CHAPTER X.

YORK AND THE MAITLANDS.

There are difficulties in the way of one who would describe an event after an immortal poet has given it a setting in lines that a worshipping world will not willingly let die. A tree, it is said, is never struck by lightning more than once, and it is safe to suppose that a subject is never illumined by the rays of heaven-descended genius without being as thoroughly exhausted. Nevertheless, with our tame domestic lantern, let us endeavour to throw a little prosaic light over the details of a scene that has been irradiated by the imagination of a Byron.

It was one of the events of the season to the social world of that foreign town, but to us it is one of the events of the century. On an evening in June, 1815, in the city of Brussels, the Duchess of Richmond gave a ball on so magnificent a scale that even the gray heads of society's veteran devotees were a little turned, and the chestnut and golden pates of their juniors tossed sleeplessly on their pillows for several nights preceding it. After all, humanity is perpetually and overpoweringly interested in nothing except humanity. On the evening appointed there was a vast beautiful throng, moving through halls as beautiful and more vast; there was the witchery of soft lights and softer sounds, of odours and colours that enchant the senses; there were banks of flowers, each of whose tiny blossoms yielded its dying breath to make the world sweeter for an hour, and among them, under the starry lights, in warm human veins, flowed a thousand streams; very blue, not so blue, and even common crimson. But all flowed faster than usual, perhaps the better to warm the lovely bare shoulders and arms, or to paint the sweet cheeks above them in the vivid hues of glad, intense young life. Intermingled with the costly robes and flashing gems on the ideal figures of fair women, gleamed the brilliant uniforms of brave men. "A thousand hearts beat happily"—with one exception. This was in the possession of the second daughter of a duke. She was even then remarkable for her beauty and for a certain imperious, condescending grace. The gay throng of which she was a part was no more to her than so many buttercups and daisies; and these sumptuous apartments, so far as they concerned her, might have been a series of green meadows. At last her indifferent glance, travelling over the room, encountered an object that faintly flushed her cheek, and brightened the eyes, whose orbit of vision was now limited to the circle immediately about her. Cold indifference had changed to throbbing impatience. Ah, why did he not come! With whom was he lingering? She dared not look up lest her glance, like a swift, bright messenger, should tell him all her heart, and draw him magnetically to her side. No, he must come of his own choice, and quickly, else her mood would change. Soft strains of music arose, melting, aching, dying upon the air. Her heart melted, ached, and apparently died also, for it turned cold and hard as she glanced at her watch, and saw that it was more than a minute, nearly two minutes (two eternities they seemed to her) since she began to be glad that she had come.

The next instant her long-lashed lids were raised in spite of herself, and she confronted a singularly tall and attractive-looking gentleman, whose face, from its pensive sadness, had a certain poetic charm. He begged the honour of the next dance with her. She regretted that he was too late. He looked disappointed, but ventured to name the next one. She was sorry, but it was impossible. Had she room for him anywhere at all on her list? She shook her head prettily but inexorably. The handsomest coquette and the plainest school-ma'am have this in common, that they detest and punish tardiness. The young man was overpowered by his sense of loss. It was small comfort to stand and look at the beautiful girl. When the gates of paradise are closed against one it matters little whether they are made of gold or of iron. Inwardly he bestowed some very hard names upon himself for imagining that that peerless creature would be allowed to await a willing wall-flower his languidly deferred appearance.

Again those heavenly strains rose and throbbed upon the air. It was maddening. The keenness of his disappointment gave his face an intensity of ardent expression that certainly did not detract from its charm in the eyes of the girl who at that instant glanced up into it. The next moment he was pressed aside—very decorously, very courteously, even apologetically pushed aside, but still compelled by an insinuating patrician hand to make room for its owner, a gentleman whose extremely lofty title had already drawn the homage of a hundred admiring pairs of eyes upon him, and whose prevailing expression was a haughty consciousness of accustomed and assumed success. The young lady whom he now honoured with a request to dance did not think of his title, nor of his condescension, nor of him. She declined with characteristic indifference on the plea that she was already engaged, and turning placed her hand on the arm of Sir Peregrine Maitland, whose suddenly bewildered and enraptured heart, if it had never before given its assent to the time-worn proposition that all is fair in love as well as in war, certainly could not hesitate now. Perhaps the triumphs of the ball-room are not less thrilling than those of the battle-field. "Why were you so cruel to me a moment ago?" he murmured, looking down into eyes that but too clearly reflected the happiness of his own.

"For the same reason that I am kind to you now," she responded like a flash.

He did not ask her the reason. Perhaps he was intuitively and blissfully aware of it. Did ever maiden discover a more demurely daring way of telling her lover that she loved him?

But now, caressed by little wafts of perfume, and half-dazed by the blaze of lights and colours around and above them, they were drifting as on a tide upon soft swelling waves of music. In liquid undulations of sweet sound they floated insensibly down the windings of the waltz, nor dreamed of danger till the note of warning came. It was a prodigious note—nothing less than the boom of a cannon—and the signal for instant, perhaps life-long, separation.

"Who could guess, If ever more should meet those mutual eyes? Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise."

But, as we know, two pairs at least of those mutual eyes were destined to meet again, and meet as gladly and warmly as when their owners danced together on the evening before the battle of Waterloo. But the chill atmosphere of a father's disapproval lay between them. It is reasonable to suppose that the fourth Duke of Richmond and Lennox was not so susceptible to the charms of pensive and picturesque young gentlemen as was his wilful daughter. Among the names on a list of invitations to a party given by the latter appeared that of Sir Peregrine Maitland, which, coming under the cold parental eye, was promptly erased. At the same time he inquired of his daughter why she permitted that undesirable gentleman to hang about her skirts—why she did not let him go. The response was that after this decided slight he probably would go; she added with a little sigh that she did not know where. The duke profanely and contemptuously mentioned a locality which shall be nameless. The young lady made no reply. She believed in division of labour, and in former domestic affairs of this sort her stern parent had invariably said what he pleased, while she contented herself with merely doing what she pleased.

Proverbially, actions speak louder than words, and the present case was no exception, for while the echo of her father's speech did not go beyond the walls of the apartment they were in, her own rash performance, which was a direct consequence of it, was a few days later noised abroad through all Paris. This was an evening call at the lodgings of Sir Peregrine Maitland. She came in unannounced, flushed, eager, defiant, lovely, letting fall the rich train of her robe, which she had caught up in a swift flight through the streets, and throwing off her enveloping cloak, which scattered a shower of sparkling drops on brow and bosom, and beautiful bare arms, for a light shower had fallen. "They would not let you come to me, so I have come to you," she declared with a daring little laugh. "I have run away from my guests. There is a houseful of them and they tire me to death. Everyone tires me to-night except you." The gentleman stood before her speechless with bewilderment. "I believe," she said with a little pout, like a spoiled child, "that you are not glad to see me."

"Glad to see you," he repeated, "dearest, yes! But not in this way, at this time."

She turned aside, but the drops that glittered on her cheek now were not caused by the rain. Her shimmering silken robes seemed to utter continuous soft whispers of applause to her nervous yet graceful movements. Altogether she was an incongruous object in the unhome-like bareness of a bachelor's apartments. "You are not very cordial, monsieur," she remarked in a cold tone, as she stood with her back to him, staring hard at an uninteresting picture above the mantel-shelf; "it seems to be a pleasure to you to receive an evening caller, but not exactly a rapture." She smiled her old imperious smile as she threw herself into a tired-looking chair, while her host, with very obvious reluctance, sank into one just opposite. For an instant her beauty smote upon his brain. He leaned forward until his face touched the lapful of rare old laces that flowed wave-like from waist to knee on the dress of the girl he loved.

"Darling," he murmured, "it is a rapture"—then he suddenly drew himself very far back in his chair—"but not exactly a pleasure!"

She rose again and moved restlessly about the room. He stood pale, speechless, waiting for her to go—a waiting that was almost a supplication. "How could you have the courage to come to me," he breathed as she drew near him.

"Because I hadn't the courage to stay away from you. I am brave enough to do, but not to endure."

"My poor love! if this escapade becomes public you will have enough to endure."

"I do not care for the world." She stood facing him with the absolute sincerity and trust of irresistible love. "I care for you," she said.

He took the little jewelled hand and reverently kissed it. "Ah, don't do that!" she cried, drawing it away with a quick impatient frown. He drew away, supposing that he had offended her, while she, giving him the puzzled incredulous look that a woman must give a man when she discovers, not that his intuitions are duller than her own, but that he has no intuitions at all, continued her tour about the room.

"Sweetheart," he said, following her, but not venturing to lay a finger upon her, "you must go." His voice was earnest and very tender.

"The same idea has occurred to me," she said, "but I dislike to hurry. There is nothing so vulgar as haste." Her old mocking tone had returned, and in despair he threw himself back into his seat.

Something in the pathetic grace of his attitude and the beauty of his sensitive poetic face smote upon the heart that, with all its perversity, belonged alone to him. She ran to him and knelt at his side, with her white arms outstretched across his knees, and her lovely head bowed upon them. The young man realized with sharp distinctness that the fear of society is not the strongest feeling that can animate the human frame. He uttered a few passionate words of endearment, and would have gathered her closely into his breast, but she, without looking up, sprang suddenly from him and, seizing her cloak, sped wind-like to her home.

But there were consequences. Madame Grundy, who is chief among those for whom Satan finds some mischief still, openly declared that there were some forms of imprudence that could be tolerated and some that could not, and that this particular indiscretion must, with reluctance, be relegated to the latter class. The irate father of the erring one coincided with this view of things, and a speedy marriage was the result. "Not guilty—but she mustn't do so again!" had evidently been the verdict of society.

A few months later, in 1818, Sir Peregrine Maitland, his affairs of love happily settled, was appointed ruler of Upper Canada, where his attention was turned to affairs of State. But there was one subject in connection with his courtship-days which had never been satisfactorily settled, and upon which he did not venture to question his wife until several years had elapsed. Then, late one afternoon, it recurred to him in that unaccountable way in which bygone events are accustomed to rise at odd times and lay claim to the attention.

"Dear," he said, "why did you object to my kissing your hand the evening you called on me in Paris?"

"You may lay out the corn-coloured silk, Emma," said Lady Sarah to her maid, who came that moment with an inquiry upon toilette matters. Then as the girl disappeared she resumed her novel, peeping over the top of it at her husband.

"As though I wanted you to kiss my hand!" she said.

"Oh!" A sudden light seemed to dawn upon the dense masculine understanding. Sir Peregrine was very proud of his beautiful wife. At the private reception which she gave that evening the corn-coloured silk gown was the centre of a group of government officials and the social dignitaries of the time, between herself and whom the ball of conversation kept lightly moving.

She turned from them to greet an old friend. "Ah, Commodore, so you are really settled here for the winter. Rose told me that you had some thoughts of remaining out in the bush through the cold season, in the cosy but rather too exclusive manner of a family of chipmunks. What have you been doing all summer?"

"Keeping myself unspotted from the world," replied the gentleman, with a stately bow to the lady, and a sportive glance at the worthy representatives of the social world surrounding her.

"How very scriptural! Do Bibles grow on bushes in the backwoods that quotation of them comes so easily?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. Such searching theological questions are, I suppose, what a man must expect to confront when he forsakes the simple and sequestered life of the chipmunks."

"Well, I am disappointed. I supposed from the expression of your eyes that you were going to say something complimentary."

"My dear Lady Sarah, do compliments grow on street corners in the metropolis that the expectation of them comes so easily?"

"No, indeed—nor in drawing-rooms either, apparently. It is a novelty to meet a man who persists in making his conversation impersonal; but it is really cold-hearted of you to think of remaining so long away from us."

"How can you say so! Absence, you know, makes the heart grow fonder."

"Does it?" The lady made a feint of moving away. "Now if it were only possible for me to absent myself," she said, laughingly.

"Impossible! That is for me to do." And the gentleman withdrew with flattering haste.

In his place appeared a blonde young man, with deep sea-blue eyes and a bright buoyant expression, on whose arm his hostess laid a soft detaining hand. "Were you on the point of asking me to walk about a little?" she inquired. "I am going to accept with alacrity."

The young fellow, who would scarcely have made the suggestion in the face and eyes of several among the most distinguished of his fellow citizens immediately surrounding her, was not slow to respond, though he assumed an expression of alarm.

"I fear this is a deep-laid plot," he remarked. "I saw my father leaving you in haste a moment ago. Probably he has offended you, and you are about to visit the iniquities of the parents upon the children. Pray are you taking me apart in order to spare my sensitive feelings? So kind of you!"

"Well, it was not my benevolent intention to lecture you at all, either in public or private, but since you speak of it so feelingly no doubt the need exists. First tell me what you have been doing all summer."

"Living out in the wild woods among the wild flowers, wild animals, wild Indians, and—"

"What a wild young man! I am positively afraid of you."

"Delightful! Please oblige me by remaining so. It is difficult for me to be appalling for any length of time, yet the emotion of fear must be cultivated in your mind at all hazards."

"And why?"

"Because you will never dare to lecture the awe-inspiring being of whom you are in mortal terror."

"Oh! are you sure of that? I met a famous lecturer the other day, and he assured me that he never stepped before an audience without suffering from fright; yet he did not spare his hearers on that account."

"Such is the hardheartedness of man. We expect more from a woman."

"More of a lecture, or more hardheartedness?"

"More of the latter—from you."

"Well I am under the impression that you will receive, before long, a good deal of the former from a young lady present. Are you aware that we are observed?"

"I am sure that one of us is the observed of all observers."

"It is kind of you not to add that politeness forbids you to say which. But what I mean is that since we began to talk I have twice encountered a glance from the darkest eyes I ever saw."

"They must belong to Mademoiselle DeBerczy."

"They do. That girl's eyes and hair are black enough to cast a gloom over the liveliest conversation."

"But her smiles are bright enough to illumine the gloom."

"Then it is a shame that she should waste them upon that rather slow-looking young man in front of her. Will you take me back to my seat and then go and see if you can release her from bondage?"

The request was immediately acceded to, and not long afterwards Helene DeBerczy and Edward Macleod were exchanging the light talk, not worth reporting, that springs so easily from those whose hearts are light.

Meantime where was Rose? To all outward appearance she was demurely listening to the remarks of a distinguished statesman, whose opinions were held to be of great weight, and whose form, at any rate, fully merited this description. He was so delighted to think that one so young and fair could be so deep. Alas! she was deep in a sense the gifted gentleman never knew. For, while the sweet head bowed assent, and the rose-bud lips unclosed to utter such remarks as "Ah, indeed! You surprise me!" and "Very true!" to statements of profound national import, her maiden meditations were as free as fancy. Before her mental vision the brilliant rooms with their gay well-dressed assemblage melted away, and in their place was a fair green meadow, wide and waving and deliciously cool under the declining sun of a summer evening. The last load of the second crop of hay was on its way to the barn, when a great longing desire took possession of her to ride on it. She walked out to the field, very slowly and feebly, but still she actually walked—and the whole cavalcade came to a dead stop at sight of her, for she had never been able to go any farther than the gate since her accident. Mr. Dunlop, and Allan, and the hired man, and even the oxen all stopped, and looked at her as though they expected to hear that the house was afire, or that the servant girl had run away with the butcher's boy. But when they found that nothing was wanted except a ride on a load of hay Mr. Dunlop said, "bless the child!" and held her up as high as he could reach. Then Allan lifted her the rest of the way, blushing as he did so. She remembered how beautifully clean he looked in his white shirt sleeves, and what clear warm shades of brown there were in the eyes and on the cheeks under the broad straw hat. She remembered, too, with a little warmth of feeling—not a very uncomfortable warmth of feeling—how, when the waggon made a great lurch going over a ditch, she had uttered a little scream, and laid strenuous hands of appeal upon the white sleeved arm, and how, when they came to another ditch, a brown palm had held fast to her trembling hand until the danger was over. Halfway in the barn door he made the oxen stop, until she had stood on tip toe, and put her hand among the little swallows in a nest under the eaves. Ah, what was there in the memory of new-mown hay to fill her with this sharp sweet pain? She awoke from her dream to a consciousness that the gentleman beside her was saying that it was sufficiently clear to every enlightened understanding that unless tum tum tum tum measures were instantly adopted mum mum mum mum would be the inevitable result.

"Oh, no doubt of it," said Rose, and then there was a readjustment of the group in her immediate vicinity. Lady Sarah Maitland appeared with a bewitching smile and begged to introduce the honourable gentleman, who had been discoursing with so much eloquence to a friend of hers. The 'friend' hovered in the distance, but even in perspective it was clear to be seen that he was a man of great powers of endurance.

The honourable gentleman concealed under a flattered smile his distaste for the proposition, and in a few moments his place was occupied by Lady Sarah, who took one of the little hands, soft and pink as a handful of rose-leaves, between her own.

"I wonder if I might venture to ask a favour," she said.

"I'm sure I should never venture to refuse it," returned the young girl, with all a young girl's appreciation of kindness coming from a thoroughbred woman of the world.

"Then I wish very much that you would sing one of your favourite songs. It would be a great pleasure to very many of us."

"I'll not wait to be coaxed," was the reply, after a moment's hesitation. "It is only really good singers who can afford to do that."

In spite of her dimpled figure and child-face, Rose Macleod had a very stately little way with her, and it served to repel one pair of eyes that for the first time that evening caught sight of her as she moved towards the instrument. A little queen! That was what he had always called her in his heart. His little queen! Oh, how had he dared to enthrone her there? Presumptuous idiot! she was as far from him as the stars are from the weeds. But the girl at the piano thought of nothing but the sharp, sweet odour of new-mown hay. Sharp as a sword and sweet as love, it pierced and thrilled her being. Then, like a fragrant blossom, a melody sprang from the hidden sources of her pain. The sympathetic musical expressiveness of her voice, and its pure penetrating quality filled the room, and riveted the attention of every one in it. Others came in from adjoining rooms, until, in the press of the throng, a young man was forced, in spite of himself, nearer and nearer to the instrument, and found himself close beside the fair girl-goddess of song, just as the last words left her lips. Like one awaking from sleep she looked at him, and then the glad light of recognition swept up to her eyes. Her dream had come true. "Oh," she exclaimed, "it is Allan!"



CHAPTER XI

AFTER "THE BALL."

She was conscious of what she had said an instant afterwards and blushed to the brow. If any one at that moment had asked her what's in a name, and she had been compelled to reveal her inmost convictions, the fair Rose, who by any other name would be as sweet, would have answered "impropriety, embarrassment, a host of unpleasant emotions." It was impossible to explain to him that she had been helping him to make hay that evening in Lady Sarah Maitland's parlours, and that that was why the name that she had heard so frequently in the meadow had left her lips so easily and naturally that night. Better try and seem unconscious. But unconsciousness, like happiness, comes unsought or not at all. As for Allan, his own name had never made such music in his ears and surely to no lone watcher waiting for the dawn could the first blush of morn be more welcome than was to him this lovely mantling bloom on the face of the girl he loved.

"Charming!" "Exquisite!" "Do sing something else!" were the exclamations rained upon her as she ceased to sing, but she looked only to him.

"How is it I have never heard you sing before?" he inquired, with the applause that the others had uttered shining unspoken in his eyes.

"You have too many professional singers about your home. I am afraid to sing before them. Did you ever hear birds called 'the angels of earth?'"

"Never."

"Well, if nobody else originated the phrase I am willing to do so—rather than that it shouldn't be originated at all."

"It may be a pretty idea," said Allan, "and yet it fails to suit my critical taste." They withdrew a little from the crowd, and found a quiet place in which to sit and chat, for now a pianist of note had been led a willing sacrifice to the place Rose vacated.

"You must be hard to please," said Rose. "What can be more like an angel than a bird? It has wings, and it sings, and it is rejoicingly happy. It seems to be particularly blest every moment of its blessed little life."

"Very likely. Nevertheless I think a flower much more closely resembles an angel."

"A flower? Why, there is scarcely a point of resemblance."

The young man laughed, but the slight whimsical frown between his brows deepened.

"Now that isn't at all what I expected you to say. I thought you might be kind enough to inquire, 'What flower?' and then I could reply, 'The queen of flowers.'"

Rose looked down a moment at the warm pink hands restlessly twining and intertwining in her lap. "I am glad I did not make the inquiry," she said.

"You don't like clumsy compliments?"

"I believe I don't like any kind from you."

"Why, please?"

"I don't know exactly, unless because it seems natural to expect something better."

Allan Dunlop was dimly aware that a compliment of a very high order had been paid to himself. "Our best friends are those who compel us to do our best," he said. "I hope you will always expect something better of me than anything I have done."

It was the speech of an ambitious young man. They both recognized the note of earnestness that seemed to place them for a moment above the frivolous crowd about them. Only for a moment; then they lapsed easily into the light talk so natural to the occasion.

"Have you had a pleasant evening?" he asked.

"Very pleasant." Her mind reverted once more to her delightful reverie, and the scent of new-mown hay was again about her. Then, as though he could read her thoughts, she brought them back to the present with a quick little blush, and mentioned the name of the gentleman who had absorbed so large a part of her time, if not of her attention, through the evening.

"Now, why should she blush when she mentions his name?" thought poor Allan, with a sharp jealous pang at his heart, for the man she alluded to was an eligible bachelor, who had successfully resisted the charms of one generation of maidens. "If you find Mr. Gallon's conversation so interesting," he said, rather forlornly, "mine will seem dull by contrast. What was he expatiating upon?"

"Politics, mostly."

"Are you interested in that subject? I think of going into politics more deeply myself some time."

"Do you, indeed? More than you have?" If he had spoken of going into a decline Rose could not have looked more foreboding. Allan glanced across half-enviously at the personage who had the power to invest that topic with interest. "He seems to be more than usually roused to-night."

Rose suppressed a yawn. "Does he talk better when he is roused than he does when he's asleep?" she asked.

"Surely he displayed no signs of sleepiness when talking with you."

"No; but I cannot answer for myself."

That senseless pang of jealousy died a very easy death after all, and the only sufferer from it would have been entirely happy were it not for the advancing form of Commodore Macleod, who came in search of his daughter, and bore her off with a speed that left her lover a little chilled and daunted.

The Canadian winter with its bright, fierce days and sparkling nights was upon them, but it held no terrors for the young hearts who met it in a mood as defiantly merry as its own. Only a suffering or morbid nature sees in winter the synonym of death and decay; fancies that mourning and desolation is the burden of the gaily whistling winds; and regards the bare trees, rid of their dusty garments, and quietly resting, as shivering skeletons, and the dancing snow-flakes as the colourless pall that hides from sight all there is of life and loveliness. Nature, when the labours of the year are over, sinks to rest beneath her fleecy coverings, lulled to sleep in the kindly, yet frosty, arms of the Northern tempest. What wild weird lullabies are sung to her unheeding ears, dulled by the lethargy of sleep. How early falls the darkness, and how late the long night lingers, the better to ensure repose to the sweet mistress of the earth! How bright the starry eyes of heaven keeping watch above her rest!

The Macleods had settled in a furnished house, through which Rose had already diffused the charm of her dainty personality. She was kneeling before the hearth, like a young fire-worshipper, one snowy afternoon, and thinking a little drearily that the close environment of a snow-storm in town rendered it almost as lonely as the country, when a visitor was announced, the sound of whose name seemed to make the solitude populous. It was Allan Dunlop, whom she instantly forgave for so soon availing himself of her permission to call, when she realized how welcome a break his coming made in the cheerless monotony of the day. He caught a glimpse of bright hair against a background of blazing logs, and then she came forward to meet him, not eagerly, not shyly, but with a charming manner in which both eagerness and shyness were suggested. At that moment all the warmth and brightness of the bleak colourless world shone for him in the eyes and hair of this sweet girl, and in the glowing fire-place before which she drew his chair.

"It is exactly the sort of day on which one expects to be free from the annoyance of callers," he said. "Ought I to apologize?"

"By all means—instantly—and in the most profuse and elaborate terms." She assumed her grand air, mounted a footstool, and stood looking over his head with her saucy chin elevated, waiting for the abject petition that did not come. The young man's heart rendered the tribute of an unmistakable throb to its "little queen;" but emotional declarations are out of place after a short acquaintance, especially when there exists a decided belief that they will be listened to in an unfriendly spirit, or, what is infinitely worse, in a friendly spirit. It was the fear of making Rose his friend that steeled Allan's determination to bide his time, and that rendered his present reply rather more stiff than sensational.

"I beg a thousand pardons," he began, when she interrupted him with—

"Oh, that is too many. Do try and be a little more moderate in your demands. Would it please you to have me spend the whole afternoon in forgiving you?"

Allan laughed—a blithe contented little laugh. "Any way that you like to spend the afternoon will please me," he said, "so long as I am not deprived of your presence. Oh, not that way," he added, as a little frown crept between her golden-brown eyebrows, "that way excepted."

"Very well. I'll not frown at you, but you must promise not to come so near again to the verge of a compliment."

"I promise. Anything to keep a frown from marring the—I mean from your face. But the difficulty is to think of anything that is as easy to say."

"You might better remind me of my faults."

"Oh, you could scarcely expect me to be eloquent on that subject. I didn't know that they exist—that is to say, I am incapable of speaking upon a subject so wide reaching and profound. Are they like unto the snow-flakes for multitude?"

"No, not quite so numerous, but far worse in quality. For instance, the other day I never smiled at papa the least bit when I said, good morning!"

"Horrible! what an unnatural daughter!"

"It was because he wouldn't let me dance as often as I wanted to the night before. He said he must draw the line somewhere. It is strange that the word somewhere in that sentence invariably means the precise point where it is most painful to have it drawn."

Allan Dunlop, who had already had some experience of the Commodore's ability to draw the line at the sensitive point designated by his daughter, murmured only, "very strange."

"Not that he was in the least unkind about it," continued Rose. "Papa is always lovely to me, no matter how I behave."

"Very lovely?"

"Very lovely."

"I never before was so struck with the truths of heredity," mused the young man. "You are exactly like him."

"Oh!" the girl dropped her face in her hands a moment, and then thrust them out with the palms toward her guest. "You have need to beg a thousand pardons and a thousand more to cover the offences you have committed. And you have broken your promise!"

"What a harsh accusation! I promised not to come to the verge of a compliment. Do you think that was on the verge?"

"No! It was too blunt—too dreadfully—"

"It is a pleasure to hear you so emphatically contradict an assertion made by yourself."

"That is a mere quibble—a legal quibble. Well, there is no doubt that you would make a very successful lawyer."

"Is that a compliment, or does it approach the verge of one?"

Before this problem could be solved Herbert, who was deeply engaged in a game of checkers with his younger sister, at the other end of the apartment, suddenly announced: "Rose, here is Mr. Galton coming across the street, making directly for our house."

"Oh, dear!" was the very inhospitable exclamation of its pretty mistress. Then as she caught an amused glance from Allan's eyes, she added demurely, "I am so glad."

"Perhaps it would be better for me to go." The words escaped with obvious reluctance.

"Better for which of us?"

"For both, I think."

"Your charities are conducted on too large a scale. Now, if you could only content yourself with benefiting one of us you would remain. I have a dread of that man."

"So have I, but from a different motive. As your dread increases, mine grows less."

Close analysis and consideration of this fact gave a very becoming tint to her cheeks as she welcomed the entering guest. "Ah, Miss Rose," he exclaimed, "blooming as ever, in spite of wintry days. Do you know I came very near going past your door?" He allowed the announcement of this providentially averted calamity to sink deep into her heart, while he bowed to Allan.

"This is an unexpected pleasure," murmured the young lady, with sufficient formality to prevent her words from being dangerously insincere.

"Unexpected to you and a pleasure to me?" queried the gentleman, with a keen glance at the pair, whose tete-a-tete he had evidently disturbed, "or do your words bear reference to the idea of seeing me going past your door?"

The amount of truth in these very good guesses startled the girl to whom they were addressed into an uncomfortable sense of guilt. "How can you accuse me of anything so horrid?" she said, drawing her chair not far from him, and looking into his face with the appreciative air and attitude that are not to be resisted.

"Mr. Galton," said Herbert, who, having completed the game, and vanquished his sister, could afford to turn his attention to the frivolous conversation of his elders, "do you know what Rose said when she saw you coming? She said, 'Oh, dear, I am so glad!'"

"Herbert," implored Rose, crimsoning under these carefully reported words, and fearing that Mr. Galton, not being aware of the motive which prompted them, would not know whether to be ecstatic or sarcastic, "you are a terrible boy!"

"Herbert has done me a great kindness," exclaimed the flattered gentleman, who considered Rose's embarrassment quite natural, and very pleasing under the circumstances. "All my doubts of a welcome he has happily removed."

In the fear that these doubts might unhappily return if he were allowed to continue conversation with a too-confiding younger brother, Rose devoted herself with nervous intentness to his entertainment, and succeeded brilliantly. Fragments of laughter and chat drifted across to where Eva was trying to persuade Allan into playing checkers.

"Just one game, please, Mr. Dunlop," pleaded the little damsel, in resistless accents.

"If you but knew what a wretched player I am," said the young man gloomily.

"Oh, are you a wretched player?" she exclaimed brightly, "I am so glad. Then there is some chance for me." She added confidentially, "I am even more wretched."

"I hope you may never have the same reason to be," said Allan, with a half-suppressed glance at the lively pair near the window.

A lover, from his very nature, must be decidedly unhappy or supremely blest, and it is scarcely to be expected that perfect felicity can reign in a heart whose pretty mistress is spending her smiles on another man. Allan did not believe that Rose really cared for Mr. Galton—he had seen too many proofs to the contrary—but he did believe that she was giving that objectionable gentleman every reason to think that she did care. With how many men did she pursue this course of action, and was he to believe her guilty of careless coquetry? Upon how many admirers may a rose breathe perfume and still keep its innocent heart sweet for its lover? These were the questions that rankled in his mind, while Eva set the checkers in place.

"Perhaps I can keep you from getting a king," she said exultantly.

"If I can only keep my queen," observed the young man absently.

"Why, Mr. Dunlop, there are no queens in this game; it isn't like chess."

"There! you see how little I know about it," was the regretful reply.

Despite this painful manifestation of ignorance the two combatants appeared for a while to be very equally matched. Then the advantage was clearly on Allan's side. His king committed frightful havoc among the scattered ranks of the enemy, till suddenly, as he observed the painful stress of attention and warm colour in the face of his fair little foe, a strange and unaccountable languor fell upon his troops. They seemed to care not whether they lived or died, while their shameless commander, surveying them with anxious countenance, gave vent to his emotion in such ejaculations as, "Dear me!" "Why didn't I see that move?" or, "The idea of your taking two men at one jump!" At last the announcement that he was completely vanquished was joyfully made by Eva, and incredulously listened to by Herbert, who viewed his sister's opponent with amazement, not unmingled with pity.

"The battle is indeed lost!" Herbert said, quoting the historic words in a consolatory way; "but there is time to win another."

"I'm afraid not," said Allan, rising and preparing to depart.

"I wish that you could have won the game, too," said Eva, suddenly stricken with remorse in the midst of her good-fortune.

"You are a very kind little girl. I can depend on you to consider my feelings."

The accent, ever so slight, upon the "you" aroused Rose's attention. "Why, you are not going?" she exclaimed, coming towards him.

"Such is my charitable intention," he replied, smiling with sad eyes.

"I was only waiting for you to finish your game before bringing Mr. Galton to the fire to talk politics with you."

"That is a warm topic, and a warm place."

"Perhaps Mr. Dunlop fears that we shall quarrel on the subject. You know we are on different sides, Miss Macleod."

"We shall hardly come to blows, I think," returned Allan, with the look of bright good-fellowship which made him a favourite with both political parties.

"The idea of your quarrelling with anybody!" said Rose, as she accompanied him to the door.

"I may have a very serious disagreement with him some time," replied her jealous though unacknowledged lover, "but it will not be about politics."

He ran hastily down the steps, unconsciously brushing against Commodore Macleod, who favoured him with a bow of about the same temperature as the weather. Muttering a hurried excuse, he went on into the cold gloom of the early winter twilight, shivering slightly, not from the chill without, but from the deadlier chill within. 'What a pompous unbearable old fellow the elder Macleod was. How could he endure to have him for a father-in-law? Ah! how could he endure not to have him?' The fear that he might never stand in a closer relationship to a man for whom he had so little liking lay heavily upon him.

That same evening the object of these mingled emotions laid a detaining hand upon the shoulder of his pretty daughter as she bent to bestow a bed-time kiss upon his grizzled moustache. "I wish to have a little conversation with you, my dear, on a serious subject"

"Oh, but Papa," replied the spoiled girl, "I am not at all in a serious frame of mind."

"It is highly probable that you will find yourself so at the end of our talk."

"Charming prospect! After such an inducement as that I can't resist any longer." She sank back into a low chair near a great case of books, for they were sitting in the cosy library.

"I met young Dunlop coming out of the house as I was coming in," began the Commodore. "I was sorry to see that."

"I was sorry to see it, too, Papa, but he couldn't be persuaded to stay longer."

"That is not a very respectful answer to give to your old father; nevertheless, I am glad to hear it, as it assures me that you have not reached the point when his absence will leave you sad."

"Oh, no! But I am willing to admit that over Mr. Galton's departure I did come very near shedding tears—of joy."

"I hope my little girl will have no cause to shed any other kind."

"His little girl" endeavoured to look oracular as she replied: "That will largely depend upon the nature of the information you are about to communicate to me."

"It is only a request, my dear! I wish for your own sake that you would have as little as possible to do with that young Dunlop."

There was an appreciable interval of silence. Rose stared hard at the fire. Her father added, "Of course, I do not wish you to do anything unreasonable."

"I am sure of that," said the girl softly, "nor anything unkind."

The gentleman stirred a little uneasily in his chair. "You must remember," he said, "that the greatest unkindness one can do another is to encourage false hopes in him."

"How would you like me to treat him?"

"Oh, my dear child, I can't tell. You know perfectly well yourself. Be preoccupied, absent-minded, indifferent, when he comes. Make him repeat what he says, and then answer him at random. Look as though you had a thousand things to distract your attention, and treat him as though he were the chair on which he is sitting."

"And you think that would be an ample and delicate return for the countless kindnesses shown me by himself, and his people last summer?"

"Oh, hang himself and his people!" was the Commodore's mental comment. Aloud he said, "Well, the young fellow could hardly leave you to perish under the horse's heels. What he did was only common decency."

"Then, perhaps, it would be as well to treat him with common decency. Don't you think that desirable quality is omitted from your course of treatment?" Her tones were those of caressing gentleness, but the flame of the firelight was not more red than the cheek on which it gleamed.

"Why, bless me, Rose, I don't want you to give him the cut direct. There is no need to put him either in paradise or the inferno. Better adopt a happy medium."

"Yes; but purgatory is rather an unhappy medium."

"Well, my dear, I have nothing more to say. I suppose it is natural that you should set aside the counsel of a man who has loved you for nineteen years in favour of the attention of one who has known you about the same number of weeks."

"Papa, you are unjust!" The repressed tears came at last, but they were dried as quickly as they dropped.

"Can't you understand," he continued in a softened tone, "that I would willingly give him anything in return for his kindness—except my eldest daughter?"

"That is a gift he would never value. A society man might do so, but the idea of a young fellow of talent and energy and ambition and brains looking at a little goose like me!"

The Commodore laughed. "No doubt it would be a great hardship for him to look at you; but young men of talent, ambition and that sort of thing are not afraid of hardship. In fact they grow to love it. So you think he would not value the gift?" He laughed again very heartily.

"I am perfectly certain," declared the young girl, with impressive earnestness, "that he will never stoop to ask you for it."

"Then there is nothing more to be said," replied the Commodore, with an air of great relief. "The whole question could not be more satisfactorily settled. You are my own loyal little girl and—and you don't think me a dreadfully cross old bear, do you?"

She went straight to his arms. "How can I help it," she asked, with her customary bright smile, "when you give me such a bearish hug?"

But alone in her room, the smile vanished in a tempest of fast-coming tears. There was a reason for them, but she was unconscious of it then. Later she discovered it to lie in the fact that in her heart of hearts she was not a "loyal little girl" at all, but an "out and out little traitor and rebel."



CHAPTER XII.

A KISS AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

It was late afternoon in a Canadian midwinter day. Cold and still, with a coldness so intense that the blinding brightness of the sun made no discernable impression on the densely packed snow, and with a stillness absolutely undisturbed by any slightest breath of blustering wind. Before the early twilight came, Rose Macleod, wrapped in furs from dainty head to well-booted feet, ran lightly down stairs, tapping softly at the library door on the way.

"I am all ready, Papa," she said, illumining the room for a moment with a pair of dark blue eyes and crimson cheeks. "Don't you think it will be a beautiful night?"

"Very beautiful, and cold enough to kill an Esquimaux. I confess it would be a pleasure to know that in a few hours you would be safe under the blankets instead of junketing over at Madame DeBerczy's."

"I shall be just as safe under the buffalo robes, just as warm, and a great deal happier."

"Very well; be off then. By the way, how many are in your party?"

"Oh, nearly a dozen at least."

"Then there is a possibility that you will not all perish. Tell the survivors to report themselves here as early tomorrow morning as possible."

There was a sound of bells and a mingling of merry voices as a sleigh-load of young people drove up to the door, and waited for Rose to join them. "Delays are dangerous," observed Edward, as his sister, after opening the door, was suddenly stung by the reflection that she had not taken a last comprehensive view of herself in the glass, and turned to the hall mirror to rectify the omission.

"Particularly, when it is below zero," said another.

"What is she doing now?" patiently inquired a third.

"Airing the hall," responded a girlish voice. "Oh, no, she is really coming! Rose," she called, "come and sit by me."

"No, there is more room here," said another voice; while still another exclaimed, "I have been keeping such a cosy little corner here for you."

She stood in smiling hesitancy a moment, when her hand, from which she had removed the glove in order to adjust an unruly hair-pin, was taken by another hand, firm and warm and gloveless, and she was drawn almost unconsciously to the side of its owner. It was Allan Dunlop who had thus taken summary possession of her, and incurred a little of her dignified displeasure.

"You left me no room for choice," she said in a slightly offended tone.

"I beg your pardon, I was thinking only of leaving you room for a seat."

She was silent. It was very difficult to keep this young man at a distance, when there was such a very little distance between them, and yet she must be true to the promise tacitly given to her father. She must be cool, indifferent, uninterested. "It isn't a matter of any importance," she said absently.

"I'm afraid it is to me," he continued in a lower tone, "I know scarcely a soul here, and declined Edward's invitation to join you on that account."

"Oh, it is very easy to become acquainted with a sleighing-party." She greeted the two young ladies on the other side of him, and introduced him to them. They were refined, attractive-looking girls, but they had a fatal defect. They absorbed social heat and light instead of radiating them. It seemed as though they might be saying: "There, now, you got us into an unpleasant situation by inviting us here, and it's your duty to make us happy; but we're not having a good time at all, and we'd like to know what you're going to do about it." Allan did the best he could, not half-heartedly, for he was accustomed to do thoroughly whatever he attempted, and his success was marked. Those grave girls, who, heretofore, had always seemed to be haunted by some real or fancied neglect, were in a gale of semi-repressed merriment. The mirth was infectious, and as the horses flew over the frozen road, the gay jingle of bells mingled happily with the joyous laughter of young voices. Poor Rose, whose natural love for society and capacity for fun-making had induced her to set very pleasant hopes upon this sleigh-ride, found herself, much to her surprise, the only silent one of the company. With Allan's gracefully unconcerned personality on one side, a middle-aged lady of rather severe aspect—the matron of the party—on the other, and just opposite a pair who were very agreeably and entirely engaged with as well as to each other, all means of communication seemed to be hopelessly cut off. It was really very unreasonable for Allan to act in this way. He was saving her the trouble of treating him badly and keeping him at a distance; but, strange to say, there are some disagreeable duties of which one does not wish to be relieved. If it were possible to be overwhelmingly dignified when one is buried shoulder deep in bear and buffalo skins—but that was out of the question.

The clear crystalline day began to be softly shadowed by twilight. Behind them lay the town, its roofs and spires robed in swan's-down, while on all sides the fallen logs and deep underbrush, the level stubbles and broad irregular hollows, and all the vast sweep of dark evergreen forest, melting away in immeasurable distance, was a dazzling white waste of snow. In the bright moonshine it sparkled as though studded with innumerable stars. Above them was a marvellously brilliant sky.

Suddenly, under a group of trees that stretched their ghostly arms across the roadway, the cavalcade came to a full stop; and Edward, who was driving, looked round with a face of gloomy foreboding at the merrymakers.

"What is the matter?" demanded half-a-dozen voices.

"We shall have to go back," announced the young man, with a look of forced resignation.

"Go back!" echoed the same voices an octave higher, "why, what has happened?"

"Nothing, except that Rose ought to take another look at herself in the hall mirror. There is something fatally wrong with her appearance."

"About which part of my appearance?" demanded the young lady, who was too well acquainted with her brother to be at all surprised or disturbed by anything he could say.

"I don't know, I'm sure. Perhaps its the tout ensemble. Yes, that's just what it is."

"Do drive on, Edward, and don't be ridiculous. It's too cold to discuss even so important a subject as that."

"I am sure you must be suffering from the cold." It was Allan who spoke, turning round to her in a tone of quick, low tenderness.

"Not in the least!" Every small emphatic word was keen and hard as a piece of ice. Then, in the white moonlight, she confronted something that made her heart sink, it was the unmistakable look of mental suffering, a look that showed her that he at any rate was suffering from the cold—the sharp stinging cold of a winter whose beginning was pressing bitterly upon them, whose end, so far as they could see, was death.

The mansion of Madame DeBerczy sent out broad shafts of light through its many windows to welcome the latest addition to the brilliant throng already assembled in its ample interior. Madame herself was superb in a regal-looking gown that became her aristocratic old countenance as a rich setting becomes an antique cameo. Her stately rooms were aglow with immense fire-places, each holding a small cart-load of hissing and crackling wood, the reflected light gleaming brightly from the shining fire-irons, while a number of brass sconces—the picturesque chandeliers of the past—polished to the similitude of gold, were softly shimmering overhead. The beautiful English furniture of the last century, artistic yet home-like; the old world cabinets, covered with surface carving, solid yet graceful in appearance; tiles, grave and cheerful in design, set into oaken mantel-pieces; peacock coloured screens, and ample crimson curtains, edged with heavy silken borders of gold, all lent their aid to brighten and enrich the rooms that to-night were graced by some of the best society from Upper Canada's; most ambitious little town of York. Mademoiselle Helene, beautiful in a blush rose gown, with a few star-shaped flowers of the same shade in her silky hair, was the magical living synthesis of this small world of warmth and colour in the eyes of her lover. These eyes were more than usually brilliant from his long ride in the keen air, and the yellow locks upon the smooth white brow were several noticeable inches above the heads of those around him. As he walked down the crowded rooms, in enviable proximity to the blushing dress, his handsome face and half careless, half military air drew the attention of more than one bright pair of eyes.

"Rather a pretty boy," commented a pompous-looking gentleman, patronizingly.

"But entirely too fair," was the disapproving response of the critical young lady beside him, whose own complexion and opinion were certainly free from the undesirable quality she referred to. "Of course, a pink face is attractive—in a doll."

"Then the daughter of our hostess escapes the imputation of being doll-like."

"Oh, she is quite too overgrown for that. It's a pity she has that peculiar complexion through which the blood never shows."

In another group, an enthusiastic young creature whispered to her mother: "Mamma, do notice Miss DeBerczy's face; white as a cherry blossom, and her lips the cherries themselves. Isn't she just like a picture?"

"Yes, dear," drawled mamma, adjusting her eye-glass with an air of rendering impartial justice, "like a very ill-painted picture. Why don't she lay on her colours a little more artistically?"

"Oh, she doesn't lay them on, they're natural."

"Well, Lena, you should not be so quick to notice and comment upon natural defects. Not one of us is free from them, and it is uncharitable and unkind to make them the subject of remark."

Thus silenced and put in the wrong the young lady ventured nothing further.

"Edward," said Helene, later in the evening, "really you ought to dance with somebody else. There are dozens of charming girls here."

"Which dozen did you wish me to dance with?"

"Don't be nonsensical, please. Haven't you any preference?"

"Oh, decidedly, yes." He glanced at a petite maiden, whose figure and movements were light and fairy-like. "But I'm afraid she would refuse me."

"I don't think she would."

"That isn't sufficient. My vanity is painfully sensitive to the smallest danger of slight."

The fairy-like person had unconsciously assumed an appreciative, not to say sympathetic, expression. Helene smiled. "Your fears are very becoming to your youth and modesty, but I think I may go so far as to say I am sure she will not refuse."

"That is joyful news." Another set was forming, and he rose with hand extended to Helene. "You said you were sure she would not refuse," he responded to her look of blank amaze; and then, as she yielded to the irresistible entreaty in his eyes, he murmured softly, "How could you imagine I had any other preference but you?"

"One imagines a great many strange things," she replied. "Once I fancied that you preferred an Indian girl."

"How could you!" he repeated with intense emphasis. All that part of his life seemed vague and far away as though he had dreamed it in some prehistoric period of his existence. It refused to take the hues and proportion of reality. Yes, that was nothing but a wild fantastic dream—the sort of dream from which one wakes with a wretchedly bad taste in the mouth. This rare girl, with the flower-like curves and colours, was the only reality. And yet, was she reality? Her dress, wreathed flame-like from warm white shoulders to satin shod feet, lay in rich glowing lengths upon the waxed and polished floor. Her beautiful head, too heavily weighted with braids and coils of raven blackness, swayed slumberously upon the dainty white neck, and he could not tell whether he better liked to see the dark lashes lying upon her cheeks or uplifted to reveal the magical eyes beneath. He was very much in love. The soft intoxicating strains of music went to his head like wine. He was powerless to struggle against the thrilling illusion of the hour. When the others returned to their seats or promenaded the brilliant rooms they escaped alone and unobserved into the conservatory. Here they beheld the greatest possible contrast to the desolate wintry waste without. The air was heavy and languorous with the odour of tropic flowers. The music, almost oppressive in the crowded parlours, melted deliciously upon the ear as they wandered away. Helene, when she noticed that they were quite alone, suffered a vague alarm. She told herself in one moment that it was not possible that Edward would choose this opportunity for a formal declaration of his love, and the next moment she reminded herself that impossible things are the ones that frequently come to pass. The idea, like an ill-shaped burden, pressed uncomfortably upon her.

A maiden's heart, like a summer night, knows and loves its own secret. All through the mysterious deep hours of sleep it holds the secret closely wrapped in darkness, pure as the dew on the grass, innocent as the little leaves in the forest, glorious as the countless stars of heaven. Some time, and soon enough, the dawn will come. Then the stars will pale before a glory more intense, the countless little leaves, like delicate human emotions, will wake and stir, and the white mists of maidenliness will be warmed with heavenly radiance. But after sunrise comes the day—the long prosaic day of duty and denial, of work and its rewards, of sober, plain realities. Why should the night of mystery and beauty hasten towards the common light? Her being thrilled under the first faint approaches of the dawn, and yet—yet a little longer, oh, ardent, impetuous, all-conquering Sun! It seemed as though the girl's very soul were pleading. The rich-hued, fragrance-laden flowers in the sweet dim place bent their heads to listen, but her impassioned lover paid no heed to the unspoken prayer. The sense of her beauty—of her unsurpassable charm, mingled with the voluptuous music—pierced his heart with insupportable pain. Could she not feel his unuttered love? Her lily-like face was cool and pale, but in that warm-coloured robe it seemed as though her very body blushed. In leaning over to reach a peculiar flower that attracted her attention, a little wave of her gown rested upon his knee, and it seemed to his infatuated vision that the insensate fabric throbbed as well as glowed from the momentary contact. Helene kept up a continual flow of small talk, of which he heard not a syllable. Rising hurriedly, her long train caught in a low branch that stretched across the walk, and he bent to extricate it.

"How is it that you dare to touch the hem of my garment?" she demanded laughingly.

"Oh, I can dare more than that," he cried. The conviction that she loved him, as indeed she did, gave him a sort of desperate courage. He took her in his arms and held her close, kissing her passionately on lips and eyes and soft white shoulders. She neither moved nor spoke, but stood, when he released her, confronting him with a sort of frigid, fascinated stare. "Oh, what have I done? Helene," he exclaimed tremblingly. "I thought you loved me."

"I?" she questioned with haughty disdain, "love?" she demanded with incredulous contempt, "you?"

The concentrated fires of her wrath and scorn were heaped upon this final monosyllable. Every word was a fierce insulting interrogation. Surely the traditional "three sweet words" had never before been uttered with such tragic effect. She stood before him a living statue of outraged pride, clothed in a fiery robe of righteous indignation; then she turned and passed out of his sight, leaving the young man to his reflections.

They were bitter enough in all truth. He still cared for Helene, he loved her as he loved himself. But it is only fair to add that he held himself in the very smallest estimation. He had acted like a drunken fool. How would he like any man alive to treat his little Rose in that style? But then she might have behaved reasonably about it. She had trampled on his heart, and left it sore and bruised and bleeding. Very well, he was not a child to cry out when he was hurt. He went back to the gay throng, and saw, as in a cruel dream, the girl who despised him scattering profuse smiles upon others. No matter! Nothing could possibly be of any importance now. Rose was making her way with some difficulty towards him. How wan and tired she looked. Was it possible that any one besides himself was suffering? The idea was absurd.

"Isn't it time for us to go, Edward?" she said. "Madame DeBerczy has invited our party to remain over to-morrow, but I promised papa not to desert him any longer than was strictly necessary." Edward found the proposition a most welcome one. They could not leave Oak Ridges too soon, nor remain away from it too long.

His sister's drooping little figure attracted the attention of Helene. "Do you talk of going?" Helene asked. "Well, so you shall go—to bed; and the very first bed we come to." She bent caressingly over the little golden head of her friend. Their beautiful arms were interlinked. Rose glanced irresolutely at her brother.

"You will need to put on the extra wraps you brought," he said, "as it is particularly cold at this hour of the morning." Helene was ignored utterly. He did not seem to know that she was present. The proud girl was wounded to the quick. She was not visible at their leave-takings. When every one was gone she went away upstairs, telling herself at every step that she hated, hated, Edward Macleod; that he was in all things and in every way detestable. She did not weep nor bewail. The tears showed as seldom in her eyes as the blood in her cheeks, and her pride was of the inflexible sort that scorns to relax when its possessor is alone. She dropped into a heavy troubled sleep, and dreamed that she was solitary in a frozen land, whose only sunshine was the golden head of her lover. In the strange fantastic manner of dreams he seemed to be a very little child, whose light warm weight lay along her arms, close to the heart above which he had pressed those burning kisses. It was bitter cold; but the whole scene was like a picture of winter. She could not feel it—she could feel nothing but the aching of her own heart, the warm breath growing ever warmer, and the clinging hands, clinging ever closer, of the child she loved. The sense of delicious languor changed to a feeling of heaviness—almost suffocation. Every golden hair of the head upon her breast pierced her like a ray of brightest sunshine. Hastily putting him from her she fled away with the wintry winds, herself as wild and swift and soulless as they. But presently coming to look for the child, and unable to find him, she realized that he was lost, and then she woke, trembling with deep, tearless sobs.

"What is it, my dearest?" called Madame DeBerczy from the next room.

"Nothing, mother, dear, but a troubled dream."

"Ah, it is the excitement of these late hours. Try to sleep again."

But Helene could sleep no more. A few days later she heard that Edward Macleod, with a party of friends, had gone on a shooting expedition to the Muskoka country.



CHAPTER XIII.

RIVAL ATTRACTIONS.

The current of a strong human affection, when it is thrown back upon itself, must find vent in another direction. The weakest stream of passion, when its chosen course is impeded by an immovable obstacle, does not sink by gentle degrees into the earth, and thus, lost to sight, become merely a thing of memory. There is disturbance and disorder; banks are overflowed; and fields, once made fruitful and beautiful by the softly-flowing river, lie sodden and unwholesome, flooded by the dangerous waves. For days and nights Edward's brain was surging with the sound of rushing waters. The tumultuous feelings so strongly excited, so completely overthrown that evening in the conservatory with Helene, would not subside. They beat upon his desolate heart in great waves of rage, remorse, despair, and love, like the beating of lonely waters upon a shipwrecked shore.

Hence it was that he welcomed the idea conveyed in a letter from a friend in Barrie that they, with another boon companion, should go hunting in Muskoka. Edward wrote an immediate agreement to the proposition, mentioning Pine Towers as the place most convenient for them to meet and lay plans for future action. He at once made preparations to depart, for the idea of delay was intolerable to him. The very atmosphere of the town was poisonous—the demands of society not to be tolerated. He told his family that his old longing for the wilds had come upon him, the sort of ennui that nothing but the odour of the woods could cure. The close of the day following found him on the frozen shores of Kempenfeldt Bay, now clasped in the icy arms of winter. The wind was wild among the leafless trees along the avenue, but the desolation of his home was a visible response to the sorer desolation of his heart.

The two or three old servants remaining in the lonely house were delighted to see the young master home again. Olympia, the coloured cook, whose high-sounding cognomen was usually reduced to Olly, gave him a welcome equal to what might be expected from a whole plantation of darkies. Her eyes and teeth shone in perpetual smiles, her gaily turbaned head and dusky hands gesticulated in perfect time to the exclamations poured out upon him.

"Well, my soul!" she cried; "well, my soul! Marse Ed., its good to see you home again. Come in, chile, come right in! How mis'able you do look to be sure. Just like a ghost, so cold and white. Shan't I mix you a little something warm?"

"Oh, no, Olly, I'm all right; just a little tired after my long journey, that's all."

She recognized the lifelessness in his tone, the jaded look and air of one who is fighting a hard battle in the face of sure defeat. "You's sick, honey," she exclaimed, with the ready sympathy of her race, "and you's come back to old Olly to take care ob you. Dat's right, chile, I'll just mix you a little warm—"

"Oh, dear, no, Olly, thank you; its comfort enough just to be quiet and to be at home."

She left him in the parlour, but he pushed on after her into the great fire-lit kitchen, partly because he detested the society of his own thoughts, partly because it suited his present mood to be made much of by the kindly old woman, to whom his mother all her life had been a "chile." It was almost like being a boy again to sit in the chimney corner and tell old Olly the story of his journey in all its details. But before the recital was half-finished, something stirred in the semi-darkness, on the other side of the fire-place.

"Why, bress my heart," said Olly, "I t'ought you was a dog, Wanda, you sat dat quiet. What's de matter wid you, gal? Whar's your manners?"

The graceful shrinking figure would gladly have escaped out of sight, but at the sound of her name Edward came forward to greet the Indian girl. Olly, with many muttered protestations against the rudeness shown to her young mahs'r, lifted the trap-door, and vanished down cellar. The pale life-weary young man was alone with the sweet womanly savage.

He held the little hand she offered him very closely and kindly.

"Are you glad to see me, Wanda?" he asked.

That was the keynote of his mental state. He was not glad to see anyone or anything, but he was still interested to know that someone cared for him. In his present mood it was certainly more pleasant to feel that others were kindly disposed towards him than that they were indifferent. The Algonquin maiden, on her side, was filled with a soft delicious emotion. In the summer, when this daring young man pursued her, she repulsed him; but in the winter, when he left her, she thought of him. The natural result of her meditations upon so fascinating a subject it is not difficult to conjecture. She began to believe in the reality of his regard for her, and to fancy that he had left her because of her harshness, of which he had frequently complained. Now, could it be possible that his coming had anything to do with the thought of her? Yes, she replied, she was glad to see him; her blushing beautiful face gave eloquent testimony to the fact. He released her then, and followed Olly into the dining-room, where a small but sumptuous repast was laid, for nothing in the house above nor in the cellar beneath was considered too good for young mahs'r. "You'd be sprised, Marse Ed.," confided the old woman, "de improvement made by dat chile since I took her in han'. It jus' went agin my stomach to see her runnin' wild, widout a frien' in de worl', cept dose heathen Injuns. She t'ought a heap ob yer mudder, an' I could'nt tell her 'nough about her. Dat gave me a holt on her, you see, and dars no denyin' she's changed a lot since las' summer."

"Tell her to come in here," said Edward, "and I'll judge for myself."

So in a few moments she came in, though with obvious reluctance, and took the chair that Edward placed for her at the table. It was a novel experience to the young man to find his wishes so implicitly obeyed by this hitherto almost unapproachable girl. He felt disposed to exercise this wonderful newly-acquired authority. "You must eat something, Wanda," he observed; "I dislike to eat alone."

This was the sharpest test that could have been applied to the improvement he wished to discover, but the girl's incomparable native grace never failed her. It was impossible that she should either lounge in her chair or sit stiffly erect in it. Her use of knife and fork was marked, not by awkwardness but by extreme deliberation, and careful observation of the manner in which Edward wielded his own. She wore a dark grey dress, which he dimly remembered to have seen on his sister Rose, and which that young lady had altered to fit the Algonquin girl. The entire absence of colour in the dress intensified by contrast the rich hues of cheek and lip, and the deep blackness of eyes and hair. The only detail of her appearance which displeased his taste was the strings of cheap glass beads wound about neck and waist. Was there a vein of cheapness and vulgarity in her character to correspond with this outward manifestation? He believed not. It was so easy to believe everything that was good of this shy sweet personage. He examined her narrowly and critically in the new and remarkable role she was compelled to play as the guest and equal of himself. There was a surprising almost ludicrous similarity between the native unconsciousness and dignity of the Indian and that of certain high-bred dames whereof he knew, and yet there was about her the unmistakable something that proved her wholly unversed in the ways of society. Her dainty hands were very brown; her manner without being constrained was certainly not easy; and her expression was that of a bird, one moment resigned to imprisonment, the next panting for liberty. In one word she was untamed. But was she untamable? His heart beat faster at the thought. When the tea things were removed he threw himself upon the couch; while the girl, sitting before the blazing hearth, took between her hands and drew upon her knees the slender head of his favourite hound. They made a striking picture, and the blue, beauty-loving eyes of the spectator looked longingly upon it. The dark lovely face bent forward seemed more childish in its soft curves since the capacity to love and suffer had wakened in her breast. Her sweet lips trembled with repressed feeling.

"Wanda," said Edward, "don't waste caresses on that unthankful brute. He doesn't need them."

She looked at him with wide startled eyes. "Come to me," he breathed in resistless accents. "Ah, Wanda, you pitied me once when I had a scratch on my hand. Can not you pity me now when I have a sword in my heart?"

It was not love that called her; it was the despairing cry of one who was perishing to be loved. She rose after a moment, steadying herself by a hand on the chair-back, for her beautiful frame was swayed by irresolution, love, shame and pride. Slowly, very slowly, with the sweet uncertain footsteps of a baby that fears to tread the little distance between itself and the waiting irresistible arms of love, she came towards him. It seemed at every moment that she must break away and fly, as she had flown from him in the woods of summer. When she reached his side her proud head fell, then the drooping shoulders bent lower and lower till the uncertain knees at last failed her, and she sank trembling on the cushion at his side with her arms about his face. It was the attitude of protection, not that of a weak craving for it. The fierce pain for which he asked her pity could arise from nothing else but his love for her. This was the reasoning of the simple savage—a reasoning that reached the hitherto unsounded depths of passion and pathos in her nature. The young man, who bore in his heart a bitter recollection of the scornful repulse offered by one beautiful girl, could not resist the matchless tenderness so freely given by another. He laid his face wearily against her arm, and she bent over him murmuring words of uncontrollable love and pity.

Afterwards he asked himself what in the name of all the powers of evil he meant by it; but this was some days afterwards. A long tramp through the frozen woods in search of game had brought him a single wild animal and a great many sober thoughts. In the rough log house in which he and his companions were camping for a week, there was neither room nor opportunity for private meditation; but the conviction came to him with the luminous abruptness of lightning that he had used this ignorant girl merely as a salve for his wounded vanity, and cruelly deceived her by so doing. Not that his early passion for the Indian girl had died a natural death. On the contrary it had been fanned into fresh flame by the novel charm of her sweet approachableness. None the less, but rather all the more clearly, he saw the detestable selfishness of his own course. But, unfortunately, his tenderness for her kept pace with his self-contempt. His feelings toward Helene and Wanda at the present moment were just such as a man might entertain toward the enemy who had conquered him, and the woman who, in his greatest need, had succoured and saved him. For the one a bitterness that could not rise to the crowning revenge of forgiveness, for the other a passion of gratitude that would last a life-time.

"It appears to me," said Ridout, who was the most outspoken of the party, "that we have a precious dull time of it in the evenings. Macleod, here, is about as talkative as the deer he has slain."

The trio had been smoking in silence before a huge fire, but this reference to Edward's great exploit of the day roused them to conversation.

"It is no unusual thing for Macleod to distinguish himself in that direction," said Boulton, the elder of the two. "He has long been known as the champion dear-killer."

This wretched attempt at a pun was loftily ignored by the subject of it.

"Alas, 'tis too true!" mourned the other. "Come, Ned, try to be entertaining for once; tell us about the pretty Indian girl you were mooning with."

"What did you say?" demanded Edward, freezingly.

"You heard perfectly well what I said."

"What do you mean by it?"

"Oh, I mean the pretty squaw you were spooning with, if that suits you better."

"Gently, Tom," interposed Boulton parenthetically, "don't mention all the meanness you mean."

"I would like to inquire what right you have to mention any of it," exclaimed Edward wrathfully.

"Oh, none—none, whatever. Only it was town talk in Barrie last Fall that you had become infatuated with the sweet little squaw to such an extent that your charming sister, with commendable prudence and foresight, had you put out of harm's way as speedily as possible. There's no accounting for such reports."

"I don't understand it at all," said Edward, with mingled anger and humiliation. "How can people be so silly?"

"Exactly what your slanderers inquired of each other. Impossible to tell what they meant." The young man laughed rather disagreeably as he went off to bed.

"Look here, Ned," said Boulton, bringing a sympathetic hand down upon his friend's shoulder, "don't you take any notice of what Tom Ridout or any of his set may say. Of course every young fellow makes a fool of himself some time, in some direction; it's natural and proper, and just what is expected of him. All is he shouldn't make a complete fool of himself, and nobody believes that of you."

"Ugh!" said Edward, and relapsed into gloomy silence, from which he awoke to find himself alone, with the candle sputtering in its socket. He took off his boots, and threw one of them viciously, but with unerring aim, at the expiring light, and so went despondently to bed.

"Our fair friend appears to be quite as susceptible to the remarks made upon his wild-wood acquaintance as to the wild-wood acquaintance herself." This was the observation of Ridout, as he and Boulton went the following morning to investigate the trap they had set.

"Don't be a fool, Tom," said Boulton, with a perfectly unruffled face and tone, "that is, any more of one than you can help. Of course every young cub like you is expected to be one to a certain extent, but what I mean is don't be a big one."

It was impossible to be angry with words so placidly spoken. "I don't know what can make you so wondrous kind to Macleod," said Ridout, "unless it is a fellow-feeling, and I wouldn't have thought that of you, Boulton. But look here," surveying the empty trap with boyish disgust, "nothing taken in but ourselves! Well, we'll have to make it unpleasant for Tommy. That's the only comfort left us."

Tommy was the coloured boy, who was cook, housekeeper and general factotum for the three. When ill-luck overtook them it was felt to be some slight compensation to be at liberty to make it unpleasant for Tommy. But one day, towards the end of their self-imposed exile, it stormed so heavily and incessantly that they were compelled to remain within doors, and here Tommy's unfailing good-nature deprived the abuse with which he was heaped of all its power to charm and console. On the principle which governs the selection of a victim by the shipwrecked and storm-beaten remnant of a crew at sea, there was nothing more natural than that Edward Macleod should fall a prey to the general famishing desire for amusement. Boulton had been idly humming the air of an Indian love-song, in which Ridout joined aloud, substituting the name of Wanda for that of the ideal heroine. As the sentiment of the song was of the most languorous and 'die-away' sort it was impossible that the two men should abstain from mingling their smiles. The conclusion of the singing was followed by a few remarks from Ridout, one of which provoked a shout of uproarious laughter. For a moment Edward's face was alive with intense suffering; the next it had paled and hardened into marble-like rigidity.

"I wonder if either of you are aware," he said, with cold distinctness of utterance, "that the subject of your conversation is to be my wife."

Tom Ridout stared a moment in unbelieving amazement, and then blushed to the eyes. "I beg your pardon," he stammered, "I never thought—I didn't dream—" He broke down completely, unable to grasp the statement that shed such a different light upon their idle talk. Boulton was not subject to fluctuation of emotion, and there was no visible manifestation of a change in his feelings. The match he struck while Edward was speaking went out. He reached for another; it also went out.

"It seems to me," he said mildly, taking his unlighted pipe from his lips, "that these are the worst matches I ever saw."

Ridout had recovered some of his usual self-assurance. "It seems to me," he declared boldly, "that it's the worst match I ever heard of."

"Worst or best," said Edward, with dogged resolution, "it will be necessary for you to speak of it with respect—in my presence."

This seemed to be the end of the matter; but Boulton, who had at last got his pipe agoing, could not forbear offering a few final words on the subject.

"It's all right, Ned," he remarked, in his gentlest and kindest tones, "perfectly right and natural that a young fellow should make a fool of himself. That's exactly what's expected of him. But it isn't necessary that he should make an everlasting fool of himself. Not—strictly—necessary."

Edward rose and left the room.

To leave the room in a region upon which unpicturesque prosperity has not yet descended is equivalent to leaving the house, and that is exactly what the young man did. Of course there was a loft above that was reached by a perilously steep pair of stairs; but he was not a cur to creep away into a kennel. He went out and battled with the pitiless storm, a fiercer storm beating within his breast than that which raged without. The crazy words he had just uttered were not spoken simply to stop the idle talk of his companions; they were the ultimate expression of the thoughts over which he had brooded for days past. Helene was dead to him, and her mocking ghost haunted the desolate chambers of his heart, filling them with scornful laughter. But now upon the door of this wretched habitation had timidly knocked another guest—a guest of blooming and throbbing flesh and blood. Should he deny her admittance? Unlearned was she as one of the shy birds of the forest, but then she was eminently teachable. If his love for her could not be called a liberal education was it not something better? Was it not a liberal and lasting joy? After all, what did women know, any way? A few miserable half-learned accomplishments, the aggregate of which did not amount to so much as the eagle's feather on the proud little head of his darling. Yes, he dared to say it—his darling! He pictured her in winter as sitting by his side, before the fire, the delicate head of his pet dog encircled by her arm; in summer they would roam in blest content together through the endless forests of this beautiful new world.

And so with all his doubts triumphantly set aside he returned to the house, and during the remainder of their stay his continued flow of exuberant good spirits seemed to confirm the rightfulness of his conclusions. On his way back to York he stopped a few hours at his old home, for the sake of a brief stolen interview with Wanda. She met him with little low murmurs of tenderness and joy, and parted from him as a girl parts from the man in whose love she has absolute confidence, for whose sake she would willingly die.

When he reached home, his appearance of high health and persistent overflow of liveliness were ascribed by his family to continuous out-door exercise, nor did they dream that the sweet fever and delirium of love was upon him. Rose gave him an anxious glance or two, but poor Rose had trouble enough of her own. That cold night at the Oak Ridges, which had completely killed Edward's hopes with regard to Helene, had cast a light but lasting frost over her own. It had been painful enough to avoid Allan, but it was no less painful to be deprived of that privilege. The truth was he had given her very few opportunities to put into practice the course of treatment recommended by her father. Had she been the heroine of a novel there would inevitably have been misunderstandings of the most serious and complicated character. But she was mortal, and withal a very tender-hearted little maiden, and the secret of her cold tones and wistful glances, though for a while it sorely puzzled Allan, was at last divined by the sure intuition of love. They met frequently at various social gatherings, but it was as though a solid sheet of glass intervened between them. Through this apparently impalpable medium they could see, and smile, and speak, but no tender touch of palm, or breath of love, or thrill of quickened heart-beat could be felt between. How many times had Allan Dunlop been tempted to outstretch his hand and shatter this glassy surface! It were easily done but at the price of possible sharp pain and aching wounds, and the greater horror of seeing the sweet grieving face on the other side shrink away from him, startled by the shock. No, he would bide his time. And so, while his eyes grew hollow, his close shut lips remained very resolute. Love can wait (though waiting is the hardest task ever assigned it), but only on condition that it is given the food it needs.

Allan kept his love alive on glimpses of sunny hair, and sad little smiles, and fragments of talk, that, light and conventional as they might seem to chance listeners, were to him clothed with lovely hidden meanings. Sometimes when the eyes met by chance the small warm hands plucked nervously at the flowers she carried, or there was a restless consciousness in step and glance, or a scarcely perceptible quiver of the curved lip, or a piteous droop of the regal little head. Very slight things were these, yet out of them Memory and Imagination made a sumptuous feast, at which Love, like a starveling prince in exile, sat down with never sated appetite.



CHAPTER XIV.

MUDDY LITTLE YORK.

If the course of true love could be persuaded to forsake its ancient uncomfortable method in favour of a single harrassed lover, surely the trials of Allan Dunlop might soften its harsh turbulence, and move it to a gentler flow. Rose was devoted to her father, and the tie between them, made stronger by her mother's death, was not of a nature to be affected by the sighing breath of a mere lover. Then she was as lovable as she was lovely, and there was nothing in the cordial liking of a host of friends to encourage the growth of any morbid desire for the affection of a poor and insignificant outsider. There were other insurmountable points on the mountain chain of circumstance that lay between him and his heart's dearest wish. The Commodore's inherent reverence for birth and breeding, and his comparative indifference to brain, was one of them. The obstinate pride of Allan's undistinguished and ambitious self was another.

Of all sorts of pride the sort that goes with inferiority, not of person, or behaviour, or talents, but of mere social position, is the most inveterate. This unreasonable feeling was the mightiest of all the obstructions that, mountain-like, lay between them; but on its rough sides—flowers on an arid rock—grew the yearning affections, seemingly rootless, yet continuing to bloom in secret, scarce discovered beauty. Of what use was it, he asked himself in bitterness, to brood over these impassable barriers, to cultivate a faith in the power of his own affection strong enough to remove them, to cherish the vain imagination that this incomparably sweet girl and his own plain self were made for each other, and that no earthly obstacle could suffice to separate them? Upon his soul had fallen the edict of society, "What man hath put asunder let no higher power join together!"

And so he hardened his heart and closed his eyes to the heavenly vision of girlish beauty and purity that shone forever in the upper skies of his consciousness, as clear as the star of evening, and almost as far away. But tears flow as easily beneath closed lids as when the eyes are wide open, and to the hardest heart come moments of reverie, of sudden waking from sleep, or involuntary lapsing into day dream, when, like a sword in the heart, comes the thought of one too dearly loved. Do his best he could not escape these moments of exquisite torture. The poem he was reading fell fantastically into the tune of the last waltz down which he and Rose had drifted together. The prose—and very prosy—work he impatiently seized in the hope of banishing that witching melody from his brain, simply followed the perverted feet of the poem. Down the dull page danced the meaningless syllables, keeping time to the delicious strain in a way that was simply appalling to a mind whose intellectual processes were, as a rule, thoroughly well regulated. If he walked the street there was small chance but that some half-turned head or fluttering robe among the women he met would remind him of the sweetest head and prettiest drapery in the world.

Always along the misty aisles of his consciousness sped this little lovely vision, now hasting, now delaying, now bending with melting tenderness toward him, now mockingly eluding his grasp, never out of sight, never within reach. No wonder he grew pale and heavy-eyed and distrait. But no one of those who noticed that he ate little and spoke little, and walked with weary footsteps, knew that he was a haunted man—haunted not by any pale spectre, but by veritable flesh and blood, gold crowned, pink tinted, and illumined by the bluest eyes this side of the blue heavens. It is useless for those who are troubled in this way to say they will not be haunted. Celestial visits are planned with reference to anything but the convenience of their recipient.

Allan Dunlop was spoken of as 'a pushing young man,' but in affairs of the heart he did not push—he simply waited. Not that he had any faith in the so-called beneficent influences of time—for what young lover is willing to believe that the slow drag of months and years over his passion will crush all life from it at last?—but he had the delicacy of nature which forbids the gross intrusion of personal wishes and desires upon unwilling ears. He had, besides, a spark of that old-world loyalty which is prone to uphold the claim of the father in the face of despairing aspirants for the daughter's hand.

This unwillingness to take an advantage, or to push it when it was thrust upon him, was not without a certain allurement for Rose. She was accustomed to be sought after; but the man who unconsciously occupied a higher place in her estimation than any by whom she was surrounded, held himself aloof. Probably he despised her and the frivolous society in which she moved. It was a depressing reflection, for the regard of those whom we believe to be our superiors is infinitely more precious than the adoration of those who are not.

To the lover, as to the good general, the knowledge of when not to approach is of inestimable importance. Scarce are the girls upon whose hearts a tender impression can be made in the middle of an ordinary work-a-day forenoon, or who can give sigh for sigh immediately after a hearty dinner. Very few are those who, at all times, are equally approachable and appreciative. Allan's stern, self-denying course of action, to which he considered himself forced, could not have been better chosen had he had nothing at heart but the aim of furthering his own interests. In Rose's imagination he had always formed an admirable contrast to the purposeless, objectless young men of her acquaintance, and his wise withdrawal after he had roused her interest, she interpreted as indifference. So let it be, thought the young lady, assuming a feeling of entire content. But assumed feelings are not lasting. She who had been the life of society now grew very weary of it. She yawned secretly in rooms of entertainment, or invented lame excuses for her non-appearance there. "I can't think what is the matter with me," she said to herself. "I never cared for solitude, and I don't now; but I care less for common people and commonplace talk."