to suspect, and

answered laughingly, “Hugh McGregor married! Why, I don’t suppose he has

ever looked twice at any girl. He is a confirmed old bachelor, but very

nice. Father thinks the world of him.”

“Yes, oh, yes,” Mildred moaned, as she clasped her hands over her

forehead where the pain was so intense.

“You are worse. You are white as a sheet; let me call papa,” Alice

cried, alarmed at the look of anguish in the dark eyes and the gray

pallor of the face which seemed to have grown pinched and thin in a

moment.

But her husband was the last person whom Mildred wished to see then, and

detaining Alice she said, “Don’t call him, please. It will soon pass

off, and don’t think me ungrateful, either, but I’d rather be alone for

a while. I may sleep and that will do me good.”

And so, after darkening the room, Alice went out and left the wretched

woman alone in her grief and pain.

“Mrs. Hayford was mistaken. Hugh is not engaged to Bessie, and I am Mrs.

Giles Thornton,” she said, a little bitterly. “My ambition ought to be

satisfied. I have made my own bed and must lie in it, and go on lying,

too!”

She smiled faintly at her own joke and then continued: “If I had only

resisted and come back Mildred Leach! But it is now too late, and Hugh

will always despise me for the deception. Oh, Hugh!”

There was a spasmodic wringing of the hands, and then, as if ashamed of

herself Mildred said, “I must not, will not be faithless to my husband,

who loves me, I know, and I will be worthy of his love and make him

happy, so help me Heaven!”

The vow was made and Mildred would keep it to the death. The might have

been, which has broken so many hearts when the knowledge came too late,

was put away and buried deep down in the inmost recesses of her soul,

and when two hours later she awoke from a refreshing sleep and found her

husband sitting by her, she put her hand in his just as she had never

put it before, and did not shrink from him when he stooped down to

caress her.

CHAPTER VII.

CALLS AT THE PARK.

It was early the next morning when Mildred arose and stepping out upon

the balcony looked toward the town which had changed so much since she

was there last. Across the noisy little river which went dashing along

in its rocky bed at the foot of the mountain, one or two tall stacks of

manufactories were belching forth their smoke, while new churches and

hotels and villas dotted what had been pasture lands when she went away.

Standing upon tiptoe she could see the chimney top of her old home, and

just over it, up the mountain road, the evergreens in the cemetery where

her father and Charlie were lying.

“I’ll go there some day alone and find their graves,” she was thinking

when her husband joined her.

“I am sure you are better, you look so fresh and bright; but it is time

you were getting ready for breakfast,” he said, as he gave her a little

caress.

And Mildred was very bright when she at last went with her husband to

the breakfast-room, a half-opened rose which he had gathered for her at

her throat, and another at her belt. It was her first appearance at her

own table, and Mr. Thornton led her proudly to her seat behind the

coffee urn and looked at her admiringly while she assumed the rôle of

mistress as naturally as if she had all her life been accustomed to her

present surroundings. Alice had kissed her effusively as she came in,

hoping she was quite well and thinking her more beautiful than on the

previous day. Gerard, who was less demonstrative but more observant than

his sister, greeted her cordially and then sat watching her, curious and

puzzled by something in her face or manner or voice which seemed

familiar to him.

“She is dazzlingly lovely. I wonder how Bessie will look beside her,” he

thought, as after breakfast he started for the farm house as was his

daily custom.

It was very warm that morning and Mildred had seated herself with a book

upon the shaded balcony opening from her room, when word was brought her

that her husband wished to see her on the front piazza.

“There’s a gentleman with him,—Mr. McGregor,” the servant said, and

Mildred felt as if her heart had suddenly risen in her throat, making

her choke and gasp for breath.

She knew he would come some time, but had not expected him so soon, and

she shook like a leaf as she stood a moment before her mirror.

“He will never know me,” she said, as side by side with the reflection

of herself she saw the girl of fifteen years ago; sallow and thin and

slight, with eyes too big for her face, and hair too heavy for her head;

the girl with the faded calico dress and high-necked apron, who seemed

to walk beside her as she descended the broad staircase and went through

the hall and out upon the piazza, where she heard her husband’s voice,

and Hugh’s.