“I came on business, and intended calling later, but I shall be glad to

see Mrs. Thornton,” she heard him say, and then the smothered, choking

sensation left her, and, with a little unconscious nod to the other

Mildred at her side, she whispered:

“I shall pull through.”

Hugh was standing half-way down the piazza, leaning against a column,

with his straw hat in his hand, fanning himself, just as she had seen

him do a hundred times when they were boy and girl together, and he was

looking at the shadowy Mildred at her side just as he now looked at her,

the tall, elegant, perfectly self-possessed woman, coming slowly towards

him, every movement graceful, and every action that of one sure pf

herself, and accustomed to the admiration she saw in his eyes,—the same

kind, honest blue eyes which she remembered so well, but which had in

them no sign of recognition as he came forward to meet her, and offering

her his hand, welcomed her to Rocky Point, “and America,” he added,

while a blood-red stain crept up from her neck to her ear as she felt

the deception she was allowing. Hugh was not as polished as Mr.

Thornton, nor were his clothes as faultless and fashionable, but he was

every whit a gentleman, and looked it, too, as he stood for a moment

talking to Mildred in the voice she knew so well and which had grown

richer and deeper with the lapse of time, and moved her strangely as she

listened to it again.

“I think I should have known him anywhere,” she thought, as she answered

his remarks, her own voice, in which the English accent was predominant,

steady and firm, but having in it occasionally a tone which made Hugh

start a little, it was so like something he had heard before, but could

not define.

There was nothing in this English woman, as he believed her to be, which

could remind him of Mildred Leach, who was never once in his mind during

the few minutes he was talking with her. And still she puzzled him, and

all that morning, after his return to his office, her lovely face and

especially her eyes haunted him and looked at him from every paper and

book he touched, and he heard the tone, which had struck him as

familiar, calling to him everywhere, and bringing at last a thought of

Mildred Leach and the July morning when she had shelled her peas by the

door, and given him a pod as a souvenir. Where was she now, he wondered,

and would she come back in the autumn? Probably not. She had held out

similar promises before only to break them. She was weaned entirely from

all her old associations, and it did not matter, he said to himself,

wondering, as he often did, why he had so long kept in his mind the

little wayward girl, who had never done anything but tease and worry

him, and tell him of the great things she meant to do.

“She has been a long time doing it, unless she calls a life of

dependence a great thing,” he said, and then his thoughts drifted to

Thornton Park and the bride, who was troubled with no more calls that

day, and so had time to rest and go about her handsome house and

grounds, much handsomer than when she first rang the front door bell and

was told to go to the side entrance by the man who was her husband now,

and prouder of her than of all his other surroundings.

The next day there were many visitors at the Park, mostly strangers to

Mildred, although a few of them had been known to her in childhood, but

like Hugh, they saw no resemblance in her to the “oldest Leach girl,” as

she was called by the neighbors who remembered her. Of the bride there

was but one verdict, “The most elegant and agreeable woman that has ever

been in Rocky Point,” was said of her by all, for Mildred, while bearing

herself like a princess, was so gracious and friendly that she took

every heart by storm.

It was late in the day when Bessie started to make her call with Tom.

Dinner was over and Mildred, who, with her husband and Gerard and Alice,

was sitting upon the piazza, saw them as they turned an angle in the

shrubbery and came up the avenue.

“Oh, there’s Bessie,” Allie cried, springing to her feet, while

Mildred’s heart began to beat wildly as she glanced at Mr. Thornton, on

whose brow there was a dark frown, the first she had seen since she was

his wife, and this quieted her at once, for she readily guessed its

cause. She knew he had not married her family, and had begun to suspect

that he meant to keep her from them as much as possible.

“But he cannot do it,” she thought, and turning to him she said in a low

tone, “They are mine; my own flesh and blood, and for my sake treat them

politely. It is the first favor I have asked of you.”

There was something in her eyes which made him think she might be

dangerous if roused, and for aught he knew she might bring the whole

family there to live, or leave him for them, and swallowing his pride,

he went forward to meet his visitors with so much cordiality that Tom,

who had never received the slightest civility from the great man,

thought, to himself, “By Jove, she’s made him over.”

“My wife, Mrs. Thornton; Miss Leach and Mr. Leach,” Mr. Thornton said,

and Mildred’s hand, cold and nerveless, was taken by a hand as white and

soft as her own, while Bessie’s blue eyes looked curiously at her, and

Bessie was saying the commonplace things which strangers say to each

other.

“How lovely she is,” Mildred thought, hardly able to restrain herself

from folding the sunny, bright-faced girl in her arms and sobbing and

crying over her.

But Tom was speaking to her now, and she was conscious of a feeling of

pride as she looked at the tall, handsome, manly fellow, and knew he was

her brother. Tom was like his mother, and Bessie like her father, while

Mildred was like neither, and one could scarcely have seen any

resemblance between them as they sat talking together until the moon

came up over the hill and it was time to go. Bessie had devoted herself

to Mildred, who fascinated her greatly, and who had adroitly led her to

talk of herself and her home and her mother. Mildred spoke of the pinks,

her voice trembling as she sent her thanks and love to the blind woman

whom she was soon coming to see.

“Oh, I’m so glad,” Bessie exclaimed, in her impulsive way, “and mother

will be glad too. She sent the pinks because they are her favorite

flowers and she says they remind her of Milly, who used to love them so

much; that’s my sister, who has been abroad many years. I scarcely

remember her at all.”

“Oh,” came like a moan from Mildred, who felt as if a blow had struck

her heart, it throbbed so painfully at the mention of her old name by

the sister who did not know her, and for an instant she was tempted to

scream out the truth and bring the foolish farce to an end.

Then she felt her husband’s hand on her arm and the power of his will

overmastering her, and keeping her quiet. But she was glad when the

interview was over and she was free to go by herself and sob out her

anguish and shame and regret, that she had ever lent herself to this

deception. Of the two, Bessie and Tom, she had felt more drawn toward

the latter, of whom any sister might be proud, and when bidding him

good-night she had held his hand with a pressure which surprised him,

while her lips quivered and her eyes had in them a wistful look, as if

she were longing to say, “Oh, Tom; my brother.” And Tom had felt the

magnetism of her eyes and manner, and he said to Alice, who, with

Gerard, walked with them to the Park gate, “I say, Allie, your

stepmother is a stunner, and no mistake, and I do believe she took a

fancy to me. Why, I actually thought she squeezed my hand a little, and

she looked as if she’d like to kiss me. It wouldn’t hurt me much to kiss

her.”

“Oh, Tom; and right before Allie,” Bessie said laughingly, and Tom

replied, “Can’t a fellow fall in love with his stepmother-in-law, if he

wants to?” and the arm he had thrown around Alice tightened its hold

upon her.

Here they all laughed together and went on freely discussing the woman,

who, on her knees in her room was praying to be forgiven for the lie she

was living, and for strength to meet her mother, as that would be the

hardest ordeal of all. Once she resolved to defy her husband and

proclaim her identity, but gave that up with the thought that it was not

very long until September, and she would wait at least until she had

seen her mother.

CHAPTER VIII.

MILDRED AND HER MOTHER.

It was several days before Mildred went to the farm house, from which

her husband would have kept her altogether if he could have done so. His

determination to separate her as much as possible from her family had

been constantly increasing since his return, and he had fully made up

his mind to leave Rocky Point by the first of September and advertise

the Park for sale, thus cutting off all chance for intimacy in the

future when it was known who she was. She could do for her family all

she pleased, he thought, but she must not be intimate with them, and on

his way to the house, for he drove her there himself, he reminded her

again of her promise, saying to her very kindly, as he helped her to

alight:

“I can trust you, Milly, and am sorry for you, for I know it will be

hard to meet your mother and keep silence.”

It was harder than Mildred herself had anticipated, for the sight of the

familiar place, the walk, the garden, and the brook, where she had waded

barefoot many a time in summer and drawn her sled in winter with Hugh at

her side, nearly unmanned her, and every nerve was quivering as she rang

the bell in the door of the little, square entry, with the steep, narrow

stairs winding up to the chambers above. It was Bessie who answered the

ring, blushing when she saw her visitor and apologizing for her

appearance. The hired girl was gone for a day or two, leaving her maid

of all work, and as this was baking day she was deep in the mysteries of

pastry and bread, with her long, bib apron on and her hands covered with

flour.

“Never mind me,” Mildred said, as she took in the situation. “It was

thoughtless in me to come in the morning. Please keep to your work while

I talk with your mother. I will call upon you some other time. Oh,

Gerard, you here?” she continued, as through the door opening into the

kitchen she saw the young man seated by the table pitting cherries which

Bessie was to make into pies. “That’s right; help all you can,” she

added with a smile, glad he was there, as it would leave her alone and

freer with her mother, whom she found in the bright, sunny room, built

partly with the money she had sent.

Mrs. Leach was always very neat and clean, but this morning she was

particularly so, in her black cambric dress and spotless white apron,

with the widow’s cap resting on her snowy hair. Her hands were folded

together, and she was leaning back in her chair as if asleep, when

Mildred’s voice roused her, and a moment after Bessie said:

“Here, mother, is Mrs. Thornton, and as I am so busy I will leave her

with you for a little while.”

Suddenly, as if she had been shot, Mrs. Leach started forward, and

rubbing her eyes, in which there was an eager, expectant look, said:

“I must have been dozing, for I dreamed that Milly had come and I heard

her voice in the kitchen. Mis’ Thornton here, did you say? I am very

proud to meet her;” and the hands were outstretched, groping in the

helpless way habitual with the blind. And Mildred took the hands in hers

and drawing a chair to her mother’s side sat down so close to her that

Mrs. Leach felt her hot breath stir her hair and knew she was being

looked at very closely. But how closely she did not dream, for Mildred’s

soul was in her eyes, which scanned the worn face where suffering and

sorrow had left their impress. And what a sad, sweet face it was, so

sweet and sad that Mildred involuntarily took it between her hands and

kissed it passionately; then, unable to control herself, she laid her

head on her mother’s bosom and sobbed like a little child.

“What is it? Oh, Mrs. Thornton, you scare me. What makes you cry so? Who

are you?” Mrs. Leach said, excitedly, for she was frightened by the

strange conduct of her visitor.

“You must excuse me,” Mildred said, lifting up her head. “The sight of

you unnerved me, for my,—my mother is blind?”

She did not at all mean to say what she knew would involve more

deception of a certain kind, but she had said it and could not take it

back, and it was a sufficient explanation of her emotion to Mrs. Leach,

who said:

“Your mother blind! Dear,—dear,—how did it happen, and has she been so

long? Where does she live, and how could she bear to have you leave her?

Dear, dear!”

“Don’t talk of her now, please. I can’t bear it,” Mildred replied, and

thinking to herself, “Homesick, poor thing,” Mrs. Leach, whose ideas of

the world were narrowed to her own immediate surroundings, began to talk

of herself and her family in a desultory kind of way, while Mildred

listened with a feeling of half wonder, half pain.

All her associations while with Mrs. Harwood had been with

highly-cultivated people, and in one sense her mother was new to her and

she realized as she had never done before how different she was from Mr.

Thornton and herself. “But she is my mother, and nothing can change my

love for her,” she thought, as she studied her and the room, which was

cozy and bright, though very plainly furnished as compared with the

elegant boudoir where she had made her own toilet. There was the tall

clock in the corner which had ticked away the hours and days she once

thought so dreary and lonely; the desk between the windows, where her

father used to keep his papers, and his old, worn pocketbook, in which

there was never much money, and on the bed in another corner was a

patchwork quilt, a few blocks of which Mildred had pieced herself,

recognizing them now with a start and a throb of pain as she saw in two

of them bits of the frock she had bought for Charlie with the berries

picked in her husband’s pasture. She had been turned out then as a

trespasser where she was mistress now, and there were diamonds on her

white hands, which had once washed potatoes for dinner, her special

abomination, and her gown had cost more than all her mother’s wardrobe.

And there she sat in a kind of dream, while the other Mildred of years

ago sat close beside her, confusing and bewildering her, so that she

hardly heard half her mother was saying about Tom and Bessie, the

dearest children in the world. But when at last her own name was

mentioned she started and was herself again, and listened as her mother

went on:

“I’ve another girl, Mildred by name, but I call her Milly. She’s been in

Europe for years, and has been everywhere and speaks French and German,

and writes such beautiful letters.”

She was evidently very proud of her absent daughter, and the lady beside

her, whose pallid face she could not see, clasped her hands and held her

breath as she continued:

“I never s’posed she’d stay so long when she went away, or I couldn’t

let her go; but somehow or other she’s staid on and on till she’s been

gone many a year; many a year has Milly been gone, fifteen years come

fall, and now ‘tain’t likely I should know her, if I could see. You

won’t be offended, Mis’ Thornton, if I say that something about you

makes me think of Milly; something in your voice at first, and you laid

your head on my neck and cried just as she used to when things went

wrong and fretted her, which they mostly did, for she wasn’t meant to be

poor, and was always wantin’ to be rich and grand. I guess she is grand

now she’s been in foreign places so much, but she’s comin’ home in the

fall; she wrote me so in her last letter. You’ll call on her, won’t

you?”

“Yes,” Mildred stammered, scarcely able to keep herself from crying out:

“Oh, mother, I _have_ come. I am Milly,” but a thought of her husband

restrained her, and thinking how she would make amends in the future,

when freed from her promise of secrecy, she listened again, while her

mother talked of her father and Charlie, and lastly of Hugh McGregor,

who was a great favorite with the old lady.

“Jest like my own boy,” Mrs. Leach said, “and so kind to Tom. He lent

him money to go to school, and helps him a sight in his law books, and

helps on the farm, too, when he gets time, which is not often, for Hugh

is a first-rate lawyer and pleads at the bar like a judge. I believe

he’s comin’. Yes, I hear his step,” and her face lighted up as Hugh

appeared in the open door.

“Good-morning, Mrs. Leach,” he called cheerily. “I beg your pardon, good

morning, Mrs. Thornton,” and he bowed deferentially to the lady as he

came in with a cluster of lovely roses, which he laid in Mrs. Leach’s

lap, saying, “Here are some of Milly’s roses. They opened this morning

and I brought them to you. Shall I give one to Mrs. Thornton?”

“Yes, do; the fairest and best. I think she must be like them, though I

can’t see her,” Mrs. Leach replied, and selecting one of the finest,

Hugh offered it to Mildred, whose cheeks rivaled it in color, as she

held it near them to inhale its perfume.

It was of the variety known as “Souvenir d’un Ami,” and the original

stock had been bought by Mrs. Leach two or three years before with some

money sent her by Mildred, whose name she had given to the rose. This

she explained to Mildred, adding that Mr. McGregor was so fond of the

rose that he had taken a slip from her garden and planted it under his

office window.

“He calls it Milly’s rose,” she added, “for he and Milly were great

friends, as children. Hugh, ain’t there something about Mis’ Thornton

that makes you think of Milly?”

Mildred’s face was scarlet, but she tried to hide it by bending her head

very low as she fastened the rose to the bosom of her dress, while Hugh

answered laughingly, “Why, no. Milly was small and thin, and a child

when we saw her, while Mrs. Thornton is——” here he stopped, confused and

uncertain as to what he ought to say next. But when Mildred’s eyes

flashed upon him expectantly, he added very gallantly, “Mrs. Thornton is

more like Milly’s roses.”

“Thank you for the compliment, Mr. McGregor. I will remember it and keep

Milly’s rose, too,” Mildred said, with a little dash of coquetry, and a

ring in her voice which made Hugh think of the Milly who, he supposed,

was thousands of miles away.

Just then there was the sound of wheels stopping before the house, and

Gerard, with his apron still tied around his neck, for he was not yet

through with his culinary duties, came to the door, saying, “Mrs.

Thornton, father is waiting for you.”

“Yes, I’ll be there directly,” Mildred replied, rising hurriedly to say

good-bye, and giving her hand to her mother, who fondled it a moment and

then said to her, “Your hands are soft as a baby’s, and there are many

rings on your fingers. I think I know how they look, and I have felt

your hair, but not your face. Tom and Bessie say it is handsome. Would

you mind my feeling it? That’s my way of seeing.”

Mildred was glad that Hugh had stepped in to the next room and could not

see her agitation, as she knelt beside the blind woman, whose hands

moved slowly over her face and then up to her hair, where they rested a

moment as if in benediction, while she said, “You are lovely, I am sure,

and good, too, and your poor blind mother must miss you so much. Didn’t

she hate to part with you?”

“Yes, oh, yes, and my heart is aching for her. Please bless me as if you

were my mother and I your daughter Milly,” was Mildred’s sobbing reply,

her tears falling like rain as the shaking hands pressed heavily upon

her bowed head, while the plaintive voice said slowly, “God bless you,

child, and make you happy with your husband, and comfort your poor

mother while you are away from her. Amen.”

“Will you tell Mrs. Thornton I am in a hurry?” Mr. Thornton said to

Bessie, loudly enough for Mildred to hear, and wiping her tears away,

she went out through the side door where her husband was standing, with

a frown upon his face, caused not so much by her delay as by the glimpse

he was sure he had caught of his son, in the kitchen, with a checked

apron tied round his neck and a big cherry stain on his forehead.

Nor did the sight of his wife’s flushed cheeks and red eyes help to

restore his equanimity, and although he said nothing then, Mildred felt

that he was displeased, as he helped her into the phaeton and took his

seat beside her.

CHAPTER IX.

GERARD AND HIS FATHER.

Gathering up the reins and driving very slowly, he began:

“Was that Gerard whom I saw tricked out as a kitchen cook?”

“Gerard was there. Yes,” Mildred answered, and he continued in that

cool, determined tone which means more than words themselves, “Is he

often there? Is he interested in your sister? If he is, it must stop. I

tell you it must stop,” he added more emphatically as his wife made no

reply. “I married you because——” he paused a moment and looked at the

woman sitting at his side in all her glowing beauty, and then went on in

a softer tone,—“because I loved you more than I loved my pride, which,

however, is so great, that it will not quietly submit to my son’s

marrying your sister.”

“Does he intend to?” Mildred asked so coolly that it exasperated him,

and he replied, “He will not with my consent, and he will hardly dare do

so without it. Why, he has scarcely a dollar of his own, and no business

either. More’s the pity, or he wouldn’t be capering round a kitchen in

an old woman’s apron.”

“I think it was Bessie’s,” Mildred said quietly, and angrier than ever,

her husband continued. “You told me in Paris that your sister was

engaged to Mr. McGregor.”

“It was a mistake,” Mildred said, her heart beating heavily as she

thought of all the mistake had done for her.

“Yes,” Mr. Thornton repeated, “I ventured to rally Hugh a little this

morning, and he denied the story while something in his manner aroused a

suspicion which the sight of Gerard confirmed. What was he doing there?”

“Pitting cherries for Bessie,” Mildred said with provoking calmness, and

he continued, “I tell you it shall not be. Gerard Thornton must look——”

here he stopped, not quite willing to finish the sentence, which Milly,

however, finished for him—“must look higher than Bessie Leach?”

“Yes, that’s what I mean, although I might not have said it, for I do

not wish to wound you unnecessarily; but I tell you again it must not

be, and you are not to encourage it, or encourage so much visiting

between my children and the Leach’s. Why, that girl,—Bessie, I think is

her name,—is at the Park half the time. Heavens! What would it be if

they knew who you were! I was wise to do as I did, but I am sorry I came

here at all, and I mean to return to New York earlier than I intended,

and if necessary, sell the place. That will break up the whole

business.”

To this Mildred made no reply, but sat thinking, with a growing

conviction that she now knew her husband’s real reason for wishing to

keep her identity a secret during their stay at the Park. It was to

prevent the intimacy which he knew would ensue between her and her

family, if they knew who she was, and with all the strength of her will

she rebelled against it. “I will not encourage the young people, but he

shall not keep me from my mother,” she thought, and the face at which

her husband looked a little curiously as he helped her from the phaeton,

had in it an expression he did not understand.

“I believe she’s got a good deal of the old Harry in her after all, but

I shall be firm,” he thought, as he drove to the stable and gave his

horse to the groom.

Lunch was nearly over when Gerard appeared, the cherry stains washed

from his face, but showing conspicuously on his nails and the tips of

his fingers, from which he had tried in vain to remove them.

“Why, Gerard, what have you been doing to your hands?” Alice asked, and

with an amused look at Mildred, he replied, “Stoning cherries with

them,” while his father hastily left the table.

“Gerard,” he said, pausing a moment in the doorway, “Come to the library

after lunch. I want to see you.”

“Yes, sir,” Gerard answered, feeling as certain then of what was coming

as he did twenty minutes later when his father asked abruptly, “How old

are you?”

“Twenty-five last May.”

“Twenty-five,—yes; and been graduated three years, and no business yet.

Nothing to do but wear a kitchen apron and stone cherries for Bessie

Leach. I saw you. I don’t like it, and as soon as we are in New York I

shall find something for you to do.”

At the mention of Bessie, Gerard had stiffened, for his father’s tone

was offensive. But his answer was respectful: “I shall be glad of

something to do, sir, although I do not think myself altogether to blame

for having been an idler so long. When I left college you know I was in

so bad health that you and the doctor both, fearing I had inherited my

mother’s malady, prescribed perfect rest and quiet for a long time. But

I am strong now and will do anything you think best. I prefer law, and

would like to go into Mr. McGregor’s office. I can get on faster there

than in New York.”

“Yes, and see Bessie Leach oftener,” Mr. Thornton began angrily. “I tell

you I will not have it. The girl is well enough and pretty enough, but I

won’t have it, and if you are getting too much interested in her, quit

her at once.”

“Quit Bessie!” Gerard said. “Quit Bessie! Never! She has promised to be

my wife!”

“Your wife!” Mr. Thornton repeated, aghast with anger and surprise, for

he never dreamed matters had gone so far.

“Yes, my wife. I was only waiting for you to know her better to tell you

of our engagement,” Gerard replied, and then for half an hour, Mildred,

who was in her room over the library, heard the sound of excited

voices,—Gerard’s low and determined, and his father’s louder and quite

as decided.

And when the interview was over, and her husband came up to her, he

said:

“I am very sorry, my darling, because, in a way, the trouble touches you

through your sister; but you must see that it is not a suitable match

for my son. She is not you, and has not had your advantages. She is a

plain country girl, and if Gerard persists in marrying her he will have

no help from me, either before or after my death.”

“You mean you will disinherit him?” Mildred asked, and he replied:

“Yes, just that; and I have told him so, and given him the summer in

which to make up his mind. He has some Quixotic idea of studying law

with McGregor, which will of course keep him here after we have gone. I

don’t intend to live in a quarrel, and shall say no more to him on the

subject, or try to control his actions in any way. If he goes with us to

New York, all right; and if he chooses to stay here, I shall know what

to do.”

A slight inclination of Mildred’s head was her only reply, until her

husband said:

“Do you think Bessie would marry him if she knew he was penniless?”

And then she answered proudly: “I do,” and left the room, saying to

herself as she went out into the beautiful grounds, whose beauty she did

not see: “What will he do when he hears of Alice and Tom? Three Leaches

instead of one. Poor Tom! Poor Bessie! And I am powerless to help them.”

CHAPTER X.

IN THE CEMETERY.

As Mr. Thornton had said, he did not like to live in a quarrel, and

after his interview with his son, he tried to appear just as he had done

before, and when Bessie came to the Park, as she often did, he treated

her civilly, and insensibly found himself admiring her beauty and grace,

and thinking to himself, “If she had money she might do.”

Upon Mildred he laid no restrictions with regard to her intercourse with

her family, feeling intuitively that they would not be heeded. And thus

she was free to see her mother as often as she liked, and it was

remarked by the villagers that the proud mistress of Thornton Park went

more frequently to the farm house than anywhere else. Many a morning she

spent in the pleasant room, listening while her mother talked, mostly of

Mildred, whose long silence was beginning to trouble her.

“It is weeks since I heard from her. She said in her last letter it

might be some time before she wrote again, but I am getting anxious,”

she would say, while Mildred comforted her with the assurance that no

news was good news, and that perhaps her daughter was intending to

surprise her by coming upon her unexpectedly some day.

“I am certain of it; I am something of a prophet, and I know Milly will

come,” she would say, as she smoothed her mother’s snowy hair, or

caressed her worn face, which always lighted up with gladness when she

came, and grew sadder when she went away.

By some strange coincidence, it frequently happened that Hugh called

upon Mrs. Leach when Mildred was there, and always stopped to talk with

her. But Mildred was never quite at ease with him. Her eyes never met

his squarely, while her brilliant color came and went as rapidly as if

she were a shy school-girl confronted with her master instead of the

elegant Mrs. Thornton, whose beauty was the theme of every tongue,

stirring even him a little, but bringing no thought of Mildred, of whom

he sometimes spoke to her mother. As yet Milly had found no chance to

visit her father’s and Charlie’s graves, which she knew she could find

without difficulty, as her mother had told her of the headstones which

Tom had put there in the spring. But she was only biding her time, and

one afternoon in August, when she had been in Rocky Point six weeks or

more, she drove up the mountain road to call upon some New Yorkers who

were stopping at the new hotel. It was late when she left the hotel, and

the full moon was just rising as she reached the entrance to the

cemetery on her return home. Calling to the driver to let her alight,

she bade him go on and leave her, saying she preferred to walk, as the

evening was so fine. Mildred had already won the reputation among her

servants of being rather eccentric, and thinking this one of her cranks,

the man drove on, while she went into the grounds, where the dead were

lying, the headstones gleaming white through the clump of firs and

evergreens which grew so thickly as to conceal many of them from view,

and to hide completely the figure of a man seated in the shadow of one

of them not very far from the graves to which she was making her way.

Hugh had also been up the mountain road on foot, and coming back had

struck into the cemetery as a shorter route home. As he was tired and

the night very warm, he sat down in an armchair under a thick pine,

whose shadow screened him from observation, but did not prevent his

outlook upon the scene around him. He had heard the sound of wheels

stopping near the gate, but he thought no more of it until he saw

Mildred coming slowly across the yard diagonally from the gate, holding

up her skirts, for the dew was beginning to fall, and making, as it

seemed to him, for the very spot where he was sitting. At first he did

not recognize her, but when removing her hat as if its weight oppressed

her she suddenly raised her head so that the moonlight fell upon her

face, he started in surprise, and wondered why she was there. Whose

grave had she come to find? Some one’s, evidently, for she was looking

carefully about her, and afraid to startle her, Hugh sat still and

watched, a feeling like nightmare stealing over him as she entered the

little enclosure where the Leaches were buried. He could see the two

stones distinctly, and he could see and hear her, too, as leaning upon

the taller and bending low so that her eyes were on a level with the

lettering, she said, as if reading. “John Leach, and Charlie; these are

the graves. Oh, father! Oh, Charlie! do you know I have come back after

so many years only to find you dead? And I loved you so much. Oh,

Charlie, my baby brother!”

Here her voice was choked with sobs, and Hugh could hear no more, but he

felt as if the weight of many tons was holding him down and making him

powerless to speak or move, had he wished to do so. And so he sat

riveted to the spot, looking at the woman with a feeling half akin to

terror and doubt, as to whether it were her ghost, or Mildred herself

weeping over her dead. As her smothered sobs met his ear and he thought

he heard his own name, he softly whispered, “Milly,” and stretched his

arms towards her, but let them drop again at his side and watched the

strange scene to its close. Once Mildred seemed to be praying, for she

knelt upon the grass, with her face on her father’s grave, and he heard

the word “Forgive.”

Then she arose and walked slowly back to the road, where she was lost to

view. As long as he could see the flutter of her white dress Hugh looked

after her, and when it disappeared from sight he felt for a few moments

as if losing his consciousness, so great was the shock upon his nervous

system. Mrs. Thornton was Mildred Leach,—the girl he knew now he had

never given up, and whose coming in the autumn he had been looking

forward to with so much pleasure. She had come, and she was another

man’s wife, and what was worse than all she was keeping her identity

from her friends and daily living a lie. Did her husband know it, or was

he, too, deceived?

“Probably,” Hugh said, with a feeling for an instant as if he hated her

for the deception. But that soon passed away, and he tried to make

himself believe that it was a hallucination of his brain and he had not

seen her by those two graves. He would examine them and see, for if a

form of flesh and blood had been there the long, damp grass would be

trampled down in places. It was trampled down, and in the hollow between

the graves a small, white object was lying.

“Her handkerchief. She has been here,” he whispered, as he stooped to

pick it up. “If her name is on it I shall know for sure.”

There was a name upon it, but so faintly traced that he could not read

it in the moonlight, which was now obscured by clouds. A storm was

rising, and hastening his steps towards home he was soon in his own room

and alone to think it out. Taking the handkerchief from his pocket, he

held it to the light and read “M. F. Thornton.” There could be no

mistake. It was Mrs. Thornton he had seen in the cemetery, but was it

Mildred? “M. F.,” he repeated aloud, remembering suddenly that Mildred’s

name was Mildred Frances, which would correspond with the initials.

“It is Milly,” he continued, “but why this deception? Is she ashamed to

have her family claim her? Ashamed to have her husband know who she was;

and did she pass for Fanny Gardner in Europe?”

Again a feeling of resentment and hatred came over him, but passed

quickly, for although he might despise and condemn, he could not hate

her. She had been too much to him in his boyhood, and thoughts of her

had influenced every action of his life thus far. Just what he had

expected, if he had expected anything, he did not know, but whatever it

was, it was cruelly swept away. He had lost her absolutely, for when his

respect for her was gone, she was gone forever, and laying his head upon

the table he wrestled for a few moments with his grief and loss, as

strong men sometimes wrestle with a great and bitter pain.

“If she were dead,” he said, “it would not be so hard to bear. But to

see her the beautiful woman she is,—to know she is Mildred and makes no

sign even to her poor, blind mother, is terrible.”

He was walking the floor now, with Milly’s handkerchief held tightly in

his hands, wondering what he should do with it.

“I’ll keep it,” he said. “It is all I have left of her except the lock

of hair and the peas she gave to me. What a fool I was in those days,”

and he laughed as he recalled the morning when Milly threw him the pod

which he had not seen in a year.

But he brought it out now, and laughed again when he saw how hard and

shriveled were both the peas.

“Stony and hard like her. I believe I’ll throw them away and end the

tomfoolery,” he said.

But he put them back in the box, which he called a little grave, and

took up next the curl of tangled hair, comparing its color in his mind

with Mrs. Thornton’s hair, which, from its peculiar, mottled appearance,

had attracted his notice. How had she changed it, he wondered, and then

remembering to have heard of dyes, to which silly, fashionable women

sometimes resorted, he was sure that he hated her, and putting the box

away went to bed with that thought uppermost in his mind, but with

Milly’s handkerchief folded under his pillow.

CHAPTER XI.

WHAT FOLLOWED.

When Hugh awoke the next morning it was with a confused idea that

something had gone out of his life and left it a blank, and he asked

himself what it was and why he was feeling so badly. But memory soon

brought back a recollection of the secret he held and would hold to the

end, for he had no intention of betraying Mildred or charging her with

deception, if, indeed, he ever spoke to her again. He had no desire to

do so, he thought, and then it came to him suddenly that there was to be

a grand party at Thornton Park that night, and that he had ordered a

dress suit for the occasion.

“But I shall not go,” he said to himself, as he made his hurried toilet.

“I could not bear to see Milly tricked out in the gewgaws and jewels for

which she sold herself.”

And firm in this resolution, he went about his usual duties in his

office, clinching his fist and setting his teeth when several times

during the day he heard Tom Leach talking eagerly of the party, which he

expected to enjoy so much. Tom did not ask if Hugh was going, expecting

it as a matter of course, and Hugh kept his own counsel, and was silent

and moody and even cross for him, and at about four o’clock sat down to

write his regret. Then, greatly to his surprise, he found how much he

really wanted to see Mildred once more and study her in the new

character she had assumed.

“I shall not talk with her and I don’t know that I shall touch her hand,

but I am half inclined to go,” he thought, and tearing up his regret, he

decided to wait awhile and see; and as a result of waiting and seeing,

nine o’clock found him walking up the broad avenue to the house, which

was ablaze with light from attic to basement, and filled with guests,

who crowded the parlors and halls and stairways, so that it was some

little time before he could fight his way to the dressing-room, which

was full of young men and old men in high collars, low vests and

swallow-tails, many of them very red in the face and out of breath with

their frantic efforts to fit gloves a size too small to hands unused to

them, for fashionable parties like this were very rare in Rocky Point.

Mildred had not wished it, as she shrank from society rather than

courted it, but Gerard and Alice were anxious for it, and Mr. Thornton

willing, and under the supervision of his children cards were sent to so

many that the proud man grew hot and cold by turns as he thought of

having his sacred precincts invaded by Tom, Dick and Harry, and the rest

of them, as he designated the class of people whom he neither knew, nor

cared to know. But Alice and Gerard knew them, and they were all there,

Tom and Bessie with the rest, Tom by far the handsomest young man of all

the young men, and the one most at his ease, while Bessie, in her pretty

muslin dress, with only flowers for ornament, would have been the belle

of the evening, but for the hostess, whose brilliant beauty, heightened

by the appliances of dress, which so well became her fine figure,

dazzled every one as she stood by her husband’s side in her gown of

creamy satin and lace, with diamonds flashing on her white neck and arms

and gleaming in her hair. How queenly she was, with no trace of the

storm which had swept over her the previous night, and Hugh, when he

descended the stairs and first caught sight of her, stopped a few

moments, and leaning against the railing, watched her receiving her

guests with a smile on her lips and a look in her eyes which he

remembered now so well, and wondered he had not recognized before. And

as he looked there came up before him another Milly than this one with

the jewels and satin and lace, a Milly with tangled hair and calico

frock and gingham apron, shelling her peas in the doorway and predicting

that she would some day be the mistress of Thornton Park. She was there

now, and no grand duchess born to the purple could have filled the

position better.

“Thornton chose well, if he only knew it,” Hugh thought, and, mustering

all his courage he at last went forward to greet the lady. And when she

offered her hand to him he took it in spite of his determination not to

do so, and looked into her eyes, which kindled at first with a strange

light, while in his there was an answering gleam, so that neither would

have been surprised to have heard the names Milly and Hugh

simultaneously spoken. But no such catastrophe occurred, and after a few

commonplaces Hugh passed on and did not go near her again until, at a

comparatively early hour, when he came to say good-night.

Mildred had removed her glove to change the position of a ring which cut

her finger, and was about putting it on again when Hugh came up,

thinking that at the risk of seeming rude he would not again take the

hand which had sent such a thrill through him when earlier in the

evening he held it for an instant. But the sight of it, bare and white

and soft as a piece of satin, unnerved him and he grasped it tightly,

while he made his adieus, noting as he did so the troubled expression of

her face as she looked curiously at him.

“Does she suspect I know her?” he thought as he went from the house, but

not to his home.

It was a beautiful August night, and finding a seat in the shrubbery

where he could not be seen, he sat there in the moonlight while one

after another carriages and people on foot went past him, and finally,

as the lights were being put out, Tom Leach came airily down the walk,

singing softly. “Oh, don’t you remember sweet Alice, Ben Bolt? Sweet

Alice, with hair so brown.”

“Tom’s done for,” Hugh thought, little dreaming how thoroughly he was

done for in more respects than one.

CHAPTER XII.

LOVE VERSUS MONEY.

Tom had been the last to leave the house, for he had lingered awhile to

talk to Alice, with whom he was standing in the conservatory, partially

concealed by some tall vases and shrubs, when Mr. Thornton chanced that

way. Thinking his guests all gone and hearing the murmur of voices, he

stopped just in time to see Tom’s arm around his daughter’s waist and to

hear a sound the meaning of which he could not mistake, as the young

man’s face came in close proximity to that of his daughter. To say that

he was astonished is saying very little. He was horrified and disgusted,

and so indignant that his first impulse was to collar the audacious Tom

and hurl him through the window. But not wishing a scene before the

servants, he restrained himself, and went quietly away, with much the

same feeling which prompted Cæsar to say, “_Et tu, Brute!_” Since his

interview with his son he had never mentioned Bessie’s name to him, or

raised any objection to her coming to his house as often as she liked.

But he had watched her closely, and had been insensibly softened by her

girlish beauty and quiet grace of manner. There was nothing of the

plebeian in her appearance, and he was beginning to think that if

Gerard’s heart were set upon her, rather than have a bitter quarrel he

might possibly consent to the marriage, although it was not at all what

he desired. The young couple could live at the Park house, and in the

spring he would go abroad for an indefinite length of time, and thus

separate himself and wife entirely from her family. In Europe, with her

refinement and money, Alice would make a grand match and possibly marry

an earl, for titles, he knew, could be bought, and he had the means to

buy them. With a daughter who was My Lady, and a son-in-law who was My

Lord, he could afford to have a Leach for his daughter-in-law, and

Gerard’s star was rising when he came so unexpectedly upon a scene which

at once changed him from a relenting father into a hard, determined man,

whom nothing could move.

Mildred was asleep when he went to his room, but had she been awake he

would have said nothing to her. His wrath was reserved for his daughter,

who poured his coffee for him next morning, as Mildred had a headache,

and was not out of her bed. Gerard, too, was absent, and the meal was a

very silent, cheerless one, for Alice felt that something was the matter

and trembled when, after it was over, her father asked her to step into

the library, as he wished to speak with her alone.

“Alice,” he began, “I want to know the meaning of what I saw last

night?”

“What did you see?” she asked, her heart beating rapidly but bravely as

she resolved to stand by Tom.

“I am no spy on other people’s actions, but I was passing the

conservatory and saw Tom Leach kiss you, and I think, yes, I’m very sure

you kissed him back; at all events you laid your head on his shoulder in

a very disreputable way, and I want to know what it means.”

Alice, who had some of her father’s nature, was calm and defiant in a

moment. The word disreputable had roused her, and her answer rang out

clear and distinct, “It means that Tom and I are engaged.”

“Engaged! You engaged to Tom Leach!” Mr. Thornton exclaimed, putting as

much contempt into his voice as it was possible to do. “Engaged to Tom

Leach! Then you are no daughter of mine.”

Mr. Thornton had never liked Tom, whose frank, assured manner towards

him was more like that of an equal than an inferior, and for a moment he

felt that he would rather see Alice dead than married to him. Just then

Gerard came to the door, but was about to withdraw when his father

called him in and said inquiringly, “Your sister tells me she is engaged

to Tom Leach. Did you know it?”

“Yes, I imagined something of the kind,” was Gerard’s reply, as he

crossed over to his sister and stood protectingly by her side, while his

father, forgetting his softened feelings towards Bessie, went on: “And

you? I gave you time to consider your choice. Have you done so?”

“I have.”

“And it is——?”

“To marry Bessie,” was Gerard’s answer, while Alice’s came with it: “And

I shall marry Tom.”

Such opposition from both his children roused Mr. Thornton to fury, and

his look was the look of a madman, as he said, “That is your decision.

Then hear mine. I shall disinherit you both! I can’t take away from you

the few thousands your mother left you, but I can do as I like with my

own. Now, what will you do?”

“Marry Bessie.”

“Marry Tom,” came simultaneously from the young rebels, and with the

words, “So be it,” their father left the room, and a few minutes later

they saw him galloping rapidly down the avenue in the direction of the

town.

He did not return to lunch, and when he came in to dinner he seemed very

absent-minded and only volunteered the remark that he was going to New

York the next day to see that their house was made ready for them within

a week. As Mildred’s headache was unusually severe she had kept her bed

the entire day and knew nothing of the trouble until just at twilight,

when Alice, who felt that she must talk to some one, crept up to her,

and laying her head on the pillow beside her, told of her father’s anger

and threat and asked if she thought he would carry it out.

“No,” Mildred answered. “He will think better of it, I am sure,” and

Alice continued, “Not that I care for myself, but I wanted to help Tom.”

“Do you love him so much that you cannot give him up?” Mildred asked.

“Love him! Why, I would rather be poor and work for my living with Tom,

than have all the world without him,” Alice replied, while the hand on

her head pressed a little heavily as she went on: “Papa is so proud. You

don’t know how contemptuously he says _those Leaches_, as if they were

too low for anything, and all because they happen to be poor, and

because——Did I ever tell you that Bessie’s sister Mildred, who has been

so long in Europe, was once,—not exactly a servant in our family, for

she took care of me,—my little friend, I called her, and was very fond

of her. But I suppose father does not wish Gerard and me to marry into

her family. Are you crying?” Alice asked suddenly, as she heard what

sounded like a sob.

“Yes,—no,—I don’t know. I wish I could help you, but I can’t,” Mildred

answered, while the tears rolled down her cheeks like rain.

Every word concerning her family and herself had been like a stab to

her, and she felt how bitterly she was being punished for her deception.

Once she decided to tell Alice the truth, and might have done so if she

had not heard her husband’s step outside the door. That broke up the

conference between herself and Alice, who immediately left the room.

The next morning Mr. Thornton started for New York, where he was absent

for three or four days, and when he returned he complained of a headache

and pain in all parts of his body. He had taken a severe cold, he said,

and went at once to his bed, which he never left again, for the cold

proved to be a fever, which assumed the typhoid form, with its attendant

delirium, and for two weeks Mildred watched over and cared for him with

all the devotion of a true and loving wife. True she had always been,

and but for one memory might have been loving, too, for Mr. Thornton had

been kind and indulgent to her, and she repaid him with every possible

care and attention. He always knew her in his wildest fits of delirium,

and would smile when she laid her cool hand on his hot head, and

sometimes whisper her name. Gerard and Alice he never knew, although he

often talked of them, asking where they were, and once, during a

partially lucid interval, when alone with Mildred, he said to her, “Tell

the children I was very angry, but I am sorry, and I mean to make it

right.”

“I am sure you do,” Mildred replied, little guessing what he meant, as

his mind began to wander again, and he only said, “Yes,—all right, and

you will see to it. All right,—all right.”

And these were the last words he ever spoke, for on the fourteenth day

after his return from New York, he died, with Mildred bending over him

and Mildred’s hand in his.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE WILL.

When Mr. Thornton left Gerard and Alice after his threat of

disinheritance, he went straight to the office of Hugh McGregor, and

asking to see him alone, announced his intention of making his will.

“It’s time I did it,” he said with a little laugh, and then as Hugh

seated himself at his table, he dictated as follows:

To a few charitable institutions in New York he gave a certain sum; to

his children, Gerard and Alice, a thousand dollars each, and the rest of

his property he gave unconditionally to his beloved wife, Mildred F.

Thornton.

“Excuse me, Mr. Thornton,” Hugh said, looking up curiously from the

paper on which he was writing, “isn’t this a strange thing you are

doing, giving everything to your wife, and nothing to your children.

Does she know,—does she desire it?”

“She knows nothing, but I do. I know my own business. Please go on.

Write what I tell you,” Mr. Thornton answered impatiently, and without

further protest Hugh wrote the will, which was to make Mildred the

richest woman in the county, his hand trembling a little as he wrote

Mildred F., and thought to himself, “That is Milly’s name. She did not

deceive him there. Does he know the rest?”

“You must have three witnesses,” he said, when the legal instrument was

drawn up.

“Tom Leach is in the next room. I saw him. He will do for one,” Mr.

Thornton said, with a grim smile, as he thought what a ghastly joke it

would be for Tom to witness a will which cut Alice off with a mere

pittance. “Have him in.”

So Tom was called, together with another man who had just entered the

office. A stiff bow was Mr. Thornton’s only greeting to Tom, who

listened while the usual formula was gone through with, and then signing

his name, Thomas J. Leach, went back to his books, with no suspicion as

to what the will contained or how it would affect him.

“I will keep the paper myself,” Mr. Thornton said, taking it from Hugh,

with some shadowy idea in his brain that it might be well to have it

handy in case he changed his mind and wished to destroy it.

But death came too soon for that, and when he died his will was lying

among his papers in his private drawer, where it was found by Gerard,

who without opening it, carried it to Mildred. There had been a funeral

befitting Mr. Thornton’s position and wealth, and he had been taken to

Greenwood and laid beside his first wife, and after a few days spent in

New York the family came back to their country home, which they

preferred to the city. Bessie, Tom and Hugh met them at the station, the

heart of the latter beating rapidly when he saw Mildred in her widow’s

weeds, and helping her alight from the train, he went with her to her

carriage, and telling her he should call in a few days on business,

bowed a little stiffly and walked away.

Since drawing the will he had been growing very hard towards Mildred,

whose identity he did not believe her husband knew, else he had not

married her, and as he went back to his office after meeting her at the

station he wondered what Gerard would think of the will, half hoping he

would contest it, and wondering how long before something would be said

of it to him. It was not long, for the second day after his return from

New York, Gerard found it and took it to Mildred.

“Father’s will,” he said, with a sinking sensation, as if he already saw

the shadow on his life.

Mildred took the paper rather indifferently, but her face blanched as

she read it, and her words came slowly and thick as she said, “Oh,

Gerard, I am so sorry, but he did not mean it to stand, and it shall

not. Read it.”

Taking it from her, Gerard read with a face almost as white as hers, but

with a different expression upon it. She was sorry and astonished, while

he was resentful and angry at the man whose dead hand was striking him

so hard. But he was too proud to show what he really felt, and said

composedly, “I am not surprised. He threatened to disinherit us unless

we gave up Bessie and Tom, and he has done so. It’s all right. I have

something from mother and I shall be as glad to work for Bessie as Tom

will be to work for Alice. It’s not the money I care for so much as the

feeling which prompted the act, and, by George,” he continued, as he

glanced for the first time at the signatures, Henry Boyd, Thomas J.

Leach, Hugh McGregor, “if he didn’t get Tom to sign Alice’s death

warrant. That is the meanest of all.”

What more he would have said was cut short by the violent fit of

hysterics into which Mildred went for the first time in her life. And

she did not come out of it easily either, but sobbed and cried

convulsively all the morning, and in the afternoon kept her room, seeing

no one but Alice, who clung to her as fondly as if she had been her own

mother. Alice had heard of the will with a good deal of composure, for

she was just the age and temperament to think that a life of poverty, if

shared with the man she loved, was not so very hard, and besides she had

in her own right seven hundred dollars a year, which was something, she

reasoned, and she took her loss quite philosophically, and tried to

comfort Mildred, whose distress she could not understand. Mildred knew

by the handwriting that Hugh had drawn the will, and after passing a

sleepless night she arose early the next morning, weak in body but

strong in her resolve to right the wrong which had been done to Gerard

and Alice.

“I am going to see Mr. McGregor,” she said to them when breakfast was

over, and an hour or two later her carriage was brought out, and the

coachman ordered to drive her to Hugh’s office and leave her there.

CHAPTER XIV.

MILDRED AND HUGH.

Tom was at work that morning on the farm, and as the other clerk was

taking a holiday, Hugh was alone when he received his visitor, whose

appearance there surprised him, and at whom he looked curiously, her

face was so white and her eyes, swollen with weeping, so unnaturally

large and bright. But she was very calm, and taking the seat he offered,

and throwing back the heavy veil whose length swept the floor as she

sat, she began at once by saying:

“You drew my husband’s will?”

“Yes, I drew it,” he answered curtly, and not at all prepared for her

next question, which seemed to arraign him as a culprit.

“Why did you do it?” and there was a ring in her voice he could not

understand.

“Why did I do it?” he repeated. “Don’t you know that lawyers usually

follow their client’s wishes in making their wills?”

“Yes, but you might have dissuaded him from it. You knew it was wrong.”

“You don’t like it then?” he asked, but repented the question when he

saw the effect upon her.

Rising to her feet and tugging at her bonnet strings as if they choked

her, she looked steadily at him and said:

“Don’t like it? What do you take me for? No, I don’t like it, and if I

had found it first, I think,—I am sure I should have torn it to pieces.”

She had her bonnet off, and was tossing it toward the table as if its

weight oppressed her. But it fell upon the floor, where it might have

lain if Hugh had not picked it up, carefully and gingerly, as if half

afraid of this mass of crape. But it was Milly’s bonnet, and he brushed

a bit of dust from the veil, and held it in his hand, while she pushed

back her hair from her forehead, and wiping away the drops of

perspiration standing there went on:

“Do you know why he made such a will?”

“I confess I do not. I expressed my surprise at the time, but he was not

a man to be turned from his purpose when once his mind was made up. May

_I_ ask why he did it?” Hugh said, and Mildred replied:

“Yes;—he was angry with Gerard and Alice, because of—of—Tom and Bessie

Leach. The young people are engaged and he accidentally found it out.”

“Yes, I see;—he thought a Thornton too good to marry a Leach. Do you

share his opinion?” Hugh asked, while the blood came surging back to

Mildred’s white face in a great red wave, but left it again, except in

two round spots which burned on either cheek.

Hugh was torturing her cruelly, and she wrung her hands, but did not

answer his question directly. She only said, as she took the will from

her pocket and held it towards him, “It is all right? It is legally

executed?”

“Yes, it is all right.”

“And it gives everything to me to do with as I please?”

“Yes, it gives everything to you to do with as you please. You are a

very rich woman, Mrs. Thornton, and I congratulate you.”

His tone was sarcastic in the extreme, and stung Mildred so deeply that

she forgot herself, and going a step nearer to him cried out, “Oh, Hugh,

why are you so hard upon me? Why do you hate me so? Don’t you know who I

am?”

Hugh had not expected this, for he had no idea that Mildred would ever

tell who she was, and the sound of his name, spoken as she used to speak

it when excited, moved him strangely. He was still holding her black

bonnet, the long veil of which had become twisted around his boot, and

without answering her at once he stooped to unwind it and then put the

bonnet from him upon the table as if it had been a barrier between him

and the woman, whose eyes were upon him.

“Yes,” he said at last, very slowly, for he was afraid his voice might

tremble, “You are Mrs. Thornton now; but you were Mildred Leach.”

“Oh, Hugh, I am so glad!” Mildred cried, as she sank into her chair, and

covering her face with her hands, sobbed like a child, while Hugh stood

looking at her, wondering what he ought to do, or say, and wishing she

would speak first. But she did not, and at last he said:

“Mrs. Thornton, you have often puzzled me with a likeness to somebody

seen before I met you. But I had no suspicion of the truth until I saw

you in the cemetery at your father’s grave. I am no eavesdropper, but

was so placed that I had to see and hear, and I knew then that you were

Mildred, come back to us, not as we hoped you would come, but——”

His voice was getting shaky, and he stopped a moment to recover himself.

Then, taking from his side pocket the handkerchief he had carried with

him since the night he found it, he passed it to her, saying:

“I picked it up after you left the yard. Have you missed it?”

“Yes,—no. I don’t remember,” she replied, taking the handkerchief, and

drying her eyes with it. Then, looking up at Hugh, while the first smile

she had known since her husband died broke over her face, she continued:

“I am glad you know me; I have wanted to tell you and mother and

everybody. The deception was terrible to me, but I had promised and must

keep my word.”

“Then Mr. Thornton knew? You did not deceive him?” Hugh asked, conscious

of a great revulsion of feeling towards the woman he had believed so

steeped in hypocrisy.

“Deceive him?” Mildred said, in some surprise. “Never,—in any single

thing. I am innocent there. Let me explain how it happened, and you will

tell the others, for I can never do it but once. I am so tired. You

don’t know how tired,” and she put her hands to her face, which was

white as marble, as she commenced the story which the reader already

knows, telling it rapidly, blaming herself more than she deserved and

softening as much as possible her husband’s share in the matter.

“He was very proud, you know,” she said, “and the Leaches were like the

ground beneath his feet. But he loved me. I am sure of that, and he was

always kind and good, and tried to make up for the burden he had imposed

upon me. Yes, my husband loved me, knowing I was a Leach.”

“And you loved him?” Hugh asked, regretting the words the moment they

had passed his lips, and regretting them more when he saw their effect

upon Mildred.

Drawing herself up, she replied:

“Whether I loved him or not does not matter to you, or any one else. He

was my husband, and I did my duty by him, and he was satisfied. If I

could have forgotten I should have been happy, and I tell you truly I am

sorry he is dead, and if I could I’d bring him back to-day.”

She was now putting on the bonnet which made her a widow again, and made

her face so deathly white that Hugh was frightened and said to her:

“Forgive me, Mrs. Thornton. It was rude in me to ask that question.

Forget it, I beg of you. You are very pale. Can I do anything for you?”

“No,” she answered, faintly. “I am only tired, that’s all, and I must

get this business settled before I can rest. I have come to give the

money back to Gerard and Alice, and you must help me do it.”

“I don’t quite understand you,” Hugh said. “Do you mean to give away the

fortune your husband left you?”

“Yes, every farthing of it. I can never use it. It would not be right

for me to keep it. He was angry when he made that will. He did not mean

it, and had he lived he would have changed it. That was what troubled

him when he was ill and he tried to tell me about it,” and very briefly

she repeated what her husband had said to her of his children.

“I did not understand him then, but I do now. He knew I would do right;

he trusted me,” she continued, her tears falling so fast as almost to

choke her utterance.

“But,” said Hugh, “why give it all? If Mr. Thornton had made his will

under different conditions, he would have remembered you. Why not divide

equally? Why leave yourself penniless?”

“I shall not be penniless,” Mildred replied. “When I was married Mr.

Thornton gave me fifteen thousand dollars for my own. This I shall keep.

It will support mother and me, for I am going back to her as soon as all

is known. And you will help me? You will tell mother and Bessie and Tom,

and everybody, and you will be my friend, just for a little while, for

the sake of the days when we played together?”

Her lips were quivering and her eyes were full of tears as she made this

appeal, which no man could have withstood, much less Hugh, who would

have faced the cannon’s mouth for her then, so great was his sympathy

for her.

“Yes, I will do all you wish, but not to-day. The will must be proved

first, and you are too tired. I will see to it at once, and then if you

still are of the same mind as now I am at your service. Perhaps it will

be better to say nothing for a few days.”

“Yes, better so,—you—know—best—stand—by—me,—Hugh,” Mildred said, very

slowly, as she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes in the weary

way of a child going to sleep.

Hugh thought she was going to faint, her face was so pinched and gray,

and he said, excitedly:

“Mildred, Mildred, rouse yourself. You must not faint here. I don’t know

what to do with people who faint. You must go home at once. Your

carriage is gone but I see a cab coming. I will call it for you.”

Darting to the door, he signaled the cab, to which he half led, half

carried Mildred, who seemed very weak and was shaking with cold.

Rallying a little, she said to him:

“Thank you, Hugh. I’d better go home. I am getting worse very fast and

everything is black. Is it growing dark?”

This was alarming. He could not let her go alone, and springing in

beside her, Hugh bade the cabman drive with all possible speed to the

Park and then go for a physician.

CHAPTER XV.

THE DENOUEMENT.

Nothing could have happened better for Mildred and her cause than the

long and dangerous illness which followed that visit to Hugh’s office.

It was early September then, but the cold November rain was beating

against the windows of her room when at last she was able to sit up and

carry out her purpose. She had been very ill, first with the fever taken

from her husband, and then with nervous prostration, harder to bear than

the fever, for then she had known nothing of what was passing around

her, or whose were the voices speaking so lovingly to her, or whose the

hands ministering to her so tenderly, Bessie, who called her sister, and

Alice, who was scarcely less anxious and attentive than Bessie herself.

She did not even know the white-haired woman who sat by her day after

day, with her blind eyes turned toward the tossing, moaning, babbling

figure on the bed, whose talk was always of the past, when she was a

girl and lived at home, and bathed her mother’s head and cooked the

dinner and scolded Tom and Bessie and kissed and petted Charlie. Of Hugh

she seldom spoke, and when she did it was in the old, teasing way,

calling him a red-haired Scotchman and laughing at his big hands and

feet. To all intents and purposes she was the Mildred whom we first saw

shelling peas in the doorway, and the names of her husband and Gerard

and Alice never passed her lips. Every morning and evening Hugh walked

up the avenue, and ringing the bell asked, “How is Mrs. Thornton?” Then

he would walk back again with an abstracted look upon his face, which to

a close observer would have told of the fear tugging at his heart. The

possibility that Mildred could ever be anything to him, if she lived,

did not once enter his mind, but he did not want her to die, and the man

who had seldom prayed before, now learned to pray earnestly for

Mildred’s life, as many others were doing.

Hugh had done his work well, and told Mildred’s story, first to her

mother, Bessie and Tom, then to Gerard and Alice, and then to everybody,

giving it, however, a different coloring from what Mildred had done. She

had softened her husband’s part in the matter and magnified her own,

while he passed very lightly over hers, and dwelt at length upon the

pride and arrogance of the man who, to keep her family aloof, wrung from

her a promise, given unguardedly and repented of so bitterly. Thus the

sympathy of the people was all with Mildred, who, as the lady of

Thornton Park, had won their good opinion by her kindness and

gentleness, and gracious, familiar manner. That she was Mrs. Giles

Thornton did not harm her at all, for money and position are a mighty

power, and the interest in, and sympathy for her were quite as great, if

not greater, than would have been the case if it were plain Mildred

Leach for whom each Sunday prayers were said in the churches and for

whom inquiries were made each day until the glad news went through the

town that the crisis was past and she would live. Hugh was alone in his

office when the little boy who brought him the morning paper said, as he

threw it in, “Mis’ Thornton’s better. She knows her marm, and the doctor

says she’ll git well.” Then he passed on, leaving Hugh alone with the

good news.

“Thank God,—thank God,” he said. “I couldn’t let Milly die,” and when a

few minutes later one of his clerks came into the front office, he heard

his chief in the next room whistling Annie Laurie, and said to himself,

with a little nod, “I guess she’s better.”

It had been a very difficult task to tell Mildred’s story to Mrs. Leach

and Tom and Bessie, but Hugh had done it so well that the shock was not

as great as he had feared it might be. As was natural, Mrs. Leach was

the most affected of the three, and within an hour was at Mildred’s

bedside, calling her Milly and daughter and kissing the hot lips which

gave back no answering sign, for Mildred never knew her, nor any one,

until a morning in October, when, waking suddenly from a long,

refreshing sleep, she looked curiously about her, and saw the blind

woman sitting just where she had sat for days and days and would have

sat for nights had she been permitted to do so. Now she was partially

asleep, but the words “Mother, are you here?” roused her, and in an

instant Mildred was in her mother’s arms, begging for the pardon which

was not long withheld.

“Oh, Milly, my child, how could you see me blind and not tell me who you

were?” were the only words of reproof the mother ever uttered; then all

was joy and peace, and Mildred’s face shone with the light of a great

gladness, when Tom and Bessie came in to see her, both very kind and

both a little constrained in their manner towards her, for neither could

make it quite seem as if she were their sister.

Gerard and Alice took it more naturally, and after a few days matters

adjusted themselves, and as no word was said of the past Mildred began

to recover her strength, which, however, came back slowly, so that it

was November before she was able to see Hugh in her boudoir, where Tom

carried her in his arms, saying, as he put her down in her easy-chair,

“Are you sure you are strong enough for it?”

“Yes,” she answered, eagerly. “I can’t put it off any longer. I shall

never rest until it is done. Tell Hugh I am ready.”

Tom had only a vague idea of what she wished to do, but knew that it had

some connection with her husband’s will, the nature of which he had been

told by Gerard.

“She’ll never let that stand a minute after she gets well,” Tom had

said, but he never guessed that she meant to give up the whole.

Hugh, who had been sent for that morning, came at once, and found

himself trembling in every nerve as he followed Tom to the room where

Mildred was waiting for him. He had not seen her during her sickness,

and he was not prepared to find her so white and thin and still so

exquisitely lovely as she looked with her eyes so large and bright, and

the smile of welcome on her face as she gave him her hand and said, “We

must finish that business now, and then I can get well. Suppose I had

died, and the money had gone from Gerard and Alice.”

“I think it would have come back to them all the same,” Hugh replied,

sitting down beside her, and wondering why the sight of her affected him

so strangely.

But she did not give him much time to think, and plunging at once into

business, told him that she wished to give everything to Gerard and

Alice, dividing it equally between them.

“You know exactly what my husband had and where it was invested,” she

said, “and you must divide it to the best of your ability, giving to

each an equal share in the Park, for I think they will both live here. I

wish them to do it, for then we shall all be near each other. I shall

live with mother and try to atone for the wrong I have done. I have

enough to keep us in comfort, and shall not take a cent of what was left

me in the will.”

This was her decision, from which nothing could move her, and when at

last Hugh left her she had signed away over a million of dollars and

felt the richer for it, nor could Gerard and Alice induce her to take

back any part of it after they were told what she had done.

“Don’t worry me,” she said to them. “It seemed to me a kind of atonement

to do it, and I am so happy, and I am sure your father would approve of

it if he could know about it.”

After that Mildred’s recovery was rapid, and on the first day of the new

year she went back to the farm house to live, notwithstanding the

earnest entreaties of Gerard and Alice that she should stay with them

until Tom and Bessie came, for it was decided that the four should, for

a time at least, live together at the Park. But Mildred was firm.

“Mother needs me,” she said, “and is happier when I am with her. I can

see that she is failing. I shall not have her long, and while she lives

I shall try to make up to her for all the selfish years when I was away,

seeking my own pleasure and forgetting hers.”

And Mildred kept her word and was everything to her mother, who lived to

see, or rather hear, the double wedding, which took place at St. Jude’s

one morning in September, little more than a year after Mr. Thornton’s

death. The church was full and there was scarcely a dry eye in it as

Mildred led her blind mother up the aisle, and laid her hand upon

Bessie’s arm in response to the question, “Who giveth this woman to be

married to this man?” It was Mildred who gave Alice away, and who three

weeks later received the young people when they came home from their

wedding journey, seeming and looking much like her old self as she did

the honors of the house where she had once been mistress, and joining

heartily in their happiness, laughingly returned Tom’s badinage when he

called her his stepmother-in-law. Then, when the festivities were over,

she went back to her mother, whom she cared for so tenderly that her

life was prolonged for more than a year, and the chimes in the old

church belfry were ringing for a Saviour born, when she at last died in

Mildred’s arms, with Mildred’s name upon her lips and a blessing for the

beloved daughter who had been so much to her. The night before she died

Mildred was alone with her for several hours, and bending over her she

said, “I want to hear you say again that you forgive me for the

waywardness which kept me from you so long, and my deception when I came

back. I am so sorry, mother.”

“Forgive you?” her mother said, her blind eyes trying to pierce the

darkness and look into the face so close to hers. “I have nothing to

forgive. I understand it all, and since you came back to me you have

been the dearest child a mother ever had. Don’t cry so, Milly,” and the

shaky hand wiped away the tears which fell so fast, as Mildred went on:

“I don’t know whether the saints at rest ever think of those they have

left behind; but if they do, and father asks for me, tell him how sorry

I am, and tell Charlie how I loved him, and how much I meant to do for

him when I went away.”

“I’ll tell them. Don’t cry,” came faintly from the dying woman, who said

but little more until the dawn was breaking, and she heard in the

distance the sound of the chimes ringing in the Christmas morn. Then,

lifting her head from Mildred’s arm, she cried joyfully:

“The bells,—the bells,—the Christmas bells. I am glad to go on his

birthday. Good-bye, Milly. God bless you; don’t cry.”

They buried her by her husband and Charlie, and then Mildred was all

alone, except for the one servant she kept. Bessie and Alice would

gladly have had her at the Park, but she resisted all their entreaties

and gave no sign of the terrible loneliness which oppressed her as day

after day she lived her solitary life, which, for the first week or two,

was seldom enlivened by the presence of any one except Gerard and Tom,

who each day plowed their way through the heavy drifts of snow which

were piled high above the fence tops. A terrible storm was raging on the

mountains, and Rocky Point felt it in all its fury. The trains were

stopped,—the roads were blocked,—communication between neighbor and

neighbor was cut off, and though many would gladly have done so, few

could visit the lonely woman, who sat all day where she could look out

toward the graves on which she knew the snow was drifting, and who at

night sat motionless by the fire, living over the past and shrinking

from the future which lay so drearily before her.

CHAPTER XVI.

SUNSHINE AFTER THE STORM.

It was the last day, or rather the last night of the storm. The wind had

subsided, and when the sun went down there was in the west a tinge of

red as a promise of a fair to-morrow. But to Mildred there seemed no

to-morrow better than to-day had been, and when after her early tea she

sat down in her little sitting-room, there came over her such a sense of

dreariness and pain as she had never before experienced. Once she

thought of her husband, who had been so kind to her, and whispered

sadly:

“I might have learned to love him, but he is dead and gone; everybody is

gone who cared for me. Even Hugh has disappointed me,” and although she

did not realize it this thought was perhaps the saddest of all. Hugh had

disappointed her. During the two years since her return to the farm

house, she had seen but little of him, for it was seldom that he called,

and when he did it was upon her mother, not herself.

But he had not forgotten her, and there was scarcely a waking hour of

his life that she was not in his mind, and often when he was busiest

with his clients, who were increasing rapidly, he saw in the papers he

was drawing up for them, her face as it had looked at him when she said:

“Oh, Hugh, don’t you know me?” He was angry with her then, and his heart

was full of bitterness towards her for her deception. But that was gone

long ago, and he was only biding his time to speak.

“While her mother lives she will not leave her,” he said; but her mother

was dead, and he could wait no longer. “I must be decent, and not go the

very first day after the funeral,” he thought, a little glad of the

storm which kept every one indoors.

But it was over now, and wrapping his overcoat around him, and pulling

his fur cap over his ears he went striding through the snow to the farm

house, which he reached just as Mildred was so absorbed in her thoughts

that she did not hear the door opened by her maid, or know that he was

there until he came into the room and was standing upon the hearth rug

before her. Then, with the cry, “Oh, Hugh, is it you? I am glad you have

come. It is so lonesome,” she sprang up and offered him her hand, while

he looked at her with a feeling of regret that he had not come before.

He did not sit down beside her, but opposite, where he could see her as

they talked on indifferent subjects,—the storm,—the trains delayed,—the

wires down,—the damage done in town,—and the prospect of a fair day

to-morrow. Then there was silence between them and Mildred got up and

raked the fire in the grate and brushed the hearth with a little broom

in the corner, while Hugh watched her, and when she was through took the

poker himself and attacked the fire, which was doing very well.

“I like to poke the fire,” he said, while Mildred replied, “So do I;”

and then there was silence again, until Hugh burst out:

“I say, Milly, how much longer am I to wait?”

“Wha—at?” Mildred replied, a faint flush tinging her face.

“How much longer am I to wait?” he repeated; and she answered, “Wait for

what?”

“For you,” and Hugh arose and went and stood over her as he continued:

“Do you know how old I am?”

Her face was scarlet now, but she answered laughingly, “I am thirty. You

used to be four years older than myself, which makes you thirty-four.”

“Yes,” he said. “As time goes I am thirty-four, but measured by my

feelings it is a hundred years since that morning when I saw you going

through the Park gate and felt that I had lost you, as I knew I had

afterwards, and never more so than when I saw you in the cemetery and

knew who you were.”

“Why are you reminding me of all this? Don’t you know how it hurts? I

know you despised me then, and must despise me now,” Mildred said, with

anguish in her tones as she, too, rose from her chair and stood apart

from him.

“I did despise you then, it’s true,” Hugh replied, “and tried to think I

hated you, not so much for deceiving us as for deceiving your husband,

as I believed you must have done; but I know better now. Your record has

not been stainless, Milly, and I would rather have you as you were

seventeen years ago on the summer morning when you were a little girl of

thirteen shelling peas and prophesying that you would one day be the

mistress of Thornton Park. You have been its mistress, and I am sorry

for that, but nothing can kill my love, which commenced in my boyhood,

when you made fun of my hands and feet and brogue and called me freckled

and awkward, and then atoned for it all by some look in your bright eyes

which said you did not mean it. I am awkward still, but the frecks and

the brogue are gone, and I have come to ask you to be my wife,—not

to-morrow, but some time next spring, when everything is beginning new.

Will you, Milly? I will try and make you happy, even if I have but

little money.

“Oh, Hugh! What do I care for money. I hate it!”

It was the old Mildred who spoke in the old familiar words, which Hugh

remembered so well, but it was the new Mildred who, when he held his

arms towards her, saying “Come,” went gladly into them, as a tired child

goes to its mother.

It was late that night when Hugh left his promised bride, for there was

much to talk about, and all the incidents of their childhood to be lived

over again, Hugh telling of the lock of hair and the pea-pod he had kept

with the peas, hard as bullets now, especially the smaller one, which he

called Mildred.

“But, do you know, I really think it has recently begun to change,” Hugh

said, “and I shall not be surprised to find it soft again——”

“Just as I am to let you see how much I love you,” Mildred said, as she

laid her beautiful head upon his arm, and told him of the rumor of his

engagement to Bessie, which had been the means of making her Mrs.

Thornton.

“That was the only secret I had from my husband,” she said. “I told him

everything else, and he took me knowing it all, and I believe he loved

me, too. He was very kind to me,—and——”

She meant to be loyal to her husband, and would have said more, if Hugh

had not stopped her mouth in a most effective way. No man cares to hear

the woman who has just promised to marry him talk about her dead

husband, and Hugh was not an exception.

“Yes, darling, I know,” he said. “But let’s bury the past. You are mine

now; all mine.”

Hugh might be awkward and shy in many things, but he was not at all shy

or awkward in love-making when once the ice was broken. He had waited

for Mildred seventeen years, and he meant to make the most of her now,

and he stayed so long that she at last bade him go, and pointed to the

clock just striking the hour of midnight.

No one seemed surprised when told of the engagement. It was what

everybody expected, and what should have been long ago, and what would

have been, if Mildred had staid at home, instead of going off to Europe.

Congratulations came from every quarter and none were more sincere than

those from the young people at the Park, who wanted to make a grand

wedding. To this Hugh did not object, for in his heart was the shadow of

a wish to see Mildred again as he saw her that night at the party in

jewels and satins and lace. But she vetoed it at once. A widow had no

business with orange blossoms, she said, and besides that she was too

old, and Hugh was old, too, and she should be married quietly in church,

in a plain gray traveling dress and bonnet. And she was married thus on

a lovely morning in June, when the roses were in full bloom, and the

church was full of flowers, and people, too,—for everybody was there to

see the bride, who went in Mildred Thornton and came out Mildred

McGregor.

And now there is little more to tell. It is three years since that

wedding day, and Hugh and Mildred live in the red farm house, which is

scarcely a farm house now, it has been so enlarged and changed, with its

pointed roofs and bow windows and balconies. Brook Cottage they call it,

and across the brook in the rear there is a rustic bridge leading to the

meadow, where Mr. Leach’s cows used to feed, but which now is a garden,

or pleasure ground, not so large, but quite as pretty as the Park, and

every fine afternoon at the hour when Hugh is expected from his office,

Mildred walks through the grounds, leading by the hand a little

golden-haired boy, whom she calls Charlie for the baby brother who died

and whom he greatly resembles. And when at last Hugh comes, the three go

back together, Hugh’s arm around Milly’s waist and his boy upon his

shoulder. They are not rich and never will be, but they are very happy

in each other’s love, and no shadow, however small, ever rests on

Milly’s still lovely face, save when she recalls the mad ambition and

discontent which came so near wrecking her life.

In the Park three children play, Giles and Fanny, who belong to the

Thorntons, and a second Mildred Leach, who belongs to Tom and Alice.

One picture more, and then we leave them forever near the spot where we

first saw them. Gerard and Bessie,—Alice and Tom,—have come to the

cottage at the close of a warm July afternoon, and are grouped around

the door, where Mildred sits, with the sunlight falling on her hair, a

bunch of sweet peas pinned upon her bosom, and the light of a great joy

in her eyes as she watches Hugh swinging the four children in a hammock,

and says to Bessie “I never thought I could be as happy as I am now. God

has been very good to me.”

THE END.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Captain Ralph 1 50

Col. Ross of Piedmont 1 50

Robert E. Lee 1 50

Stonewall Jackson 1 50

Her Majesty the Queen 1 50

=CELIA E. CARDNER’S NOVELS.=

Stolen Waters. (In verse) $1 50

Broken Dreams. Do. 1 50

Compensation. Do. 1 50

A Twisted Skein. Do. 1 50

Tested 1 50

Rich Medway 1 50

A Woman’s Wiles 1 50

Terrace Roses 1 50

Seraph—or Mortal? (New) 1 50

=A. S. ROE’S NOVELS.=

True to the Last $1 50

A Long Look Ahead 1 50

The Star and the Cloud 1 50

I’ve Been Thinking 1 50

How could He Help It 1 50

Like and Unlike 1 50

To Love and Be Loved 1 50

Time and Tide 1 50

Woman Our Angel 1 50

Looking Around 1 50

The Cloud on the Heart 1 50

Resolution 1 50

=CAPTAIN MAYNE REID’S WORKS.=

The Scalp Hunters $1 50

The Rifle Rangers 1 50

The War Trail 1 50

The Wood Rangers 1 50

The Wild Huntress 1 50

The Maroon 1 50

The Headless Horseman 1 50

The Rangers and Regulators 1 50

The White Chief 1 50

The Tiger Hunter 1 50

The Hunter’s Feast 1 50

Wild Life 1 50

Osceola, the Seminole 1 50

The Quadroon 1 50

Tile White Gauntlet 1 50

Lost Leonore 1 50

=POPULAR HAND-BOOKS.=

The Habits of Good Society—The nice points of taste and good

manners $1 00

The Art of Conversation—For those who wish to be agreeable

talkers 1 00

The Arts of Writing. Reading and Speaking—For Self-Improvement 1 00

Carelton’s Hand-Book of Popular Quotations 1 50

1000 Legal Don’ts—By Ingersoll Lockwood 75

600 Medical Don’ts—By Ferd. C. Valentine, M.D. 75

On the Chafing Dish—By Harriet P. Bailey 50

Pole on Whist 1 00

Draw Poker without a Master 50

=POPULAR NOVELS, COMIC BOOKS, ETC.=

Les Miserables—Translated from the French. The only complete

edition $1 50

Stephen Lawrence—By Annie Edwardes 1 50

Susan Fielding Do. Do. 1 50

A Woman of Fashion Do. Do. 1 50

Archie Lovell Do. Do. 1 50

Love (L’Amour)—English Translation from Michelet’s famous French

work 1 50

Woman (La Femme)—The Sequel to “L’Amour.” Do. Do. 1 50

Verdant Green—A racy English college story. With 200 comic

illustrations 1 50

Doctor Antonio—By Ruffini 1 50

Beatrice Cenci—From the Italian 1 50

Josh Billings His Complete Writings—With Biography, Steel

Portrait, and 100 Ill. 2 00

Artemas Ward. Complete Comic Writings—With Biography, Portrait,

and 50 Ill. 1 50

Children’s Fairy Geography—With hundreds of beautiful

Illustrations 1 00

All the books on this list are handsomely printed and bound in cloth,

sold everywhere, and by mail, postage free, on receipt of price by

[Illustration]

G. W. DILLINGHAM, Publisher,

33 WEST 23d STREET, NEW YORK.

╔══════════════════════════════════════════╗

║ _G. W. DILLINGHAM CO.’S. PUBLICATIONS._ ║

╟──────────────────────────────────────────╢

║ Miscellaneous Works. ║

║=Out of India=—Rudyard Kipling $1 50║

║=The King of Alberia=—By L. D. 1 50║

║=Fort Reno=—By Mrs. D. B. Dyer 1 00║

║=Lady Olivia=—By Col. Falkner 1 00║

║=White Rose of Memphis= Do. 1 00║

║=Red Rose of Savannah=—A. S. M. 1 00║

║=The Pink Rose of Mexico.= Do. 1 00║

║=Yellow Rose of New Orleans= Do. 1 00║

║=It’s a Way Love Has= 25║

║=Zarailla=—By Beulah 50║

║=Florine= 50║

║=Smart Saying s of Children=—Paul 1 00║

║=Crazy History of the U. S.= 50║

║=Rocks and Shoals=—Swisher 50║

║=The Wages of Sin= 50║

║=Idwymon=—By Fred’k A. Randle 1 50║

║=The Disagreeable Man=—A. S. M. 75║

║=Our Artist in Spain, etc.=—Carleton 1 00║

║=Dawn to Noon=—By Violet Fanc. 1 50║

║=Constance’s Fate.= Do. 1 50║

║=Missing Chord=—Lucy Dillingham 1 25║

║=Ronbar=—By R. S. Dement 1 50║

║=A Manless World=—Yourell 75║

║=Journey to Mars=—Pope 1 50║

║=The Dissolution=—Dandelyon 1 00║

║=Lion Jack=—By P. T. Barnum 1 50║

║=Jack in the Jungle.= Do. 1 50║

║=Dick Broadhead.= Do. 1 50║

║=Red Birds Christmas Story=, Holmes 1 00║

║=Flashes from “Ouida”= 1 25║

║=Private Letters of a French Woman= 75║

║=Passion’s Dream=—W. Boyd Sample 75║

║=The Arrows of Love=—L. Daintrey 75║

║=Eighty-Seven Kisses=—By? 75║

║=Treasury of Knowledge= 1 00║

║=Mrs. Spriggins=—Widow Bedott 25║

║=Phemie Frost=—Ann S. Stephens 1 50║

║=Disagreeable Woman=—Starr 75║

║=The Story of a Day in London= 25║

║=Lone Ranch=—By Mayne Reid 1 50║

║=The Train Boy=—Horatio Alger 1 25║

║=Dan, The Detective=—Alger 1 25║

║=Death Blow to Spiritualism= 50║

║=The Sale of Mrs. Adral=—Costello 50║

║=The New Adam and Eve=—Todd 50║

║=Bottom Facts in Spiritualism= 1 50║

║=The Mystery of Central Park=—Bly 50║

║=Debatable Land=—R. Dale Owen 1 00║

║=Threading My Way.= Do. 1 50║

║=Princess Noarmahal=—Geo. Sand 1 50║

║=Galgano’s Wooing=—Stebbins 1 25║

║=Stories about Doctors=—Jeffreson 1 50║

║=Stories about Lawyers.= Do. 1 50║

║=Doctor Antonio=—By Ruffini 1 50║

║=Beatrice Cenci=—From the Italian 1 50║

║=The Story of Mary= 1 50║

║=Madame=—By Frank Lee Benedict 1 50║

║=A Late Remorse.= Do. 1 50║

║=Hammer and Anvil.= Do. 2 50║

║=Her Friend Laurence.= Do. 2 50║

║=L’Assommoir=—Zola’s great novel 1 00║

║=Mignonnette=—By Sangrée 1 00║

║=Jessica=—By Mrs. W. H. White 1 50║

║=Women of To-day.= Do. 1 50║

║=The Baroness=—Joaquin Miller 1 50║

║=One Fair Woman.= Do. 1 50║

║=The Burnhams=—Mrs. G. E. Stewart 2 00║

║=Eugene Ridgewood=—Paul James 1 50║

║=Braxton’s Bar=—R. M. Daggett 1 50║

║=Miss Beck=—By Tilbury Holt 1 50║

║=A Wayward Life= 1 00║

║=Winning Winds=—Emerson 1 50║

║=The Fallen Pillar Saint=—Best 1 25║

║=An Errald Girl=—Johnson 1 50║

║=Ask Her, Man! Ask Her!= 1 50║

║=Hidden Power=—T. H. Tibbles 1 50║

║=Parson Thorne=—E. M. Buckingham 2 50║

║=Errors=—By Ruth Carter 1 50║

║=The Abbess of Jouarre=—Renan 1 00║

║=Bulwer’s Letters to His Wife= 2 00║

║=Sense=—A serious book. Pomeroy 1 50║

║=Gold Dust= Do. 1 50║

║=Our Saturday Nights= Do. 1 50║

║=Nonsense=—A comic book Do. 1 50║

║=Brick Dust.= Do. Do. 1 50║

║=Home Harmonies.= Do. 1 50║

║=Vesta Vane=—By L. King, R. 1 50║

║=Kimball’s Novels=—6 vols. Per Vol. 1 00║

║=Warwick=—M. T. Walworth 1 50║

║=Hotspur.= Do. 1 50║

║=Lulu.= Do. 1 50║

║=Stormchif.= Do. 1 50║

║=Delaplaine.= Do. 1 50║

║=Beverly.= Do. 1 50║

║=Zahara.= Do. 1 50║

║=The Darling of an Empire= 1 50║

║=Clip Her Wing, or Let Her Soar= 1 50║

║=Nina’s Peril=—By Mrs. Miller 1 50║

║=Marguerite’s Journal=—For Girls 1 50║

║=Orpheus C. Kerr=—Four vols. in one 2 00║

║=Perfect Gentleman=—Lockwood 1 25║

║=Purple and Fine Linen=—Fawcett 1 50║

║=Pauline’s Trial=—L. D. Courtney 1 50║

║=Tancredi=—Dr. E. A. Wood 1 50║

║=Measure for Measure=—Stanley 1 50║

║=A Marvelous Coincidence= 50║

║=Two Men of the World=—Bates 50║

║=A God of Gotham=—Bascom 50║

║=Congressman John=—MacCarthy 50║

║=So Runs the World Away= 50║

║=Birds of a Feather=—Sothern 1 50║

║=Every Man His Own Doctor= 2 00║

║=Professional Criminals=—Byrnes 5 00║

║=Heart Hungry.= Mrs. Westmoreland 1 50║

║=Clifford Troupe.= Do. 50║

║=Price of a Life=—R. F. Sturgis 1 50║

║=Marston Hall=—L. Ella Byrd 1 50║

║=Conquered=—By a New Author 1 50║

║=Tales from the Popular Operas= 1 50║

║=The Fall of Kilman Kon= 1 50║

║=San Miniato=—Mrs. C. V. Hamilton 50║

║=All for Her=—A Tale of New York 1 50║

╚══════════════════════════════════════════╝

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in

spelling.

2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.

3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.