THE EFFECT.
Not quite one year has passed away since the warm Spring night when Ben
Burt first strolled leisurely up the long avenue leading to Redstone
Hall. It was April, then, and the early flowers were in bloom, but now
the chill March winds are blowing, and the brown stocks of the tall
rose-tree brush against the window, from which a single light streams
out into the darkness. It is the window of the little library where we
have seen Frederic before, and where we meet him once again. He has
changed somewhat since we saw him last, and there is upon his face a
sad, thoughtful expression, as if far down in his heart there were a
haunting memory which would follow him through all time, and embitter
every hour.
Little by little, step by step, he had come to hate the wealth which had
tempted him to sin—to loathe the beautiful home he once loved so
well—and this had prompted him to leave it and go back to the old house
on the river, where his early boyhood was passed. There were not so many
mournful memories clustering around that spot, he thought, and if he
once were there, he might perhaps forget the past, and be happy again.
He would open an office in the city, and if possible earn his own
living, so as not to spend more of Marian’s fortune than was necessary.
He could not tell why he wished to save it. He only knew that he could
not bear to use it, and he roused himself at last, determining to do
something for himself. This plan of moving to the Hudson was opposed by
Isabel, who liked the easy, luxurious life she led at Redstone Hall;
but, for once, Frederic would not listen to her, and he had made his
arrangements to leave Kentucky in May, at which time his house would be
in readiness to receive him. Isabel would go with him, of course—she was
necessary to him now, though, faithful to the promise made to little
Alice, he had never talked to her of love. And she was glad that he had
not; for, with the knowledge she possessed, she would not have dared to
listen to his suit, and she often questioned herself as to what the end
would be.
One year or more of the dreary seven was gone, but the future looked
almost hopeless to her, and she was sometimes tempted to go away and
leave the dangerous game at which she was so hazardously playing. Still,
when she seriously contemplated such a proceeding, she shrunk from
it—for, even though she were never Frederic’s wife, she would rather
remain where she was, and see that no other came to dispute the little
claim she had. All her assurance was gone, and in her dread lest
Frederic should say the words she must not hear, she assumed toward him
a half distant, half bashful manner, far more attractive than a bolder
course of conduct would have been, and Frederic, while watching her in
this new phase of character, struggled manfully against the feeling
which sometimes prompted him to break his promise to the blind girl. She
was faulty, he knew—far more so than he had once imagined—but she was
brilliant, beautiful, accomplished, and he thought that he loved her.
But not of her was he thinking that chill March night when he sat alone
in the library watching the flickering of the lamp, and listening to the
evening wind, as it shook the bushes beneath his window. It was Marian’s
seventeenth birthday, and he was thinking of her, wondering what she
would have been had she lived to see this day. She was surely dead, he
thought, or some tidings of her would have come to him ere this, and
when he remembered how gentle, how pure and self-denying her short life
had been, he said involuntarily, “Poor Marian—she deserved a better
fate, and should she come back to me again I would prove to her that I
am not all unworthy of her love.”
There was a shuffling tread in the hall, and Josh appeared bringing
several letters. One bore the Louisville post-mark—one was from New
Orleans—one from Lexington, and one from Sarah Green!
“Who writes to me from New York?” was Frederic’s mental query, and
tearing open the wrapper he drew nearer to him the lamp and read, while
there crept over him a nameless terror as if even while he was thinking
of the lost, the grave had opened at his feet and shown him where she
lay; not in the moaning river—not in the deep, dark woods, nor on the
western prairies, as he had sometimes feared, but far away in the great
city, where there was no one to pity—no eye to weep for her save that of
the rude woman who had written him the letter.
There Marian had suffered and died for him. His Marian—his young
girl-wife! He could call her so now, and he did, saying it softly,
reverently, as we speak always of the departed, while the tears he was
not ashamed to weep, dropped upon the soiled sheet. He did not think of
doubting it. There was no reason why he should, and his heart went out
after the dead as it had never gone after the living. It seemed to him
so terrible that she should die among strangers, so far from home; and
he wondered much how she ever chanced to get there. She had remembered
him to the last, “forgiving all his sins,” the woman said, and knowing
how much those few words meant, he said again, “Poor Marian,” just as
the door opened and Alice came slowly in.
There was a grand party that night at the house of Lawyer Gibson, and at
Isabel’s request Alice had come to ask how long before the carriage
would be ready. Dinah had told her that Frederic was in the library but
he sat so still she thought he was not there, and she said inquiringly,
“Frederic?”
“Yes, darling,” was his answer in a tone which startled the sensitive
child, for she detected in it a sound of tears, and hurrying to his side
she passed her hand over his face to assure herself that she heard
aright.
“Has something dreadful happened?” she asked, as she felt the moisture
on his eye-lids.
Taking her on his lap, and laying his burning cheek against her cool
forehead, Frederic said to her very tenderly and low:
“Alice, poor Marian is dead! Here is the letter which came to tell us,”
and he placed it in her hand. There was a sudden upward flashing of the
brown eyes, and then their soft light was quenched in tears, as, burying
her face in the young man’s bosom, the blind girl sobbed, “Oh, no, no,
Frederic, no.”
For several minutes she wept passionately, while her little frame shook
with strong emotion. Then lifting up her head and reaching toward the
spot where she knew the letter lay, she said:
“Read it to me, Frederic,” and he did read, pausing occasionally as he
was interrupted by her low moaning cry.
“Is that all?” she asked, when he had finished. “Didn’t you leave out a
word?”
“Not one,” was his reply, and with quivering lips the heart-broken child
continued, “Marian sent no message for poor blind Alice to remember—she
never thought of me who loved her so much. Why didn’t she, Frederic?”
and the sightless eyes looked beseechingly at him as if he could explain
the mystery.
Poor child! Rudolph McVicar did not know how strong was the affection
between those two young girls, or he would surely have sent a message to
one who seemed almost a part of Marian herself, and it was this very
omission which finally led the close reasoning child to doubt the truth
of the letter. But she did not doubt it now. Marian was really dead to
her, and for a longtime she sat with Frederic, saying nothing, but by
her silence manifesting to him how great was her grief at this sudden
bereavement.
At last remembering her errand, she told him why she had come, and asked
what she should say to Isabel.
“Tell her I shall not go,” he said, “but she need not remain at home for
that. The carriage can be ready at any time, and Alice will tell her the
rest? You’ll do it better than I.”
Alice would rather that some one else should carry to Isabel tidings
which she felt intuitively would be received with more pleasure than
pain, but if Frederic requested it of her she would do it, and she
started to return. To her the night and the day were the same, and
ordinarily it mattered not whether there were lamps in the hall or not,
but now, as she passed from the library into the adjoining room, there
came over her a feeling of such utter loneliness and desolation that she
turned back and said to Frederic:
“Will you go with me up the stairs, for now that Marian is dead, the
night is darker than it ever was before.”
He appreciated her feelings, and taking her by the hand, led her to the
door of Isabel’s room. Very impatiently Isabel had waited for her,
wishing to know what hour Frederic intended starting, and if there would
be time for Luce, her waiting maid, to curl her long, black hair.
Accidentally she had overheard a gentleman say that if she wore curls
she would be the most beautiful woman in Kentucky, and as he was to be
present at the party she determined to prove his assertion.
“I hope that young one stays well,” she said, angrily, as the moments
went by, and at last, as Alice did not come, she bade Luce put the iron
in the fire, and commence her operations.
The negress accordingly obeyed the orders, and six long curls were
streaming down the lady’s back, while a seventh was wound around the
hissing iron in close proximity to her ear, when Alice came in, and
hurrying up to her side, began:
“Oh, Miss Huntington, poor, dear Marian wasn’t dead all the time they
thought she was. She was in New York, with Mrs. ——”
She did not finish the sentence; for, feeling certain that her treachery
was about to be disclosed, the guilty Isabel jumped so suddenly as to
bring the hot iron directly across her ear and a portion of her
forehead. Maddened with the pain, and a dread of impending disgrace, she
struck the innocent girl a blow which sent her reeling across the floor.
“Oh, Lordy!” exclaimed Luce, untwisting the hair so rapidly that a
portion of it was torn from the head—“oh, Lordy! Miss Isabel, Alice
never tached you;” and, throwing the iron upon the hearth, she hurried
to the prostrate child, who had thrown herself upon the lounge and was
sobbing so loud and hysterically that Isabel herself was alarmed, and
while bathing her blistered ear, tried to stammer out some apology for
what she had done.
“I supposed you carelessly ran against me,” she said; “and it hurt me so
I didn’t know what I was doing. Pray, don’t cry that way. You’ll raise
the house;” and she took hold of Alice’s shoulder.
“I wish she would,” muttered Luce; and, stooping down, she whispered:
“Screech louder, so as to fotch Marster Frederic, and tell him jest how
she done sarved you!”
But nothing could be further from Alice’s mind than crying for effect.
It was not so much the indignity she had suffered, nor yet the pain of
the blow which made her weep so bitterly. It was rather the utter sense
of desolation, the feeling that her last hope had drifted away with the
certainty of Marian’s death, and for a time she wept on passionately;
while Isabel, with a hurricane in her bosom, walked the floor, wondering
if her perfidy would ever be discovered, and feeling that she cared but
little now whether it were, or not. Suspense was terrible, and when the
violence of Alice’s sobs had subsided, she said to her:
“Where is Marian, and when is she coming home?”
“Oh, never, never!” answered the child. “She can’t come back, for she’s
dead now, Marian is;” and Alice covered her face again with her hands.
“Dead!” exclaimed Isabel, in a far different voice from that in which
she had spoken before. “What do you mean?” and passing her arm very
caressingly around the little figure lying on the lounge, she continued:
“I am sorry I struck you, Alice. I didn’t know what I was doing, and you
must forgive me, will you, darling? There, dry your eyes, and tell me
all about poor Marian. When did she die, and where?”
As well as she could for her tears, Alice told what she knew, and
satisfied that she was in no way implicated, Isabel became still more
amiable, even speaking pleasantly to Luce and telling her she might do
what she pleased the remainder of the evening.
“Of course I shouldn’t think of attending the party now, even if I were
not so dreadfully burned. Poor Frederic! how badly he must feel!”
“He does,” said Alice, “and he cried, too.”
Isabel curled her proud lip contemptuously, and dipping her handkerchief
again in the water, she applied it to her blistered ear, thinking to
herself that he would probably be easily consoled. It would be proper,
too, for her to commence the consoling process at once, by expressing
her sympathy; and leaving Alice alone she went to the library where
Frederic still was sitting, so absorbed in his own sad reflections that
he did not observe her approach until she said, “Alice tells me you have
heard from Marian,” then he started suddenly, and turning toward her,
answered, “Yes, you can read what is written here if you like,” and he
passed her McVicar’s letter.
It did seem to Isabel that there was something familiar about the
writing, particularly in the formation of the capitals, but she
suspected no fraud, and accepted the whole as coming from Sarah Green.
“This is some new acquaintance Marian picked up,” she thought. “The
woman speaks of having known her but a short time. Probably she left
Mrs. Daniel Burt and stumbled upon Sarah Green,” and with an exultant
smile upon her beautiful face, she put the letter down, and laying her
hand very lightly on Frederic’s shoulder, said, “I am sorry for you,
Frederic, though it is better, of course, to know just what did become
of the poor girl.”
Frederic could not tell why it was that Isabel’s words of sympathy
grated harshly on his ear. He only knew that they did, and he was glad
when she left him alone, telling him she should not, of course, attend
the party, and saying in reply to his question as to what ailed her ear,
that Luce, who was curling her hair, carelessly burned it.
“By the way,” she continued, “when I felt the hot iron, I jumped and
throwing out my hand accidentally hit Alice on her head, and, if you’ll
believe me, the sensitive child thinks I intended it, and has almost
cried herself sick.”
This falsehood she deemed necessary, in case the truth of the matter
should ever reach Frederic through another channel, and feeling
confident that she was safe in every respect, and that the prize she so
much coveted was nearly won, she left him and sought her mother’s
chamber.
In the kitchen, the news of Marian’s certain death was received with
noisy demonstrations—old Dinah and Hetty trying hard to outdo each
other, and see which should shed the most and the biggest tears. The
woollen aprons of both were brought into constant requisition, while
Hetty rang so many changes upon the virtues of the departed that Uncle
Phil became disgusted, and said “for his part he’d hearn enough ’bout
dead folks. He liked Miss Marian as well as anybody, but he did up his
mournin’ them times that he wet hisself to the skin a tryin’ to fish her
out of the river. He thought his heart would bust then, though he knew
all the time she wasn’t thar, and he told ’em so, too. He knew she’d run
away to New York, and he allus s’posed they’d hear she died summers at
the South. He wan’t disappointed. He could tell by his feelin’s when
anything was gwine to happen, and for more’n a week back he’d had it on
his mind that Miss Marian was dead—they couldn’t fool him!” and
satisfied that he had impressed his audience with a sense of his
foreknowledge, Uncle Phil pulled off his boots and started for bed,
leaving Dinah and Hetty to discuss the matter at their leisure and
speculate upon the probable result.
“I can tell you,” said Dinah, “it won’t be no time at all afore
Marster’ll be settin’ to that Isabel, and if he does, I ‘clar for’t I’ll
run away, or hire out, see if I don’t. I ain’t a goin’ to be sassed by
none of yer low flung truck and hev ’em carryin’ the keys. She may jest
go back whar she come from, and I’ll tell her so, too. I’ll gin her a
piece of my mind.”
“She is gwine back,” suggested Hetty, who, faithful to the memory of
Miss Beatrice, admired Isabel on account of a fancied resemblance
between the two. “Don’t you mind how Marster is a gwine to move up to
somewhar?”
“That’s nothin’,” returned Dinah. “They’ll come back in the Fall, but I
shan’t be here. I’ll hire myself out, and you kin be the head a spell.”
This prospect was not an unpleasant one to Hetty, who looked with a
jealous eye upon Dinah’s rather superior position, and as a sure means
of attaining the object of her ambition and becoming in turn the
favorite, she warmly espoused the cause of Isabel, and waged many a
battle of words with Dinah, who took no pains to conceal her dislike.
Thus two or three weeks went by, and as nothing occurred to cause Dinah
immediate alarm, her fears gradually subsided, until at last she forgot
them altogether, while even Marian ceased to be a daily subject of
conversation.
To Frederic reality was more endurable than suspense, for he could look
the future in the face and think what he would do. He was free to marry
Isabel, he believed; but, as was quite natural, he cared less about it
now than when there was an obstacle in his way. There was no danger of
losing her, he was sure, and he could wait as long as he pleased! Once
he thought of going to New York to make some inquiries, and if possible
find Marian’s grave, but when he reflected that Sarah Green was on the
ocean, even before her letter reached Kentucky, he decided to defer the
matter until their removal to Yonkers, which was to take place about the
middle of May. Isabel, too, had her own views upon the subject. There no
longer existed a reason why Frederic should not address her, and in her
estimation nothing could be more proper than to christen the new home
with a bride. So she bent all her energies to the task, smiling her
sweetest smile, saying her softest words, and playing the amiable lady
to perfection. But it availed her nothing, and she determined at last
upon a bolder movement.
Finding Frederic alone in the parlor, one day, she said:
“I suppose it will not affect you materially if mother and I leave when
you remove to Yonkers. Agnes Gibson, you know, is soon to be married,
and she has invited me to go with her to Florida, where, she says, I can
procure a good situation as music-teacher, and mother wishes to go back
to New Haven.”
The announcement, and the coolness with which it was made, startled
Frederic, and he replied, rather anxiously:
“I have never contemplated a separation. I shall need your mother there
more than I do here, for I shall not have Dinah.”
“Perhaps you can persuade her to stay, but I think it best for me to
go,” returned Isabel, delighted with her success.
Frederic Raymond did not wish Isabel to leave him, and, after a moment,
he said:
“Why must you go, Isabel? Do you wish for a larger salary? Are you tired
of us—of me?” And the last words were spoken hesitatingly, as if he
doubted the propriety of his saying them.
“Oh, Frederic!” and in the soft, black eyes raised for an instant to his
face, and then modestly withdrawn, there was certainly a tear! “Oh,
Frederic!” was all she said, and Frederic felt constrained to answer:
“What is it, Isabel? Why do you wish to go?”
“I don’t—I don’t,” she answered, passionately; “but respect for myself
demands it. People are already talking about my living here with you;
and now poor Marian is dead and you are a widower, it will be tenfold
worse. I wish they would let us alone, for I have been so happy here and
am so much attached to Alice. It will almost break my heart to leave
her!”
Isabel Huntington was wondrously beautiful then, and Frederic Raymond
was sorely tempted to bid her stay, not as Alice’s governess, nor yet as
the daughter of his housekeeper, but as his wife and mistress of his
house. Several times he tried to speak, and at last, crossing over to
where she sat, he began—“Isabel, I have never heard that people were
talking of you; there is no reason why they should, but if they are I
can devise a method of stopping it and still keeping you with us. I have
never spoken to you of—” love, he was going to say, and the graceful
head was already bent to catch the sound, when a little voice chimed in,
“Please, Frederic, I am here,” and looking up they saw before them
Alice.
She had entered unobserved and was standing just within the door, where
she heard what Frederic said. Intuitively she felt what would follow
next, and scarcely knowing what she did, she had apprised them of her
presence.
“The brat!” was Isabel’s mental comment, while Frederic was sensible of
a feeling of relief, as if he had suddenly wakened from a spell, or been
saved from some great peril. For several moments Isabel sat, hoping
Alice would leave the room, but she did not, and in no very amiable mood
the lady was herself constrained to go, by a call from her mother, who
wished to see her on some trivial matter.
When she was gone, Alice groped her way to the sofa, and climbing upon
it said to Frederic, “Won’t you read me that letter again which Mrs.
Green wrote to you?”
He complied with her request, and when he had finished, the child
continued, “If Marian had really died, wouldn’t she have sent some
message to me, and wouldn’t that woman have told us how she happened to
be way off there, and all about it?”
“_If Marian really died!_” repeated Frederic. “Do you doubt it?”
“Yes,” returned the child, “Marian loved me most as well as she did you,
and she surely would have talked of me and sent me some word; then, too,
if there much difference between scarlet fever and canker-rash? Don’t
some folks call it by both names?”
“I believe they do,” said Frederic, wondering to what all this was
tending.
“Marian had the scarlet fever, and I, too, just after I came here,” was
Alice’s next remark. “You were at college, but I remember it, and so
does Dinah, for I asked her a little while ago. Can folks have it
twice?” and the blind eyes looked up at Frederic, as if sure that this
last argument at least were proof conclusive of Marian’s existence.
“Sometimes, but not often,” answered Frederic, the shadow of a doubt
creeping into his own mind.
“And if they do,” persisted Alice, who had been consulting with
Dinah—“if they do, they seldom have it hard enough to die, so Dinah
says; and I don’t believe that was a good, true letter. Somebody wrote
it, to be wicked. Marian is alive, I almost know.”
“Must you see her dead body, to be convinced?” asked Frederic, a little
impatiently; and Alice rejoined:
“No, no; but somehow it don’t seem right for you to—to—oh, Frederic!”
and, bursting into tears, she came at once to the root of the whole
matter.
She had thought a great deal about the letter, wondering why Marian had
failed to speak of her, and at last rejecting it as an impossibility.
Suddenly, too, she remembered that once, when she and Marian were sick,
she heard some of the neighbors speak of their disease as scarlet fever,
while others called it the canker-rash; and all united in saying they
could have it but once. This had led to inquiries of Dinah, and had
finally resulted in her conviction that Marian might possibly be living.
Full of this new idea, she had hastened to Frederic, and accidentally
overheard what he was saying to Isabel. She comprehended it, too, and
knew that but for her unexpected presence he would, perhaps, have asked
the lady to be his wife, and she felt again as if Marian were there
urging her to stand once more between Frederic and temptation. All this
she told to him, and the proud, haughty man, who would have spurned a
like interference from any other source, listened patiently to the
pleadings of the childish voice, which said to him so earnestly:
“Don’t let Isabel be your wife!”
“What objection have you to her?” he asked; and when she replied, “She
isn’t good,” he questioned her further as to the cause of her
dislike—“was there really a reason, or was it mere prejudice?”
“I try to like her,” said Alice, “and sometimes I do real well, but she
don’t act alone with me like she does when you are round. She’ll be just
as cross as fury, and if you come in, she’ll smooth my hair and call me
‘little pet.’”
“Does she ever strike you?” asked Frederic, feeling a desire to hear
Alice’s version of that story.
Instantly tears came in Alice’s eyes, and she replied, “Only once—and
she said she didn’t mean that—but, Frederic, she did,” and in her own
way Alice told the story, which sounded to Mr. Raymond more like the
truth than the one he had heard from Isabel. Gradually the conviction
was forcing itself upon him that Isabel was not exactly what she seemed.
Still he could not suddenly shake off the chain which bound him, and
when Alice said to him in her odd, straightforward way, “Don’t finish
what you were saying to Isabel until you’ve been to New York and found
if the letter is true,” he answered, “Fie, Alice, you are unreasonable
to ask such a thing of me. Marian is dead. I have no doubt of it, and I
am free from the promise made to you more than a year since.”
“May be she isn’t,” was Alice’s reply, “and if she is, we shall both
feel better, if you go and see. Go, Frederic, do. It won’t take long,
and if you find she is really dead, I’ll never speak another naughty
word of Isabel, but try to love her just as I want to love your wife.
Will you go, Frederic? I heard you say you ought to see the house before
we moved, and Yonkers is close to New York, isn’t it?”
This last argument was more convincing than any which Alice had offered,
for Frederic had left the entire management of repairs to one whom he
knew understood such matters better than himself, consequently he had
not been there at all, and he had several times spoken of going up to
see that all was right. Particularly would he wish to do this if he took
thither a bride in May, and to Alice’s suggestion he replied, “I might,
perhaps, do that for the sake of gratifying you.”
“Oh, if you only would!” answered Alice. “You’ll find her somewhere—I
know you will—and then you’ll be so glad you went.”
Frederic was not quite so sure of that, but it was safe to go, and while
Isabel had been communicating to her mother what he had been saying to
her, and asking if it were not almost a proposal, he was deciding to
start for New York immediately. Alice’s reasons for doubting the
authenticity of the letter seemed more and more plausible the longer he
thought of them, and at supper that night he astonished both Mrs.
Huntington and daughter by saying that he was going North in a few days,
and he wished the former to see that his wardrobe was in a proper
condition for traveling. Isabel’s face grew dark as night, and the
wrathful expression of her eyes was noticeable even to him. “There is a
good deal of temper there,” was his mental comment, while Isabel feigned
some trivial excuse and left the room to hide the anger she knew was
visible upon her face. He had commenced proposing to her, she was sure,
and he should not leave Redstone Hall until he explained himself more
fully. Still it would not be proper for her to broach the subject—her
mother must do that. It was a parent’s duty to see that her daughter’s
feelings were not trifled with, and by dint of cajolery, entreaties and
threats, she induced the old lady to have a talk with Frederic, and ask
him what his intentions were.
Mrs. Huntington was not very lucid in her remarks, and without exactly
knowing what she meant, Frederic replied at random that he was in
earnest in all he had said to Isabel about her remaining there, that he
did not wish her to go away for she seemed one of the family, and that
he would speak with her further upon the subject when he came back. This
was not very definite, but Mrs. Huntington brushed it up a little ere
repeating it to Isabel, who readily accepted it as an intimation that
after his return, he intended asking her directly to be his wife.
Accordingly she told Agnes Gibson confidentially what her expectations
were, and Agnes told it confidentially to several others, who had each a
confidential friend, and so in course of a few days it was generally
understood that Redstone Hall was to have another mistress. Agnes in
particular was very busy disseminating news, hoping by this means to
turn the public gossip from herself and the white-haired man, or rather
the plantation in Florida, which she was soon to marry. In spite of her
protestations to the contrary people would say that _money_ and not
_love_ actuated her choice, and she was glad of anything which would
give her a little rest. So she repeated Isabel’s story again and again,
charging each and every one never to mention it and consulting
between-times with her bosom friend as to what her arrangements were,
and suggesting that they be married on the same day and so make the same
tour. On the subject of bridal presents Agnes had a kind of mania, and
knowing this, some of her friends, who lived at a distance and could not
be present at the ceremony, sent theirs in advance—several of them as a
matter of course deciding upon the same thing, so that in Agnes’ private
drawer there were now deposited _three fish knives and forks_, all of
which were the young lady’s particular aversion. She would dispose of
one of them at all hazards, she thought, and receive more than an
equivalent in return, so she began to pave the way for a costly bridal
present from the future Mrs. Frederic Raymond, by hinting of an elegant
_fish knife and fork_, which in its satin-lined box would look
handsomely upon the table, and Isabel, though detesting the article and
thinking she should prefer almost anything else, said she was delighted,
and when her friend came home from the south, she should invite her to
dinner certainly once a week.
This arrangement was generally understood, as were many others of a
similar nature, until at last even the bridal dress was selected, and
people said it was making in Lexington, where Frederic was well known,
and where the story of his supposed engagement circulated rapidly,
reaching to the second-rate hotel where Rudolph McVicar was a boarder.
Exultingly his wild eyes flashed, and when he heard, as he did, that the
wedding was fixed for the 20th of May, which he knew was Isabel’s
birthday, he counted the hours which must elapse ere the moment of his
triumph came. And while he waited thus, and rumor, with her lying
tongue, told each day some fresh falsehood of “that marriage in high
life,” Frederic Raymond went on his way, and with each milestone passed,
drew nearer and nearer to the lost one—the Marian who would stand
between him and Isabel.