The soft September twilight was filling the room. One pale flash of sunset came slanting through the grated window and fell on Inez Catheron's face. She stood in the middle of the floor, her clasped hands hanging loosely before her, an indescribable expression on her face.

"Poor Juan," she said, wearily; "don't be too hard on him, Aunt Helena. We have none of us ever been too gentle with him in his wrong doing, and he wasn't really bad at heart then. If any letter should come from him to you, for me, say nothing about it—bring it here. I don't think he will be taken; he can double like a hare, and he is used to being hunted. I hope he is far away at sea before this. For the rest, I have nothing to say—nothing. I can live disgraced and die a felon if need be, but not ten thousand disgraceful deaths can make me speak one word more than I choose to utter."

Lady Helena's stifled sobbing filled the room. "Oh, my child! my child!" she cried; "what madness is this, and for one so unworthy!"

"But there will be no such tragical ending. I will be tried at the Assizes and acquitted. They can't bring me in guilty. Jane Pool's circumstancial evidence may sound very conclusive in the ears of Mr. Justice Smiley, but it won't bring conviction with a grand jury. You see it wasn't sufficient even for the coroner. The imprisonment here will be the worst, but you will lighten that. Then when it is all over, I will leave England and go back to Spain, to my mother's people. They will receive me gladly, I know. It is growing dark, Aunt Helena—pray don't linger here longer."

Lady Helena arose, her face set in a look of quiet, stubborn resolve.

"Take good care of poor Victor, and watch the baby well. He is the last of the Catherons now, you know. Don't let any one approach Victor but Mrs. Marsh, and warn her not to speak of my arrest—the shock might kill him. I wish—I wish I had treated her more kindly in the past. I feel as though I could never forgive myself now."

"You had better not talk so much, Inez," her aunt said, almost coldly. "You may be overheard. I don't pretend to understand you. You know best, whether he, for whom you are making this sacrifice, deserves it or not. Good-night, my poor child—I will see you early to-morrow."

Lady Helena, her lips set in that rigid line of resolve, her tears dried, rode back to Catheron Royals. The darkness had fallen by this time—fallen with black, fast-drifting clouds, and chill whistling winds. Two or three lights, here and there, gleamed along the lofty facade of the old mansion, now a house of mourning indeed. Beneath its roof a foul, dark murder had been done—beneath its roof its master lay ill unto death. And for the guilty wretch who had wrought this ruin, Inez Catheron was to suffer imprisonment, suspicion, and life-long disgrace. The curse that the towns-people invoked on Juan Catheron, Lady Helena had it in her heart to echo.

Her first act was to dismiss Jane Pool, the nurse.

"We keep servants, not spies and informers, at Catheron Royals," she said, imperiously. "Go to Mrs. Marsh—what is due you she will pay. You leave Catheron Royals without a character, and at once."

"I'm not afraid, my lady," Jane Pool retorted, with a toss of her head. "People will know why I'm turned away, and I'll get plenty of places. I knew I would lose my situation for telling the truth, but I'm not the first that has suffered in a good cause."

Lady Helena had swept away, disdaining all reply. She ascended to Sir Victor's room—the night-lamp burned low, mournful shadows filled it. A trusty nurse sat patiently by the bedside.

"How is he now?" asked his aunt, bending above him.

"Much the same, your ladyship—in a sort of stupor all the time, tossing about, and muttering ceaselessly. I can't make out anything he says, except the name Ethel. He repeats that over and over in a way that breaks my heart to hear."

The name seemed to catch the dulled ear of the delirious man.

"Ethel," he said, wearily. "Yes—yes I must go and fetch Ethel home. I wish Inez would go away—her black eyes make one afraid—they follow me everywhere. Ethel—Ethel—Ethel!" He murmured the name dreamily, tenderly. Suddenly he half started up in bed and looked about him wildly. "What brings Juan Catheron's picture here? Ethel! come away from him. How dare you meet him here alone?" He grasped Lady Helena's wrist and looked at her with haggard, bloodshot eyes. "He was your lover once—how dare he come here? Oh, Ethel you won't leave me for him! I love you—I can't live without you—don't go. Oh, my Ethel! my Ethel! my Ethel!"

He fell back upon the bed with a sort of sobbing cry that brought the tears streaming from the eyes of the tender-hearted nurse.

"He goes on like that continual, my lady," she said, "and it's awful wearing. Always 'Ethel.' Ah, it's a dreadful thing?"

"Hooper will watch with you to-night, Martha," Lady Helena said. "Mrs. Marsh will relieve you to-morrow. No stranger shall come near him. I will take a look at baby before going home. I shall return here early to-morrow, and I need not tell you to be very watchful!—I know you will."

"You needn't indeed, my lady," the woman answered, mournfully. "I was his mother's own maid, and I've nursed him in my arms, a little white-haired baby, many a time. I will be watchful, my lady."

Lady Helena left her and ascended to the night nursery. She had to pass the room where the tragedy had been enacted. She shivered as she went by. She found the little heir of Catheron Royals asleep in his crib, guarded by the under-nurse—head-nurse now, vice Mrs. Pool cashiered.

"Take good care of him, nurse," was Lady Helena's last charge, as she stooped and kissed him, tears in her eyes; "poor little motherless lamb."

"I'll guard him with my life, my lady," the girl answered, sturdily. "No harm shall come to him."

Lady Helena returned to Powyss Place and her convalescent husband, her heart lying like a stone in her breast.

"If I hadn't sent for Victor that night—if I had left him at home to protect his wife, this might never have happened," she thought, remorsefully; "he would never have left her alone and unprotected, to sleep beside an open window in the chill night air."

Amid her multiplicity of occupations, amid her own great distress, she had found time to write to Mr. Dobb and his wife a touching, womanly letter. They had come down to see their dead daughter and departed again. She had been taken out of their life—raised far above them, and even in death they would not claim her.

And now that the funeral was over, Inez in prison, the tumult and excitement at an end, who shall describe the awful quiet that fell upon the old house. A ghastly stillness reigned—servants spoke in whispers, and stole from room to room—the red shadow of Murder rested in their midst. And upstairs, in that dusk chamber, while the nights fell, Sir Victor lay hovering between life and death.



CHAPTER XII.

THE FIRST ENDING OF THE TRAGEDY.

Eight days after the burial of Lady Catheron, several events, occurred that wrought the seething excitement of Chesholm to boiling-over point—events talked of for many an after year, by cottage fireside and manor hearth.

The first of these, was Miss Catheron's examination before the police magistrate, and her committal to jail, until the assizes. The justice before whom the young lady appeared was the same who had already issued his warrant for her arrest—a man likely to show her little favor on account of her youth, her beauty, or her rank. Indeed the latter made him doubly bitter; he was a virulent hater of the "bloated aristocracy." Now that he had one of them in his power, he was determined to let the world at large, and Chesholm in small see that neither station nor wealth could be shields for crime.

She took her place in the prisoner's dock, pale, proud, disdainful. She glanced over the dark sea of threatening faces that thronged the court-room, with calmly haughty eyes—outwardly unmoved. Her few friends were there—few indeed, for nearly all believed that if hers was not the hand that had struck the blow, she had been at least her brother's abettor. Many were brought forward who could swear how she had hated my lady; how she had taken every opportunity to insult and annoy her; how again and again my lady had been found crying fit to break her heart after the lash of Miss Inez's stinging tongue. She had loved Sir Victor—she was furiously jealous of his wife—she had fiery Spanish blood in her veins, and a passionate temper that stopped at nothing. Jane Pool was there, more bitter than ever—more deadly in her evidence. Hooper was there, and his reluctantly extorted testimony told dead against her. The examination lasted two days. Inez Catheron was re-committed to prison to stand her trial for murder at the next assizes.

The second fact worthy of note was, that despite the efforts of the Chesholm police, in spite of the London detectives, no tale or tidings of Juan Catheron were to be found. The earth might have opened and swallowed him, so completely had he disappeared.

The third fact was, that Sir Victor Catheron had reached the crisis of his disease and passed it safely. The fever was slowly but steadily abating. Sir Victor was not to die, but to "take up the burden of life again"—a dreary burden, with the wife he had loved so fondly, sleeping in the vaults of Chesholm Church.

The fourth fact was, that the infant heir of the Catherons had been removed from Catheron Royals to Powyss Place, to be brought up under the watchful eye and care of his grand-aunt, Lady Helena.

On the evening of the day that saw Inez Catheron committed for trial, the post brought Lady Helena a letter. The handwriting, evidently disguised, was unfamiliar, and yet something about it set her heart throbbing. She tore it open; it contained an inclosure. There were but three lines for herself:

* * * * *

"DEAR LADY H.: If you will permit a reprobate to be on such familiar terms with your highly respectable name, I address I——, under cover to you, as per order. J.C."

* * * * *

The inclosure was sealed. Lady Helena destroyed her own, and next day drove to the prison with the other. She found her niece sitting comfortably enough in an arm-chair, reading, and except that she had grown thinner and paler, looking little the worse. All that it was possible to do, to make her comfortable, had been done. Without a word the elder woman presented the letter—without a word the younger took it. She turned to the window and read its brief contents.

"Thank Heaven!" her aunt heard her fervently say.

"May I see it, Inez? What does he say? Is he coming here to—"

"Coming here!" The girl's dark eyes looked at her in grave astonishment "Certainly not. He is safe away, I am thankful to say, and out of their reach."

"And he leaves you here to suffer in his stead, and you thank Heaven for it! Inez Catheron, you are the most egregious—. Give me that note!"

Inez smiled as she gave it. Her aunt put up her double eye-glass, and read:

"ON BOARD THE THREE BELLS, "OFF PLYMOUTH, Oct.—.

"DEAR I.:—I've dodged the beaks, you see. I bought a disguise that would have baffled Fouche himself and—here I am. In twenty minutes we'll have weighed anchor and away to the West Indies. I've read the papers, and I'm sorry to see they've taken you on suspicion. Inez, you're a trump, by Jove! I can say no more, but mind you, only I know they can't commit you, I'd come back and confess all. I would, by jingo. I may be a scoundrel, but I'm not such a scoundrel as that.

"I see the baronet's down with brain fever. If he goes off the hooks, there will be only the young 'un between me and the succession. Suppose he goes off the hooks too, then I'll be a full-fledged baronet! But of course he won't. I'm always an unlucky beggar. You may write me on board the Three Bells, at Martinique, and let me know how things go on in England. J."

* * * * *

A flush—a deep angry flush reddened the face of Lady Helena Powyss, as she finished this cool epistle. She crushed it in her hand as though it were a viper.

"The coward! the dastard! And it is for the heartless writer of this insolent letter that you suffer all this. Inez Catheron. I command you—speak out. Tell what you know. Let the guilty wretch you call brother, suffer for his own crime."

Inez looked at her, with something of the stern, haughty glance she had cast upon the rabble of the court room.

"Enough, Lady Helena! You don't know what you are talking about. I have told you before; all I had to say I said at the inquest. It is of no use our talking about it. Come what may, I will never say one word more."

And looking at her stern, resolute face, Lady Helena knew she never would. She tore the letter she held into minutest morsels, and tied them up in her handkerchief.

"I'll burn them when I get home, and I never want to hear his name again. For you," lowering her voice, "we must save you in spite of yourself. You shall never stand your trial at the assizes."

Miss Catheron looked wistfully at the heavily bolted and barred window.

"I should like to be saved," she said, wearily, "at any other price than that of speaking. Once I thought I would die sooner than stoop to run away—a fortnight's imprisonment changes all that. Save me if you can, Aunt Helena—it will kill me to face that horrible mob again."

Her voice died out in a choking sob. She was thoroughly brave, but she shuddered with sick fear and loathing, from head to foot, as she recalled the dark, vindictive faces, the merciless eyes that had confronted her yesterday on every side.

Lady Helena kissed her quietly and turned to go.

"Keep up heart," she said; "before the week ends you shall be free."

Two days later, Lady Helena and the warden of Chesholm jail sat closeted together in deep and mysterious conference. On the table between them lay a crossed check for seven thousand pounds.

The jailor sat with knitted brows and troubled, anxious face. He had been for years a servant in Lady Helena's family. Her influence had procured him his present situation. He had a sick wife and a large family, and seven thousand pounds was an immense temptation.

"You risk nothing," Lady Helena was saying, in an agitated whisper, "and you gain everything. They will blame you for nothing worse than carelessness in the discharge of your duty. You may lose your situation. Very well, lose it. Here are seven thousand pounds for you. In all your life, grubbing here, you would never accumulate half or quarter that sum. You can remove to London; trust to my influence to procure you a better situation there than this. And oh, think of her—young, guiltless—think what her life has been, think what it is now destined to be. She is innocent—I swear it. You have daughters of your own, about her age—think of them and yield!"

He stretched forth his hand and answered, resolutely:

"Say no more, my lady. Let good or ill betide—I'll do it."

The issue of the Chesholm Courier four days later contained a paragraph that created the profoundest excitement from end to end of the town. We quote it:

* * * * *

"ESCAPE OF MISS INEZ CATHERON FROM CHESHOLM JAIL—NO TRACE OF HER TO BE FOUND—SUSPECTED FOUL PLAY—THE JAILER THREATENED BY THE MOB.

* * * * *

"Early on the morning of Tuesday the under jailer, going to Miss Catheron's cell with her breakfast, found, to his astonishment and dismay, that it was empty and his prisoner flown.

"A moment's investigation showed him the bars of the window cleanly filed through and removed. A rope ladder and a friend without, it is quite evident, did the rest. The man instantly gave the alarm and aid came. The head jailer appears to be as much at a loss as his underling, but he is suspected. He lived in his youth in the Powyss family, and was suspected of a strong attachment to the prisoner. He says he visited Miss Catheron last night as usual when on his rounds, and saw nothing wrong or suspicious then, either about the filed bars or the young lady. It was a very dark night, and no doubt her escape was easily enough effected. If any proof of the prisoner's guilt were needed, her flight from justice surely renders it. Miss Catheron's friends have been permitted from the first to visit her at their pleasure and bring her what they chose—the result is to be seen to-day. The police, both of our town and the metropolis, are diligently at work. It is hoped their labors will be more productive of success in the case of the sister than they have been in that of the brother.

"The head jailer, it is said, will be dismissed from his post. No doubt, pecuniarily, this is a matter of indifference to him now. He made his appearance once in the street this morning, and came near being mobbed. Let this escape be rigidly investigated, and let all implicated be punished."

The escape created even more intense and angry excitement than the murder. The rabble were furious. It is not every day that a young lady of the upper ten thousand comes before the lower ten million in the popular character of a murderess. They had been lately favored with such rich and sensational disclosures in high life, love, jealousy, quarrels, assassination. Their victim was safely in their hands; they would try her, condemn her, hang her, and teach the aristocracy, law was a game two could play at. And lo! in the hour of their triumph, she slips from between their hands, and, like her guilty brother and abettor, makes good her escape.

The town of Chesholm was furious. If the jailer had shown his face he stood in danger of being torn to pieces. They understood thoroughly how it was—that he had been bribed. In the dead of night, the man and his family shook the dust of Chesholm off their feet, and went to hide themselves in the busy world of London.

Three weeks passed. October, with its mellow days and frosty nights, was gone. And still no trace of the fugitive. All the skill of the officials of the town and country had been baffled by the cunning of a woman. Inez Catheron might have flown with the dead summer's swallows for all the trace she had left behind.

The first week of November brought still another revelation. Sir Victor Catheron had left the Royals; Lady Helena, the squire, the baby, the nurse, Powyss Place. They were all going to the south of France for the young baronet's spirits and health. Catheron Royals, in charge of Mrs. Marsh and Mr. Hooper, and two servants, on board wages, was left to silence and gloom, rats and evil repute, autumnal rain and wind. The room of the tragedy was shut up, a doomed room, "under the ban" forever.

And so for the present the "tragedy of Catheron Royals" had ended. Brother and sister had fled in their guilt, alike from justice and vengeance. Ethel, Lady Catheron, lay with folded hands and sealed lips in the grim old vaults, and a parchment and a monument in Chesholm Church recorded her name and age—no more. So for the present it had ended.



PART II.



CHAPTER I.

MISS DARRELL.

It had been a week of ceaseless rain—the whole country side was sodden. The month was March, and after an unusually severe January and February, a "soft spell" had come, the rain had poured or dripped incessantly from a smoke-colored sky, the state of the earth was only to be described by that one uncomfortable word "slush." Spring was at hand after a horribly bitter winter—a spring that was all wet and slop, miserable easterly winds, and bleak, drizzling rain.

Perhaps if you searched the whole coast line between Maine and Florida, you could not light upon a drearier, dirtier, duller little town than the town of Sandypoint, Massachusetts. It was a straggling place, more village than town, consisting mainly of one long street, filled with frame houses of staring white, picked out with red doors and very green shutters. Half a dozen pretentious "stores," a school-house, one or two churches, a town hall, and three hotels, comprised the public buildings. Behind Sandypoint stretched out the "forest primeval;" before Sandypoint spread away its one beauty, the bright, broad sea.

To-day it looked neither bright nor broad, but all blurred in gray wet mist; the surf cannonaded the shore with its dull thunder; the woodland in the background was a very black forest in the dreariness, and the roads—who shall paint the state of the Sandypoint roads? Worst of all, the weather showed no sign of relenting, no symptoms of clearing up. The new clock recently affixed to the Sandypoint Town Hall, was striking the matutinal hour of ten. The population of Sandypoint might all have been dead and buried, for any sign of life Independence street showed. Doors and windows were all closed in a melancholy way—a stray, draggled dog the only living creature to be seen.

Or stay—no! there was a girl besides the dog, almost as draggled as her four-footed companion. A girl of eighteen, perhaps, who walked along through rain and discomfort, without so much as an umbrella to protect her. She had come out of one of the ugliest of the ugly buildings nearest the sea, and walked along in a slipshod sort of way, never turning to the right or left to avoid an unusually deep puddle. She plunged right on through it all—a dark, sullen-looking girl in a shabby black dress, a red and black tartan shawl, an old black felt hat with dingy red flowers, long past being spoilt by rain or wind.

And yet she was a pretty girl too—a very pretty girl. Take the Venus Celestis, plump her down in a muddy road in a rainstorm, dress her in a draggled black alpaca, a faded shawl, and shocking bad hat, and what can you say for your goddess but that she isn't a bad-looking young woman? Miss Edith Darrell labors under all these disadvantages at present. More—she looks sulky and sour; it is evident her personal appearance has troubled her very little this dismal March morning. And yet as you look at her, at those big black somber eyes, at those almost classically regular features, at all that untidy abundance of blackish-brown hair, you think involuntarily "what a pretty girl that might be if she only combed her hair, put on a clean dress, and wasn't in bad temper!"

She is tall, she is slender—there is a supple grace about her even now—she has shapely feet and hands. She is a brunette of the most pronounced type, with a skin like creamy velvet, just touched on either ripe cheek with a peach-like glow, and with lips like cherries. You know without seeing her laugh, that she has very white teeth. She is in no way inclined to show her white teeth laughingly this morning. She goes steadily along to her destination—one of the "stores" where groceries and provisions are sold. The storekeeper smilingly accosts her with a brisk "Good-morning, Miss Darrell! Who'd have thought of seeing you out this nasty whether? Can I do anything for you to-day?"

"If you couldn't do anything for me, Mr. Webster," answers Miss Darrell, in no very conciliatory tone, "it isn't likely you'd see me in your shop this morning. Give me one pound of tea, one pound of coffee, three pounds of brown sugar, and a quarter of starch. Put them in this basket, and I'll call for them when I'm going home."

She goes out again into the rain, and makes her way to an emporium where dry goods, boots and shoes, millinery, and crockery are for sale. A sandy-haired young man, with a sandy mustache and a tendency to blushes, springs forward at sight of her, as though galvanized, reddening to the florid roots of his hair.

"Miss Darrell!" he cries, in a sort of rapture. "Who'd a thought it? So early in the morning, and without an umbrella! How's your pa and ma, and all the children?"

"My pa and ma, and all the children are well of course," the young lady answers, impatiently, as though it were out of the nature of things for anything to ail her family. "Mr. Doolittle, I want six yards of crash for kitchen towels, three pairs of shoes for the children, and two yards and a half of stone-colored ribbon for Mrs. Darrell's drab bonnet. And be quick."

The blushes and emotion of young Mr. Doolittle, it was quite evident, were entirely thrown away upon Miss Darrell. "Not at home to lovers," was plainly written on her moody brow and impatient lips. So Mr. Doolittle produced the crash and cut off the six yards, the three pairs of shoes were picked out, and the stoniest of the stone colors chosen, the parcel tied up and paid for.

"We didn't see you up to Squire Whipple's surprise party last night, Miss Edith," Mr. Doolittle timidly ventured, with a strong "Down East" accent. "We had a hunky supper and a rale good time."

"No, you didn't see me, Mr. Doolittle, and I don't think you're likely to in a hurry, either. The deadly liveliness of Sandypoint surprise parties, and the beauty of Sandypoint, and its beastly weather are about on a par—the parties, if anything, the most dismal of the three."

With which the young lady went out with a cool parting nod. There was one more errand to go—this one for herself. It was to the post-office, and even the old post-master lit up into a smile of welcome at sight of his visitor. It was evident, that when in good temper Miss Darrell must be rather a favorite in the neighborhood.

"Letters for you? Well, yes, Miss Edie, I think there is. What's this? Miss Edith S. Darrell, Sandypoint Mass. That's for you, and from New York again, I see. Ah! I hope none o' them York chaps will be coming down here to carry away the best-lookin' gal in town."

He handed her the letter. For a moment her dark face lit up with an eager flush; as she took the letter it fell. It was superscribed in a girl's spidery tracery, sealed with blue wax, and a sentimental French seal and motto.

"From Trixy," she said, under her breath; "and I felt sure there would be one from—Are you sure this is all, Mr. Merriweather? I expected another."

"Sure and certain, Miss Edie. Sorry to disappoint you, but that's all. Never mind, my dear—he'll write by next mail."

She turned shortly away, putting the letter in her pocket. Her face relapsed again, into what seemed its habitual look of gloom and discontent.

"He's like all the rest of the world," she thought, bitterly, "out of sight, out of mind. I was a fool to think he would remember me long. I only wonder Beatrix takes the trouble of writing to this dead-and-alive place. One thing is very certain—she won't do it long."

She returned for her parcels, and set out on her wet return walk home. Mr. Doolittle volunteered to escort her thither, but she made short work of him. Through the rain, through the slop, wet, cold, comfortless, the girl left the ugly town behind her, and came out on the lonely road that led along to the sea. Five minutes more, brought her in sight of her home—a forlorn house, standing bleak and bare on a cliff. One path led to it—another to the sands below. At the point where she must turn either way, Miss Darrell stood still and looked moodily up at the house.

"If I go there," she muttered, "she'll set me to hem the towels, or trim the bonnet, or make a pudding for dinner. It's wash day, and I know what that means in our house. I won't go—it's better out in the rain; the towels and the drab bonnet may go au diable, and my blessed stepmother with them, if it comes to that."

She turned sharply and took the path to the right. Half way down she came to a sort of projection in the cliff, partly sheltered from the rain by a clump of spruce-trees. Seating herself on this, with the grey sea sending its flying spray almost up in her face, she drew forth her letter, broke the seal, and read:

NEW YORK, March 13, 18—.

"DEAREST DITHY:—Just half-an-hour ago I came home from a splendid ball, the most splendid by far of the winter, and before one ray of all its brilliance fades from my frivolous mind, let me sit down and tell you all about it if I can.

"The ball was held at the De Rooyter house, up the avenue, in honor of their distinguished English guests, Lady Helena Powyss, of Powyss Place, Cheshire, and Sir Victor Catheron, of Catheron Royals, Cheshire. How grand the titles sound! My very pen expands as it writes those patrician names. Lady Helena. Oh, Dithy! how delicious it must be to be, 'My Lady!'

"What did I wear, you ask? Well, my dear, I wore a lovely trained green silk—gas-light green, you know, under white tulle, all looped up with trailing sprays of lily of the valley and grasses—ditto, ditto, in my hair, and just one pink, half-blown rose. A trying costume you say? Yes, I know it, but you see, the only beauty poor Trixy can claim is a tolerable pink and white complexion, and a decent head of light brown hair. So I carried it off—everyone says I really looked my very best, and—don't set this down to vanity dear—the gentlemen's eyes indorsed it. I danced all night, and here is where the rapture comes in, three times with the baronet. I can't say much for his waltzing, but he's delightful, Dithy—charming. Could a baronet be anything else? He talks with that delightful English accent, which it is impossible to imitate or describe—he is very young, about three-and-twenty, I should judge, and really (in that blonde English way) very handsome. His hair is very light—he has large, lovely, short-sighted blue eyes, and wears an eye-glass. Now, I think an eye-glass is distinguished looking in itself, and it is haut ton to be short sighted. Why are they in New York do I hear you say? Lady Helena was recommended a sea voyage for her health, and her nephew accompanied her. Lady Helena is not young nor beautiful, as you might imagine, but a fair, fat, and sixty, I should say, British matron. She is the daughter of the late Marquis of St Albans, and a widow, her husband having died some time ago. And they are immensely rich. IMMENSELY, Dithy! Capitals can't do justice to it. And of course all the young ladies last night were making a dead set at the young baronet Oh, Dithy—child, if he should only fall in love with me—with ME, and make me Lady Catheron, I believe I should just die of pure ecstasy (is that word spelled right?) like Lord Berleigh's bride in the story. Fancy yourself reading it in the papers:

"'On the ——th inst, by the Rev. Blank Blank, assisted by etc., etc., at the residence of the bride's father, Sir Victor Catheron, Baronet, of Catheron Royals, Cheshire, England, to Beatrix Marie Stuart, only daughter of James Stuart, Esq., banker of Fifth avenue, New York. No Cards!

"Dithy, think of it! It makes my brain swim, and stranger things have happened. My twentieth birthday comes next week, and ma gives a large party, and Lady H. and Sir V. are coming. I am to wear a pink silk with trimmings of real point, and pa sent home a set of pearls from Tiffany's yesterday, for which he gave $1,000. If the rose silk and pearls fail to finish him, then there is another project on the carpet. It is this, Lady H. and Sir V. go home the first week of May, and we are going with them in the same ship. I say we—pa, ma, Charley, and me. Won't it be lovely? If you were coming, you might write a book about our haps and mishaps. I think they will equal the 'Dodd Family Abroad.' Seriously, though, Edith dear, I wish you were coming with us. It's a burning shame that you should be buried alive down in that poky Sandypoint, with your cleverness, and your accomplishments, and good looks, and everything. If I marry the baronet, Dith, I shall take you with me to England, and you shall live happy forever after.

"I set out to tell you of the De Rooyter ball, and see how I run on. All New York was there—the crush was awful, the music excellent, the supper—heavenly! Sir Victor likes us Americans so much; but then who could help liking us? Oh, it has been a charming winter—parties somewhere every night. Nilsson singing for us, some sleighing, and skating no end. I have had the loveliest skating costume, of violet velvet, satin and ermine—words can't do it justice.

"Hark! A clock down-stairs strikes five, and, 'Kathleen Mavourneen, the grey dawn is breaking' over the deserted city streets. As Lady Macbeth says, 'To bed—to bed!' With endless love, and endless kisses, ever thine own.

"BEATRIX."

She finished the letter—it dropped upon her lap, and her large, dark eyes looked blankly out over the cold, gray, rain-beaten sea. This was the life she longed for, prayed for, dreamed of, the life for which she would have sold half the years of her life. The balls, the operas, the rose silks and pearls, the booths and merry-go rounds of Vanity Fair. She thirsted for them as the blind thirst for sight. She longed for the "halls of dazzling light," the dainty dishes, the violet velvet and ermine, with a longing no words can paint. She had youth and beauty; she would have suited the life as the life suited her. Nature had made her for it, and Fate had planted her here in the dreariest of all dreary sea-coast towns.

The rain beat upon her uncovered head, the cold wind blew in her face—she felt neither. Her heart was full of tumult, revolt, bitterness untold.

Beatrix Stuart's father had been her dead mother's cousin. Why was Beatrix chosen among the elect of Mammon, and Edith left to drag out "life among the lowly?" She sat here while the moments wore on, the letter crushed in her lap, her lips set in a line of dull pain. The glory of the world, the flesh-pots of Egypt, the purple and fine linen of life, her heart craved with an exceeding great longing, and all life had given her was hideous poverty, going errands in shabby hats, and her stepmother's rubbers, through rain and mud, and being waited upon by such men as Sam Doolittle. She looked with eyes full of passionate despair at the dark, stormy sea.

"If I only had courage," she said, between her set teeth, "to jump in there and make an end of it. I will some day—or I'll run away. I don't much care what becomes of me. Nothing can be worse than this sort of life—nothing."

She looked dangerous as she thought it—dangerous to herself and others, and ready for any desperate deed. So absorbed was she in her own gloomy thoughts, as she sat there, that she never heard a footstep descending the rocky path behind her. Suddenly two gloved hands were clasped over her eyes, and a mellow, masculine voice, sang a verse of an appropriate song:

"'Break, break, break, On thy cold grey stones, oh sea! And I would that my tongue could utter The thoughts that arise in me.'

"I would that my tongue could utter the thoughts that arise in me, concerning young ladies who sit perched on rocks in the rain. Is it your favorite amusement, may I ask, Miss Darrell, to sit here and be rained on? And are there no lunatic asylums in Sandypoint, that they allow such people as you to go at large?"

She sprang to her feet and confronted him, her breath caught, her eyes dilating.

"Oh!" she cried, in a breathless sort of way, "it is Charley!"

She held out both her hands, the whole expression of her face changing—her eyes like stars.

"Charley, Miss Darrell, and if it had been the Man in the Moon you could hardly look more thunderstruck. And now, if I may venture to propound so delicate a conundrum, how long is it since you lost your senses? Or had you ever any to lose, that you sit here in the present beastly state of the weather, to get comfortably drenched to the skin?"

He was holding both her hands, and looking at her as he spoke—a young man of some five-and-twenty, with grey eyes and chestnut hair, well-looking and well-dressed, and with that indescribable air of ease and fashion which belongs to the "golden youth" of New York.

"You don't say you're glad to see me, Dithy, and you do look uncommonly blank. Will you end my agonizing suspense on this point, Miss Darrell, by saving it now, and giving me a sociable kiss?"

He made as though he would take it, but Edith drew back, laughing and blushing a little.

"You know what Gretchen says to Faust: 'Love me as much as you like, but no kissing, that is vulgar.' I agree with Gretchen—it is vulgar. Oh, Mr. Stuart, what a surprise this is! I have just been reading a letter from your sister, and she doesn't say a word of your coming."

"For the excellent reason that she knew nothing about it when that letter was written. Let me look at you, Edie. What have you been doing to yourself since I left, that you should fall away to a shadow in this manner? But perhaps your failing is the natural and inevitable result of my leaving?"

"No doubt. Life would naturally be insupportable without you. Whatever I may have lost, Mr. Stuart, it is quite evident you have not lost the most striking trait in your character—your self-conceit."

"No," the young man answered; "my virtues are as lasting as they are numerous. May I ask, how it is that I have suddenly become 'Mr. Stuart,' when it has been 'Charley' and 'dear Cousin Charley' for the past two years?"

Miss Darrell laughed a little and blushed a little again, showing very white teeth and lovely color.

"I have been reading Trixy's letter, and it fills me with an awful respect for you and all the Stuart family. How could I presume to address as plain Charley any one so fortunate as the bosom friend of a baronet?"

"Ah!" Mr. Stuart remarked, placidly; "Trixy's been giving you a quarter quire crossed sheets of that, has she? You really wade through that poor child's interminable epistles, do you? I hardly know which to admire most, the genius that can write twenty pages of—nothing—or the patience which reads it, word for word. This one is Sir Victor from date to signature, I'll swear. Well, yes, Miss Darrell, I know the baronet, and he's a very heavy swell and a blue diamond of the first water. Talk of pedigree, there's a pedigree, if you like. A Catheron, of Catheron, was hand and glove with Alfred the Great. He's a very lucky young fellow, and why the gods should have singled him out as the recipient of their favors, and left me in the cold, is a problem I can't solve. He's a baronet, he has more thousands a year, and more houses in more counties than you, with your limited knowledge of arithmetic, could count. He has a fair complexion, a melancholy contrast on that point to you, my poor Edith; he has incipient, pale, yellow whiskers, he has an English accent, and he goes through life mostly in a suit of Oxford mixture and a round felt hat. He's a very fine fellow, and I approve of him. Need I say more?"

"More would be superfluous. If you approve of him, my lord, all is said in that. And Lady Helena?"

"Lady Helena is a ponderous and venerable matron, in black silks, Chantilly lace, and marabout feathers, who would weigh down sixteen of you and me, and who worships the ground her nephew walks on. She is the daughter of a marquis and a peeress in her own right. Think of that, you poor, little, half-civilized Yankee girl, and blush to remember you never had an ancestor. But why do I waste my breath and time in these details, when Trix has narrated them already by the cubic foot. Miss Darrell, you may be a mermaid or a kelpie—that sort of young person does exist, I believe, in a perpetual shower bath, but I regret to inform you I am mortal—very mortal—subject to melancholy colds in the head, and depressing attacks of influenza. At the present moment, my patent leather boots are leaking at every pore, the garments I wear beneath this gray overcoat are saturated, and little rills of rain water are trickling down the small of my back. You nursed me through one prolonged siege of fever and freezing—unless you are especially desirous of nursing me through another, perhaps we had better get out of this. I merely throw out the suggestion—it's a matter of indifference to me."

Edith laughed and turned to go.

"As it is by no means a matter of indifference to me, I move an adjournment to the house. No, thank you, I don't want your arm. This isn't the fashionable side of Broadway, at four o'clock of a summer afternoon. I talk of it, as though I had been there—I who never was farther than Boston in my life, and who, judging from present appearances, never will."

"Then," said Mr. Stuart, "it's very rash and premature to judge by present appearances, my errand here being to—Miss Darrell, doesn't it strike you to inquire what my errand here may be?"

"Shooting," Miss Darrell said, promptly.

"Shooting in March. Good Heavens, no!"

"Fishing then."

"Fishing is a delightful recreation in a rippling brook, on a hot August day, but in this month and in this weather! For a Massachusetts young lady, Dithy, I must say your guessing education has been shamefully neglected. No, I have come for something better than either fishing or shooting—I have come for you."

"Charley!"

"I've got her note somewhere," said Charley, feeling in his pockets as they walked along, "if it hasn't melted away in the rain. No, here it is. Did Trix, by any chance, allude to a projected tour of the governor's and the maternal's to Europe?"

"Yes." Her eyes were fixed eagerly on his face, her lips apart, and breathless. "Oh, Charley! what do you mean?"

In the intensity of her emotions she forgets to be formal, and becomes natural and cousinly once more.

"Ah! I am Charley again. Here is the note. As it is your healthful and refreshing custom to read your letters in the rain, I need hardly urge you to open and peruse this one."

Hardly! She tore it open, and ran over it with kindling cheeks and fast throbbing heart.

* * * * *

"MY DEAR EDITH: Mr. Stuart and myself, Charles and Beatrix, propose visiting Europe in May. From my son I learn that you are proficient in the French and German languages, and would be invaluable to us on the journey, besides the pleasure your society will afford us all. If you think six hundred dollars per annum sufficient recompense for your services and all your expenses paid, we shall be glad to have you return (under proper female charge) with Charley. I trust this will prove acceptable to you, and that your papa will allow you to come. The advantages of foreign travel will be of inestimable benefit to a young lady so thoroughly educated and talented as yourself. Beatrix bids me add she will never forgive you if you do not come.

"With kindest regards to Mr. and Mrs. Darrell, I remain, my dear Edith, Very sincerely yours, "CHARLOTTE STUART."

* * * * *

She had come to a stand still in the middle of the muddy road, while in a rapture she devoured this. Now she looked up, her face transfigured—absolutely glorified. Go to Europe! France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland! live in that radiant upper world of her dreams! She turned to Charley, and to the unutterable surprise of that young gentleman, flung her arms around him, and gave him a frantic hug.

"Charley! Charley! Oh, Charley!" was all she could cry.

Mr. Stuart returned the impulsive embrace, with a promptitude and warmth that did him credit.

"I never knew a letter of my mother's to have such a pleasant effect before. How delightful it must be to be a postman. It is yes, then, Edith?"

"Oh, Charley! as if it could be anything else? I owe this to you—I know I do. How shall I ever thank you?"

"By a repetition of your little performance. You won't? Well, as your stepmother is looking at us out of the window, with a face of verjuice, perhaps it is just as well. You're sure the dear old dad won't say no?"

"Poor papa!" her radiant face clouded a little, "he will miss me, but no—he couldn't refuse me anything if he tried—least of all this. Charley, I do thank you—dear, best cousin that ever was—with all my heart!"

She held out both hands, her heart full, and brimming over in her black eyes. For once in his life Charley Stuart forgot to be flippant and cynical. He held the hands gently, and he looked half-laughingly, half-compassionately into the flushed, earnest face.

"You poor child!" he said; "and you think the world outside this sea, and these sandhills, is all sunshine and coleur de rose. Well, think so—it's a harmless delusion, and one that won't last. And whatever betides," he said this earnestly, "whatever this new life brings, you'll never blame me, Edith, for having taken you away from the old one?"

"Never!" she answered. And she kept her word. In all the sadness—the shame, the pain of the after-time, she would never have gone back if she could—she never blamed him.

They walked on in silence. They were at the door of the ugly bleak house which Edith Darrell for eighteen years had called home, but which she was never to call home more. You would hardly have known her—so bright, so beautiful in a moment had Hope made her—a smile on her lips, her eyes like dark diamonds. For Charley, he watched her, as he might some interesting natural curiosity.

"When am I to be ready?" she asked him, softly, at the door.

"The sooner the better," he answered.

Then she opened it and went in.



CHAPTER II.

A NIGHT IN THE SNOW.

One snowy February night, just two years before, Edith Darrel and Charles Stuart had met for the first time—met in a very odd and romantic way.

Before relating that peculiar first meeting, let me premise that Edith Darrell's mother had been born a Miss Eleanor Stuart, the daughter of a rich New York merchant, who had fallen in love at an early period of her career with her father's handsome book-keeper, Frederic Darrell, had eloped with him, and been cast off by her whole family from thenceforth, forever. Ten years' hard battling with poverty and ill-health had followed, and then one day she kissed her husband and little daughter for the last time, and drifted wearily out of the strife. Of course Mr. Darrell, a year or two after, married again for the sake of having some one to look after his house and little Edith as much as anything else. Mrs. Darrell No. 2 was in every respect the exact contrast of Mrs. Darrell No. 1. She was a brisk little woman, with snapping black eyes, a sharp nose, a complexion of saffron, and a tongue like a carving-knife. Frederic Darrell was by nature a feeble, helpless sort of man, but she galvanized even him into a spasmodic sort of life. He was master of three living languages and two dead ones.

"If you can't support your family by your hands, Mr. Darrell," snapped his wife, "support them by your head. There are plenty young men in the world ready to learn French and German, Greek and Latin, if they can learn them at a reasonable rate. Advertise for these young men, and I'll board them when they come."

He obeyed, the idea proved a good one, the young men came, Mrs. Darrell boarded and lodged them, Mr. Darrell coached them in classics and languages. Edith shot up like a hop-vine. Five more little Darrells were added in the fulness of time, and the old problem, that not all the mathematics he knew could ever solve, how to make both ends meet, seemed as knotty as ever. For his daughter he felt it most of all. The five great noisy boys who called Mrs. Darrell "ma," he looked at through his spectacles in fear and trembling. His handsome daughter he loved with his whole heart. Her dead mother's relatives were among the plutocracy of New York, but even the memory of the dead Eleanor seemed to have faded utterly out of their minds.

One raw February afternoon two years before this March morning, Edith Darrell set out to walk from Millfield, a large manufacturing town, five miles from Sandypoint, home. She had been driven over in the morning by a neighbor, to buy a new dress; she had dined at noon with an acquaintance, and as the Millfield clocks struck five, set out to walk home. She was a capital walker; she knew the road well; she had the garnet merino clasped close in her arms, a talisman against cold or weariness, and thinking how well she would look in it next Thursday at the party, she tripped blithely along. A keen wind blew, a dark drifting sky hung low over the black frozen earth, and before Miss Darrell had finished the first mile of her pilgrimage, the great feathery snow flakes began whirling down. She looked up in dismay—snow! She had not counted on that. Her way lay over hills and down valleys, the path was excellent, hard and beaten, but if it snowed—and night was coming on fast. What should she do? Prudence whispered, "turn back;" youth's impatience and confidence in itself cried out, "go on," Edith went on.

It was as lonely a five-mile walk as you would care to take in an August noontide. Think what it must have been this stormy February evening. She was not entirely alone. "Don Caesar," the house dog, a big English mastiff, trotted by her side. At long intervals, down by-paths and across fields, there were some half dozen habitations, between Millfield and Sandypoint—that was all. Faster, faster came the white whirling flakes; an out-and-out February snow storm had set in.

Again—should she turn back? She paused half a minute to debate the question. If she did there would be a sleepless night of terror for her nervous father at home. And she might be able to keep the path with the "Don's" aid. Personal fear she felt none; she was a thoroughly brave little woman, and there was a spice of adventure in braving the storm and going on. She shook back her clustering curls, tied her hood a little tighter, wrapped her cloak more closely around her, whistled cheerily to Don Caesar, and went on.

"In the bright lexicon of youth there is no such word as 'Fail'," she said gayly, patting the Don's shaggy head. "En avant, Don Caesar, mon brave!" The Don understood French; he licked his mistress's hand and trotted contentedly before.

"As if I could lose the path with the Don," she thought; "what a goose I am. I shall make Mamma Darrell cut out my garnet merino, and begin it before I go to bed to-night."

She walked bravely and brightly on, whistling and talking to Don Caesar at intervals. Another mile was got over, and the night had shut down, white with whirling drifts. It was all she could do now, to make her way against the storm, and it grew worse every instant. Three miles of the five lay yet before her. Her heart began to fail her a little; the path was lost in the snow, and even the Don began to be at fault. The drifting wilderness nearly blinded her, the deep snow was unutterably fatiguing. There was but one thing in her favor—the night, for February, was mild. She was all in a glow of warmth, but what if she should get lost and flounder about here until morning? And what would papa think of her absence?

She stopped short again. If she could see a light she would make for it, she thought, and take refuge from the night and storm. But through the white whirl no light was to be seen. Right or wrong, nothing remained but to go on.

Hark! what was that? She stopped once more—the Don pricked up his sagacious ears. A cry unmistakably—a cry of distress.

Again it came, to the left, faint and far off. Yes—no doubt about it, a cry for help.

She did not hesitate a moment. Strangers, who had tried this hillpath before now, had been found stark frozen next day.

"Find him, Don—find him, good fellow!" she said and turned at once in the direction of the call.

"Coming!" she shouted, aloud. "Where are you? Call again."

"Here," came faintly over the snow. "Here, to the left."

She shouted back a cheery answer. Once more came a faint reply—then all was still.

Suddenly the Don stopped. Impossible to tell where they were, but there, prostrate in a feathery drift, lay the dark figure of a man. The girl bent down in the darkness, and touched the cold face with her hand.

"What is the matter?" she asked. "How do you come to be lying here?"

There was just life enough left within him, to enable him to answer faintly.

"I was on my way to Sandypoint—the night and storm overtook me. I missed the path and my footing; I slipped, and have broken my leg, I'm afraid. I heard you whistling to your dog and tried to call. I didn't dream it was a woman, and I am sorry I have brought you out of your way. Still, as you are here, if you will tell them at the nearest house, and—" his voice died entirely away, in the sleepy cadence of a freezing man.

The nearest house—where was the nearest house? Why, this poor fellow would freeze to death in half an hour if left to himself. Impossible to leave him. What should she do? She thought for a moment. Quick and bright of invention, she made up her mind what to do, she had in her pocket a little passbook and pencil. In the darkness she tore out a leaf—in the darkness she wrote, "Follow Don. Come at once." She pinned the note in her handkerchief—tied the handkerchief securely round the dog's neck, put her arms about him, and gave his black head a hug.

"Go home, Don, go home," she said, "and fetch papa here."

The large, half-human eyes looked up at her. She pushed him away with both hands, and with a low growl of intelligence he set off. And in that sea of snow, lost in the night, Edith Darrell was alone with a freezing man.

In her satchel, among her other purchases, she had several cents' worth of matches for household consumption. With a girl's curiosity, even in that hour, to see what the man was like, she struck a match and looked at him. It flared through the white darkness a second or two, then went out. That second showed her a face as white as the snow itself, the eyes closed, the lips set in silent pain. She saw a shaggy great coat, and fur cap, and—a gentleman, even in that briefest of brief glances.

"You mustn't go to sleep," she said, giving him a shake; "do you hear me, sir? You mustn't go to sleep."

"Yes—mustn't I?" very drowsily.

"You'll freeze to death if you do." A second shake. "Oh, do rouse up like a good fellow, and try to keep awake. I've sent my dog for help, and I mean to stay with you until it comes. Does your leg pain you much?"

"Not now. It did, but I—feel—sleepy, and—"

"I tell you, you mustn't!" She shook him so indignantly this time that he did rouse up. "Do you want to freeze to death? I tell you, sir, you must wake up and talk to me."

"Talk to you? I beg your pardon—it's awfully good of you to stay with me, but I can't allow it. You'll freeze yourself."

"No, I won't. I'm all right. It isn't freezing hard to-night, and if you hadn't broken your leg, you wouldn't freeze either. I wish I could do something for you. Let me rub your hands—it may help to keep you awake. And see, I'll wrap this round your feet to keep them out of the snow."

And then—who says that heroic self-sacrifice has gone out of fashion?—she unfurled the garnet merino and twisted its glowing folds around the boots of the fallen man.

"It's awfully good of you, you know," he could but just repeat. "If I am saved I shall owe my life to you. I think by your voice you are a young lady. Tell me your name?"

"Edith."

"A pretty name, and a sweet voice. Suppose you rub my other hand? How delightfully warm yours are! I begin to feel better already. If we don't freeze to death, I shouldn't much mind how long this sort of thing goes on. If we do, they'll find us, like the babes in the wood, under the snow-drifts to-morrow."

Miss Darrell listened to all this, uttered in the sleepiest, gentlest of tones, her brown eyes open wide. What manner of young man was this who paid compliments while freezing with a broken leg? It was quite a new experience to her and amused her. It was an adventure, and excited all the romance dormant in her nature.

"You're a stranger hereabouts?" she suggested.

"Yes, a stranger, to my cost, and a very foolhardy one, or I should never have attempted to find Sandypoint in this confounded storm. Edith—you'll excuse my calling you so, my name is Charley—wouldn't it have been better if you had left me here and gone for some one. I'm dreadfully afraid you'll get your death."

His solicitude for her, in his own danger and pain, quite touched Miss Edith. She bent over him with maternal tenderness.

"There is no fear for me. I feel perfectly warm as I told you, and can easily keep myself so. And if you think I could leave you, or any one else with a broken leg, to die, you mistake me greatly, that is all. I will stay with you if it be till morning."

He gave one of her hands a feebly grateful squeeze. It was a last effort. His numbed and broken limb gave a horrible twinge, there was a faint gasp, and then this young man fainted quietly away.

She bent above him in despair. A great fear filled her—was he dead, this stranger in whom she was interested already? She lifted his head on her lap, she chafed his face and hands in an agony of pity and terror.

"Charley!" she called, with something like a sob; "O Charley, don't die! Wake up—speak to me."

But cold and white as the snow itself, "Charley" lay, dumb and unresponsive.

And so an hour wore on.

What an hour it was—more like an eternity. In all her after-life—its pride and its glory, its downfall and disgrace, that night remained vividly in her memory.

She woke many and many a night, starting up in her warm bed, from some startling dream, that she was back, lost in the snow, with Charley lying lifeless in her lap.

But help was at hand. It was close upon nine o'clock, when, through the deathly white silence, the sound of many voices came. When over the cold glitter of the winter night, the red light of lanterns flared, Don Caesar came plunging headlong through the drifts to his little mistress' side, with loud and joyful barking, licking her face, her hands, her feet. They were saved.

She sank back sick and dizzy in her father's clasp. For a moment the earth rocked, and the sky went round—then she sprang up, herself again. Her father was there, and the three young men, boarders. They lifted the rigid form of the stranger, and carried it between them somehow, to Mr. Darrell's house.

His feet were slightly frost-bitten, his leg not broken after all, only sprained and swollen, and to Edith's relief he was pronounced in a fainting-fit, not dead.

"Don't look so white and scared, child," her step-mother said pettishly to her step-daughter; "he won't die, and a pretty burthen he'll be on my hands for the next three weeks. Go to bed—do—and don't let us have you laid up as well. One's enough at a time."

"Yes, Dithy, darling, go," said her father, kissing her tenderly. "You're a brave little woman, and you've saved his life. I have always been proud of you, but never so proud as to-night."

It certainly was a couple of weeks. It was five blessed weeks before "Mr. Charley," as they learned to call him, could get about, even on crutches. For fever and sometimes delirium set in, and Charley raved and tossed, and shouted, and talked, and drove Mrs. Frederic Darrell nearly frantic with his capers. The duty of nursing fell a good deal on Edith. She seemed to take to it quite naturally. In his "worst spells" the sound of her soft voice, the touch of her cool hand, could soothe him as nothing else could. Sometimes he sung, as boisterously as his enfeebled state would allow: "We won't go home till morning!" Sometimes he shouted for his mother; very often for "Trixy."

Who was Trixy, Edith wondered with a sort of inward twinge, not to be accounted for; his sister or—

He was very handsome in those days—his great gray eyes brilliant with fever, his cheeks flushed, his chestnut hair falling damp and heavy off his brow. What an adventure it was, altogether, Edith used to think, like something out of a book. Who was he, she wondered. A gentleman "by courtesy and the grace of God," no mistaking that. His clothes, his linen, were all superfine. On one finger he wore a diamond that made all beholders wink, and in his shirt bosom still another. His wallet was stuffed with greenbacks, his watch and chain, Mr. Darrell affirmed were worth a thousand dollars—a sprig of gentility, whoever he might be, this wounded hero. They found no papers, no letters, no card-case. His linen was marked "C. S." twisted in a monogram. They must wait until he was able himself to tell them the rest.

The soft sunshine, of April was filling his room, and basking in its rays in the parlor or rocking-chair sat "Mr. Charley," pale and wasted to a most interesting degree. He was sitting, looking at Miss Edith, digging industriously in her flower-garden, with one of the boarders for under-gardener, and listening to Mr. Darrell proposing he should tell them his name, in order that they might write to his friends. The young man turned his large languid eyes from the daughter without, to the father within.

"My friends? Oh! to be sure. But it isn't necessary, is it? It's very thoughtful of you, and all that, but my friends won't worry themselves into an early grave about my absence and silence. They're used to both. Next week, or week after, I'll drop them a line myself. I know I must be an awful nuisance to Mrs. Darrell, but if I might trespass on your great kindness and remain here until—"

"My dear young friend," responded Mr. Darrell, warmly, "you shall most certainly remain here. For Mrs. Darrell, you're no trouble to her—it's Dithy, bless her, who does all the nursing."

The gray dreamy eyes turned from Mr. Darrell again, to that busy figure in the garden. With her cheeks flushed, her brown eyes shining, her rosy lips apart, and laughing, as she wrangled with that particular boarder on the subject of floriculture, she looked a most dangerous nurse for any young man of three-and-twenty.

"I owe Miss Darrell and you all, more than I can ever repay," he said, quietly; "that is understood. I have never tried to thank her, or you either—words are so inadequate in these cases. Believe me though, I am not ungrateful."

"Say no more," Mr. Darrell cut in hastily; "only tell us how we are to address you while you remain. 'Mr. Charley' is an unsatisfactory sort of application."

"My name is Stuart; but, as a favor, may I request you to go on calling me Charley?"

"Stuart!" said the other, quickly; "one of the Stuarts, bankers, of New York?"

"The same. My father is James Stuart; you know him probably?"

The face of Frederic Darrell darkened and grew almost stern. "Your father was my wife's cousin—Edith's mother. Have you never heard him speak of Eleanor Stuart?"

"Who married Frederic Darrell? Often. My dear Mr. Darrell, is it possible that you—that I have the happiness of being related to you?"

"To my daughter, if you like—her second cousin—to me, no," Mr. Darrell said, half-smiling, half-sad. "Your father and his family long ago repudiated all claims of mine—I am not going to force myself upon their notice now. Edie—Edie, my love, come in here, and listen to some strange news."

She threw down her spade, and came in laughing and glowing, her hair tumbled, her collar awry, her dress soiled, her hands not over clean, but looking, oh! so indescribably fresh, and fair, and healthful, and handsome.

"What is it?" she asked. "Has Mr. Charley gone and sprained his other ankle?"

"Not quite so bad as that." And then her father narrated the discovery they had mutually made. Miss Dithy opened her bright brown eyes.

"Like a chapter out of a novel where everybody turns out to be somebody else. 'It is—it is—it is—my own, my long-lost son!' And so we're second cousins, and you're Charley Stuart; and Trixy—now who's Trixy?"

"Trixy's my sister. How do you happen to know anything about her?"

Edith made a wry face.

"The nights I've spent—the days I've dragged through, the tortures I've undergone, listening to you shouting for 'Trixy,' would have driven any less well-balanced brain stark mad! May I sit down? Digging in the sunshine, and rowing with Johnny Ellis is awfully hot work."

"Digging in the sunshine is detrimental to the complexion, and rowing with Johnny Ellis is injurious to the temper. I object to both."

"Oh, you do?" said Miss Darrell, opening her eyes again; "it matters so much, too, whether you object or not. Johnny Ellis is useful, and sometimes agreeable. Charley Stuart is neither one nor t'other. If I mayn't dig and quarrel with him, is there anything your lordship would like me to do?"

"You may sit on this footstool at my feet—woman's proper place—and read me to sleep. That book you were reading aloud yesterday—what was it? Oh, 'Pendennis,' was rather amusing—what I heard of it."

"What you heard of it!" Miss Darrell retorts, indignantly. "You do well to add that. The man who could go to sleep listening to Thackeray is a man worthy only of contempt and scorn! There's Mr. Ellis calling me—I must go."

Miss Darrell and Mr. Stuart, in his present state of convalescence, rarely met except to quarrel. They spoke their minds to one another, with a refreshing frankness remarkable to hear.

"You remind me of one I loved very dearly once, Dithy," Charley said to her, sadly, one, day, after an unusually stormy wordy war—"in fact, the only one I ever did love. You resemble her, too—the same sort of hair and complexion, and exactly the same sort of—ah—temper! Her name was Fido—she was a black and tan terrier—very like you, my dear, very like. Ah! these accidental resemblances are cruel things—they tear open half-healed wounds, and cause them to bleed afresh. Fido met with an untimely end—she was drowned one dark night in a cistern. I thought I had outlived that grief, but when I look at you—"

A stinging box on the ear, given with right good will, cut short the mournful reminiscence, and brought tears to Mr. Stuart's eyes, that were not tears of grief for Fido.

"You wretch!" cried Miss Darrell, with flashing eyes. "I've a complexion of black and tan, have I, and a temper to match! The only thing I see to regret in your story is, that it wasn't Fido's master who fell into the cistern, instead of Fido. To think I should live to be called a black and tan!"

They never met except to quarrel. Edith's inflammatory temper was up in arms perpetually. They kept the house in an uncommonly lively state. It seemed to agree with Charley. His twisted ankle grew strong rapidly, flesh and color came back, the world was not to be robbed of one of its brightest ornaments just yet. He put off writing to his friends from day to day, to the great disapproval of Mr. Darrell, who was rather behind the age in his notions of filial duty.

"It's of no use worrying," Mr. Stuart made answer, with the easy insouciance concerning all things earthly which sat so naturally upon him; "bad shillings always come back—let that truthful old adage console them. Why should I fidget myself about them. Take my word they're not fidgeting themselves about me. The governor's absorbed in the rise and fall of stocks, the maternal is up to her eyes in the last parties of the season, and my sister is just out and absorbed body and soul in beaux and dresses. They never expect me until they see me."

About the close of April Mr. Stuart and Miss Darrell fought their last battle and parted. He went back to New York and to his own world, and life stagnant and flat flowed back on its old level for Edith Darrell.

Stagnant and flat it had always been, but never half so dreary as now. Something had come into her life and gone out of it, something bright and new, and wonderfully pleasant. There was a great blank where Charley's handsome face had been, and all at once life seemed to lose its relish for this girl of sixteen. A restlessness took possession of of her. Sandypoint and all belonging to it grew distasteful. She wanted change, excitement—Charley Stuart, perhaps—something different certainly from what she was used to, or likely to get.

Charley went home and told the "governor," and the "maternal," and "Trixy" of his adventure, and the girl who had saved his life. Miss Beatrix listened in a glow of admiration.

"Is she pretty, Charley?" she asked, of course, the first inevitable female question.

"Pretty?" Charley responded, meditatively, as though the idea struck him for the first time. "Well, ye-e-es. In a cream-colored sort of way, Edith isn't bad-looking. It would be very nice of you now, Trix, to write her a letter, I think, seeing she saved my life, and nursed me, and is your second cousin, and everything."

Beatrix needed no urging. She was an impetuous, enthusiastic young woman of eighteen, fearfully and wonderfully addicted to correspondence. She sat down and wrote a long, gushing letter to her "cream-colored" cousin. Mrs. Stuart dropped her a line of thanks also, and Charley, of course, wrote, and there her adventure seemed to come to an end. Miss Stuart's letters were long and frequent. Mr. Stuart's rambling epistle alternately made her laugh and lose her temper, a daily loss with poor, discontented Edith. With the fine discrimination most men possess, he sent her, on her seventeenth birthday, a set of turquoise and pearls, which made her sallow complexion hideous, or, at least, as hideous as anything can make a pretty girl. That summer he ran down to Sandypoint for a fortnight's fishing, and an oasis came suddenly in the desert of Edith's life. She and Charley might quarrel still, and I am bound to say they did, on every possible occasion and on every possible point, but they were never satisfied a moment apart.

The fortnight ended, the fish were caught, he went back, and the dull days and the long nights, the cooking, darning, mending began again, and went on until madness would have been a relief. It was the old story of the Sleeping Beauty waiting for the prince to come, and wake her into life and love with his kiss. Only in this instance the prince had come and gone, and left Beauty, in the sulks, behind.

She was eighteen years old and sick of her life. And just when disgust and discontent were taking palpable form, and she was debating between a jump into Sandypoint bay and running off, came Charley, with his mother's letter. From that hour the story of Edith Darrell's life began.



CHAPTER III.

TRIXY'S PARTY.

Two weeks sufficed for Miss Darrell's preparations. A quantity of new linen, three new dresses, one hat, one spring sacque—that was all.

Mr. Darrell had consented—what was there he could have refused his darling? He had consented, hiding the bitter pang it cost him, deep in his own quiet heart. It was the loss of her mother over again; the tender passion and the present Mrs. Darrell were two facts perfectly incompatible.

Mrs. Darrell aided briskly in the preparation—to tell the truth, she was not sorry to be rid of her step-daughter, between whom and herself perpetual war raged. Edith as a worker was a failure; she went about the dingy house, in her dingy dresses, with the air of an out-at-elbows duchess. She snubbed the boarders, she boxed the juvenile Darrell's ears, she "sassed" the mistress of the house.

"It speaks volumes for your amiability, Dithy," Charley remarked, "the intense eagerness and delight, with which everybody in this establishment hails your departure. Four dirty little Darrells run about the passages with their war-whoop, 'Dithy's going—hooray! Now we'll have fun!' Your step-mother's sere and yellow visage beams with bliss; even the young gentlemen who are lodged and boarded, Greek-ed and Latin-ed here, wear faces of suppressed relief, that tells its own tale to the student of human nature. Your welfare must be unspeakably precious to them, Edie, when they bear their approaching bereavement so well."

He paused. The speech was a lengthy one, and lengthy speeches mostly exhausted Mr. Stuart. He lay back, watching his fair relative as she sat sewing near, with lazy, half-closed eyes.

Her work dropped in her lap, a faint flush rose up over her dusk face.

"Charley," she responded, gravely, "I don't wonder you say this—it is true, and nobody feels it more than I. I am a disagreeable creature, a selfish nuisance, an idle, discontented kill-joy. I only wonder, you are not afraid to take me with you at all."

Mr. Stuart sat up, rather surprised.

"My dearest coz, don't be so tremendously in earnest. If I had thought you were going to take it seriously—"

"Let us be serious for once—we have all our lives left for quarrelling," said Miss Darrell, as though quarrelling were a pleasant recreation. "I sit down and try to think sometimes why I am so miserable—so wretched in my present life, why I hail the prospect of a new one with such delight. I see other girls—nicer, cleverer girls than I am every way, and their lives suffice for them—the daily, domestic routine that is most horrible drudgery to me, pleases and satisfies them. It must be that I have an incapacity for life; I daresay when the novelty and gloss wear off, I shall tire equally of the life I am going to. A new dress, a dance, a beau, and the hope of a prospective husband suffices for the girls I speak of. For me—none of your sarcastic smiles, sir—the thought of a future husband is—"

"Only vanity and vexation of spirit. But there is a future husband. You are forced to admit that, Dithy. I wonder what he is to be like? A modern Sir Launcelot, with the beauty of all the gods, the courage of a Coeur de Lion, the bow of a Chesterfield, and the purse of Fortunatus. That's the photo, isn't it?"

"No, sir—not a bit like it. The purse of a Fortunatus, if you like—I ask nothing more. The Sir Launcelots of life, if they exist at all, are mostly poor men, and I don't want anything to do with poor men. My marriage is to be a purely business transaction—I settled that long ago. He may have the form and face of a Satyr; he may have seventy years, so that he be worth a million or so, I will drop my best courtesy when he asks, and say, 'Yes, and thanky, sir.' If the Apollo himself, knelt before me with an empty purse, I should turn my back upon him in pity and disdain."

"Is that meant for me, Edie?" Mr. Stuart inquired, rising on his elbow, and admiringly gazing at his own handsome face in the glass. "Because if it is, don't excite yourself. Forewarned is forearmed—I'm not going to ask you."

"I never thought you were," Edith said, laughing. "I never aspired so high. As well love some bright particular star, etcetera, etcetera, as the only son of James Stuart, Esquire, lineal descendant of the Princes of Scotland, and banker of Wall Street. No, Charley, I know what you will do. You'll drift through life for the next three or four years, as you have drifted up to the present, well looking, well dressed, well mannered, and then some day your father will come to you and say gruffly, 'Charles!' (Edith grows dramatic as she narrates—it is a husky masculine voice that speaks:) 'Here's Miss Petroleum's father, with a million and a half—only child—order a suit of new clothes and go and ask her to marry you!' And you will look at him with a helpless sigh, and go. Your father will select your wife, sir, and you'll take her, like a good boy, when you're told. I shouldn't wonder now, but that it is to select a wife for you, and a husband for Trixy, he is taking this projected trip to Europe."

"Shouldn't you? Neither should I. Never wonder. Against my principles," Charley murmurs.

"There are plenty of titled aristocracy abroad—so I am told—ready to silver-gild their coronets by a union with plutocracy. Plenty Lady Janes and Lady Marys ready to sell themselves to the highest bidder."

"As Edith Darrell is?"

"As Edith Darrell is. It's all very fine talking of love and devotion, and the emptiness of life without. Believe me, if one has plenty of money one can dispense with love. I've read a good many novels, but they haven't turned my head on that subject. From all I've read, indeed, I should think it must be a very uncomfortable sort of intermittent fever, indeed. Don't love anybody except yourself, and it is out of the power of any human being to make you very wretched."

"A sentiment whose truth is only equaled by its—selfishness."

"Yes, it is selfish; and it is your thoroughly selfish people, who get the best of everything in this world. I am selfish and worldly—ambitious and heartless, and all that is abominable. I may as well own it. You'll find it out for yourself soon."

"A most unnecessary acknowledgment, my dear child—it is patent to the dullest observer. But, now, Edith—look here—this is serious, mind!" He raises himself again on his elbow, and looks, with a curious smile into her darkly-earnest, cynical young face. "Suppose I am madly in love with you—'madly in love' is the correct phrase, isn't it?—suppose I am at your feet, going through all the phases of the potential mood, 'commanding, exhorting, entreating' you to marry me—you wouldn't say no, would you, Edie? You like me—don't deny it. You know you do—like me well enough to marry me to-morrow. Would you refuse me in spite of my dependence on my father, and my empty purse?"

He took her hand, and held it tightly, despite her struggles.

"Would you, Edie?" he says, putting his arm around her waist. "I'm not a sentimental fellow, but I believe in love. Come! you wouldn't—you couldn't bid me go."

Her color had risen—that lovely rose-pink color, that lit her brunette face into such beauty—but she resolutely freed herself, and met his half-tender, half-merry glance, full.

"I would," she said, "if I—liked you so, that you filled my whole heart. Let me go, sir, and no more of this nonsense. I know what I am talking about, and what comes of marrying for love. There was my own mother, she left a rich and luxurious home, wealthy suitors, all the comforts and elegances of life, without which life isn't worth living, and ran away with papa. Then followed long years of poverty, discomfort, illness, and miserable grubbing. She never complained—perhaps she wasn't even very unhappy; her's wasn't the sort of love that flies out of the window when poverty comes in at the door—she just faded away and died. For myself I have been dissatisfied with my lot ever since I can remember—pining for the glory and grandeur of this wicked world. There is but one way in which they can ever be mine—by marriage. If marriage will not bring them, then I will go to my grave Edith Darrell."

"Which I don't think you will," Mr. Stuart responded. "Young ladies like you, who set out on the search-matrimonial with lots of common-sense, worldliness, selfishness, and mercenary motives, generally reach the goal. It's a fair enough exchange—so much youth and good looks for so many thousand dollars. I wish you all success, Miss Darrell, in your laudable undertaking. It is well we should understand each other, at once and forever, or even I some day might be tempted to make a fool of myself. Your excellent counsels, my dearest cousin, will be invaluable to me, should my lagging footsteps falter by the way. Edith! where have you learned to be so hard, so worldly, so—if you will pardon me—so unwomanly?"

"Is it unwomanly?" she repeated dreamily. "Well, perhaps it is. I am honest at least—give me credit for that. My own hard life has taught me, books have taught me, looking at my mother and listening to my step-mother have taught me. I feel old at eighteen—old and tired. I am just one of those girls, I think, who turn out very good or very bad women, as fate deals with them. It's not too late yet to draw back, Charley. Your mother can easily get another young lady to do the French and German business. You can tell her I don't suit, and leave me at home."

"Not too late to draw back," he said, with his indolent smile. "Is there ever such a thing as drawing back at all? What is done is done. I couldn't go without you now, if I tried. O, don't look alarmed, I don't mean anything. You amuse and interest me, that is all. You're something of a study—entirely different from the genus young lady I'm accustomed to. Only—keep your frankness for Cousin Charley, he's harmless; don't display it to the rest of the world. It might spoil your chances. Even senile millionnaires don't care to walk into the trap, unless the springs are hidden in roses. Come, throw down that endless sewing, and let's have a walk on the beach. Who knows when we may see the sun go down, together again, over the classic waters of Sandypoint Bay."

Edith laughed, but she rose to obey.

"And I thought you were not sentimental. One would think it the Bay of Naples. However, as we start to-morrow, I don't mind going down and bidding the old rocks and sands good-by."

She put on her hat, and the two went wandering away together, to watch the sun set over the sea. In the rosy light of the spring sunset, the fishing boats drifted on the shining waters, and the fisherman's chant came borne to their ears.

"It reminds me of that other April evening two years ago, Dithy, when we came down here to say good-by. You cried then at parting—do you remember? But you were only sixteen, poor child, and knew no better. You wouldn't cry now, would you, for any man in the universe?"

"Not for Charley Stuart certainly—he needn't think it."

"He doesn't think it, my pet; he never looks for impossibilities. I wonder if that night in the snow were to come again if you'd risk your life now, as you did then?"

"Risk my life! What bosh! There was no risk; and bad as I am, and heartless as I've grown, I don't think—I don't think I'd walk away, and leave any poor wretch to die. Yes, Charley, if the night in the snow came over again, I'd do now as I did then."

"I don't believe it was a kindness after all," Charley responds. "I have a presentiment that a day will come, Dithy, when I'll hate you. I shouldn't have suffered much if you had let me freeze to death. And I've a strong prescience (is that the word) that I'll fall in love with you some day, and be jilted, and undergo untold torture, and hate you with a perfect frenzy. It will be a very fatiguing experience, but I feel in my bones that it is to be."

"Indeed! A Saul among the prophets. I shall not be surprised, however; it is my usual fate to be hated. And now, as we seem to have drifted into disagreeable and personal sort of talk, suppose we change the subject? There is a dory yonder; if your indolent sultanship can bear the labor of steering, I'll give you a last row across the bay."

They take the dory and glide away. Charley lies back, his hat pulled over his eyes, smoking a cigar and steering. She has the oars, the red sunlight is on her face. Edith defies tan and sunburn. She looks at lazy Charley, and sings as she pulls, a saucy smile of defiance on her lips:

"It was on a Monday morning, Right early in the year, That Charley came to our town, The young Chevalier. And Charley he's my darling, My darling, my darling; And Charley he's my darling, The young Chevalier!"

What Charley answers is not on record. Perhaps the aged millionnaire, who is to be the future happy possessor of Miss Darrell's charms, would not care to hear it. They drift on—they are together—they ask no more. The rosy after-glow of the sunset fades out, the night comes white with stars, the faint spring wind sighs over the bay, and both are silent. "And," says Charley's inner consciousness, "if this be not falling in love, I wonder what is?"

They linger yet longer. It is the last night, and romantically enough, for so worldly and cynical a pair, they watch the faint little April moon rise. Edith looks over her left shoulder at it, and says something under her breath.

"What invocation are you murmuring there?" Charley asks, half asleep.

"I was wishing. I always wish when I see the new moon."

"For a rich husband of course, Edie!" He sits up suddenly. "There's the baronet! Suppose you go for him."

"'Go for him!' What a horribly vulgar way you have of speaking. No. I'll leave him for Trixy. Have you had enough of starlight and moonlight, Mr. Stuart, on Sandypoint Bay, because I'm going to turn and row home. I've had no supper, and I shall eat you if we stay here fasting much longer."

She rows back, and arm in arm they ascend the rocky path, and linger one last moment at the garden gate.

"So ends the old life," Edith says, softly. "It is my last night at home. I ought to feel sad, I suppose, but I don't. I never felt so happy in my life."

He is holding her hand. For two who are not lovers, and never mean to be, they understand each other wonderfully well.

"And remember your promise," he answers. "Let the life that is coming bring what it may, you are never to blame me."

Then Mrs. Darrell's tall, spare figure appears in the moonlight, summoning them sharply to tea, and hands are unclasped, and in silence they follow her.

The first train from Sandypoint to Boston bears away Edith Darrell and Charley Stuart. Not alone together, however—forbid it Mrs. Grundy! Mrs. Rogers, the Sandypoint milliner, is going to New York for the summer fashions, and the young lady travels under her protection. They reach Boston in time for the train that connects with the Fall River boats. It has been a day of brightest sunshine; it is a lovely spring night. They dine on board. Mrs. Rogers is sleepy and tired and goes to bed (she and Edith share the same state-room), with a last charge to Mr. Stuart not to keep Miss Darrell too long on deck in the night air.

They float grandly up the bright river. Two wandering harpists and a violinist play very sweetly near them, and they walk up and down, talking and feeling uncommonly happy and free, until Charley's watch points to eleven, and the music comes to a stop. They say good-night. She goes to Mrs. Rogers and the upper berth, and Mr. Stuart meditatively turns to his own. He is thinking, that all things considered, it is just as well this particularly fascinating companionship, ends in a manner to-morrow.