GLAMOUR.

Come out of doors, O mother! and see what a wonder is here: Up through the snows of the mountain the flowers of spring appear. Come out on the roof, O mother! and see how along the ravine The glacier-ice is covered with the springtime's leafy green!

There are no flowers, my daughter: 'tis only because thou art young That blossoms from under the mountain-snows appear to thee to have sprung. There is no grass on the glacier: the blades do not even start; But thou art in love, and the grass and flowers are springing in thy heart.

I have space for only one more specimen of Caucasian heroic literature, a brief oration of Kazi Mullah, the friend and teacher of Shamyl and the founder of Caucasian Muridism. An imperfect translation of this speech will be found in Latham's Races of the Russian Empire. Copies of it in Arabic were widely circulated throughout Daghestan immediately after its delivery, and it probably contributed more than any other single thing to bring on the general insurrection of the East Caucasian mountaineers in 1832. In the spring of that year the inhabitants of a small aoul or mountain-village in Central Daghestan—I think Khunzakh—were assembled one evening in the walled courtyard of one of its houses under the minaret of the village mosque for the purpose of social enjoyment. Tradition relates that they were celebrating a wedding. A fire had been built in the middle of the courtyard, and around it picturesquely-dressed men and women were singing and dancing to the accompaniment of fifes, kettledrums and tambourines. Suddenly there appeared in the circular gallery of the minaret which overlooked the courtyard the figure of a tall, gray-bearded stranger, a mullah, whose green turban marked his lineal descent from the family of the Prophet. He looked down for a moment with stern displeasure into the fire-lighted courtyard, and then putting his hands to his lips chanted the Mohammedan call to prayers. The music and merrymaking instantly ceased, and the sweet weird chant rang out far and wide through the still evening air over the silent village, dying away at last in a long musical cry of La illaha il Allah! ("There is no God but God"). Amid profound silence Kazi Mullah—for the gray-bearded stranger was that renowned priest—stretched out his hand over the crowded courtyard and with slow stern gravity said:

"Upon all your merrymakings and feasts, upon all your marriages and rejoicings, upon yourselves, your children and your households, upon everything that you do, have and are, rests the awful curse of God! Heaven has marked you with the black seal of eternal damnation because you still grovel in sin and refuse to obey the voice and teachings of our holy Prophet. Your duty is to spread with the sword the light of our holy faith throughout the world; but what have you done? what are you doing? Miserable cowards! without faith and without religion! you pursue eagerly the pleasures of this life, but you despise the law of God and of his holy Prophet. Vain are your selfish prayers—vain is your daily attendance at the mosque. Heaven rejects your heartless sacrifices. The presence of the Russian infidel blocks up the way to the throne of God! Repent, pray, and arm yourselves for the war of the Most High. The hour draws near when I shall call you forth and consecrate you for the holy sacrifice of battle."

This impassioned speech fell like a lighted torch into a perfect powder-magazine of religious enthusiasm. Copies of it in Arabic were borne from village to village by mounted Murids; other mullahs took up Kazi's cry of gazavat (war for the faith), using his speech as a text for their excited harangues; and in less than a month the whole district was in a blaze of insurrection. Kazi Mullah himself was the first victim of the fire of war which his eloquence had kindled. He was killed while fighting desperately at the storming of the aoul of Ghimry by a column of Russian infantry under Baron Rosen, on October 17, 1832.

I have endeavored to give in the preceding songs and in the speech of Kazi Mullah an idea of the nature and the spirit of Caucasian heroic literature. I will turn now in closing to the literature of sorrow and suffering, which is the black shadow cast by heroism across the threshold of domestic life. Heroic literature is the voice of Caucasian manhood: the literature of suffering is the cry of bereaved women.

The following lines are the lament of an Avarian girl whose lover has been killed while making a raid with a troop of Lesghian horsemen through the valley of Georgia:

My beloved went away into the valley of the Alazan, and as he left me he looked over his shoulder at every step. My clear-eyed one rode down into the lowlands of Georgia, and his horse was fleet and fearless as a mountain-wolf. But from the depths of the lowlands has come the bitter news that our mountain-hawks will never more return: From the far-away valley of Georgia have come the scorching tidings that our lions lie dead in the pass with broken talons. O merciful God! if I were only an eagle, that I might touch once more those cold dead hands! O almighty One! if I were only a wild dove of the cliffs, that I might look once more into that pale dead face! I envy thee, I envy thee, O jackal of Georgia! thou feedest upon the bodies of those who wore weapons of steel! I envy thee, I envy thee, O raven of the river! thou drinkest the eyes of those who rode to battle on swift horses. The jackal devours the bodies of the warriors who bore weapons of steel, and skulks away into the depths of the forest: The raven drinks up the eyes of those who rode to battle on swift horses, and with hoarse croaks vanishes in the blue sky.

There is no attempt in this wild lament to soften or mitigate the horrors of a violent death by throwing around it a halo of heroism and glory. The woman cares not what prodigies of valor her lover performed, but she dwells with self-torturing vividness of imagination upon the helpless and abandoned body which she can never again see or touch, but which the ravens and jackals can tear and mutilate at will.

Compare with this the following lament of a Lesghian woman over the body of her dead husband:

I would stand on the shore of the green ocean if I only knew That I should see the diamond which has fallen into its surges: I would climb to the lonely summit of the highest mountain if I only knew That I should find a spring flower blossoming in the blue ice. If one look carefully one may see the diamond which has fallen into the ocean, But never again shall I see the life which has gone: If one search patiently one may find a spring flower rooted in the blue ice, But never again shall I find the swift falcon which has flown away. Henceforth I live upon an earth which is no longer a world, And in a world which has no longer a heaven.

There is a certain rude art in the way in which the asserted possibility of two evident impossibilities is made to lead up to and heighten the utter hopelessness of the third. The diamond may be recovered from the depths of the ocean; the flower which has withered and died may spring again even from glacier-ice; but the soul once gone is gone for ever: the great disaster of death is irretrievable even in imagination. There is no hint or suggestion here of any possible resurrection of the body or of reunion beyond the grave: I cannot recall any Caucasian lament in which there is. But whether the omission is due to the breaking down of faith under the strain of grief, or whether it is conventionally improper in a lament to allude to anything which would lighten the sense of bereavement, I do not know.

With these two characteristic illustrations of the form of expression which sorrow takes in Caucasian life, I must close my brief and imperfect sketch of Caucasian literature. I hope I have amply proved the assertions which I made in a previous paper with regard to the originality and innate intellectual capacity of the Caucasian highlanders; but whether I have or not, the reader must, I am sure, admit that the proverbs, songs and anecdotes above translated are at least indications of great latent capability, of unusual versatility of talent, and of a wide range of human feeling and sympathy. It is possible that I overestimate their value on account of my inability to separate the impressions made upon me by the people themselves from those made by their literature; but I am confident that the general outlines of the Caucasian character as I have tried here to sketch them are accurate, and that the reader would fully appreciate and admit the significance of the literature if he could make the personal acquaintance of the people.

In conclusion, I cannot better express my own opinion of the Caucasian mountaineers than by adopting the words of A. Viskovatof, one of the fairest and most discriminating of Russian travellers: "Nature has not properly brought out the moral and intellectual capacity of the Caucasian highlanders. Through the superficial crust of ignorance and wildness you may see in every mountaineer a frank and acute intellect, and, brigand though he may be, he still shows evidences of human feeling and of a soul. His brigandage, indeed, is only the external roughness which results naturally from his education, his circumstances and his mode of life. Beneath it there are intellect, feeling, manliness and strength of character. Under certain conditions of course these very traits go to make up the daring, skilful mountain-brigand whom we know; but separate him from his surroundings, educate him in the civilized world, and you have a capable, energetic, intellectual and feeling man. Love of honor and love of fame are, generally speaking, among the strongest actuating impulses of the mountaineer's character; and these were the very impulses which kept him always hostile to the Russians, which impelled him constantly to engage in partisan warfare, and which enabled him to resist so long and with such terrible strength all Russia's efforts to subdue him. Was it merely for plunder that parties of mountaineers used to assemble in front of our lines and throw themselves furiously upon our outposts? No: the leaders of those parties reminded them in forcible and eloquent speeches of the deeds of their heroic fathers and forefathers, of the glory to be won in battle with the giours, of the exploits of their brothers and countrymen who had left their bodies on Russian soil; and they fought for honor and fame. What made the Chechenses hold out so long and so desperately, suffering hunger and peril and hardship, dying, and sending their children to die, in battle? Was it a spirit of blind submission to Shamyl and their religious leaders, or an unreasoning hatred of infidels, or a thirst for plunder and rapine? Not at all. It was the love of independence—the natural devotion of brave men who were fighting for their country, their honor and their freedom."

GEORGE KENNAN.



THE GIFT.

You brought me a flower of spring When the winter airs were cold, And the birds began to sing, And the gloom turned swift to gold.

The world looked chilly and dark, But you called a flash from the sky: Your clear eyes kindled a spark Of splendor that cannot die.

O Love with the heart of Truth! What is it you lay at my feet? The bloom of your glorious youth, Its flower and radiance sweet?

I lift to my lips the flower, For thanks seem worthless and weak, And I bless the beautiful hour, But I have no word to speak.

CELIA THAXTER.



THROUGH WINDING WAYS.

CHAPTER XIII.

I am not enough of a hero even in my own story to dwell upon the events of the two following years. I graduated with honors, of which I was secretly and my mother and Mr. Floyd ostentatiously proud. Then my guardian and I set out upon our travels. Travel was something different in those times from what it is to-day, but Mr. Floyd had for years been familiar with the best of European life, and this gave me opportunities such as few men of my age possessed. We spent our second winter in the East: then returned to Florence, and were planning a few months more of adventure when we received the news of Mr. Raymond's death. Mr. Floyd had but one thought after this, which was that now at last his little girl was his own again.

He had had an accident in Damascus—a fall which in itself was not serious, causing mere contusion and sprains, but it had resulted in a severe illness by the time we reached Alexandria. Harry Dart had been with us in Egypt and Palestine, but was obliged to leave us, and for a month or more I had nursed my guardian assiduously, with a fear lest this was to be the end of a sacred and beloved existence. He too feared it, and between his intervals of pain would say, "I want to see my little girl once more: I must see your mother. Oh, why do we separate ourselves from those we love?" But he rallied, and finally regained his ordinary health, and before May we were again in Florence in our old rooms and talking of joining Harry Dart at Venice, when Helen's letter came.

Mr. Floyd sent for me at once when he had read the news. I found him lying on a sofa in his great dingy parlor, with its heavily-moulded ceilings frescoed into dusky richness, its sides hung with heavy crimson draperies and decaying canvases, out of whose once splendid pigments color and meaning had faded long ago.

"Think of it, my boy," said he softly: "my father-in-law is dead. Mr. Raymond died the twenty-second of April."

"Poor little Helen!" I exclaimed: "is she all alone?"

"I fancy your mother is with her," he returned, glancing back at the letter. "She says she shall send for Mrs. Randolph. She and I are executors of the old man's will. I try to feel solemn over the death," he went on gravely. "With all our belief in immortality, death is a terrible thing to regard closely. But yet he was an old, old man: am I wrong that I cannot mourn for him?"

We went about our preparations for return at once. Vanished were our plans for Venice and the Alps. I had looked forward with pleasure to spending my summer with Dart. No man in the world is so good a comrade as an enthusiastic painter, and Harry was keen of eye, with an exquisite pleasure in form and color: nothing came amiss to him between earth and sky. It had been a pleasant dream with us to go together about Venice, rowed by some sweet-voiced Luigi or Antonio from one stretch of sea-kissed marble palace-steps to another—to spend our mornings in dim basilicas, our afternoons away across the widening lagoons, and finish the day in the square of San Marco listening to Bellini's and Verdi's airs. But now that this sweet idleness of Italy must be put by, I was glad that we were to come back home again. I was a little surprised to find myself almost as eager as Mr. Floyd in making preparations for return. In a week we were on the ocean.

Mr. Floyd had seemed to enjoy our travels. He was always in good spirits, always a brilliant and engaging talker, a pleased observer and clever analyst. Harry and I had made the usual display of unlimited fastidiousness which youth delights in, but our elder had taken everything more kindly. He could not fatigue himself, and rarely looked at more than two or three pictures at a time.

"I used to feel," he would say, "if I went away from a gallery without a crick in my back and a blinding headache that I had no realization of my aesthetic privileges. Now-a-days I am willing to confess that I find too much of everything. Besides, all these pictures have been so overpraised! Let us find some pleasure that is not in the guide-books."

This was his tone, and I discovered in it at times, despite all his cheerfulness, a strange fatigue of spirit. But now that he was on his way home he had suddenly become exuberantly joyful.

"It is so delightful," he would remark to me, "to realize once more that the chief end of man is not, after all, to have fluent meditations upon wrecks of lost empires—to discover beauty in hideousness because somebody else pretends to do so—to mumble praises about frescoes which are frightful to look at, and break your neck besides—to have profound emotions in Jerusalem and experience awe before pyramids and sphinxes. This fictitious life we have been leading is very elegant, no doubt, and gives one material for just criticisms, but, strictly between us, I think it dreadfully tiresome. I shall never go into it again. I suppose my little girl will want to go abroad now that she can do what she chooses, but I shall let you take care of her, Floyd."

I laughed. "You will find Helen a magnificent young lady by this time," I returned. "She is seventeen, is she not? A good many men will fight for the pleasure of showing her about, and likely as not she will not look at me."

"She is as old as her mother was when I married her," said Mr. Floyd thoughtfully. "Can it be that people will want to be marrying my little girl? I want her all to myself for a time. Who knows how long? I have been a lonely man, and now I want close, intimate human companionship. I am tired of doing, I am tired of thinking. I am out of politics: I am ready for enjoyment. It seems to me I can be very happy with Helen and your mother close at hand. We shall not be a dreary family. Your mother and I can sit together and talk: you and Helen can have your little amusements. Now that she is to be quite unrestricted, I hope and expect a little nonsense from her."

"But, sir—" I began hesitatingly.

"But what, pray?"

"You cannot believe that we are all to live together. It is time for me to make a beginning in life, and my mother must be with me."

"You have made a very handsome beginning," returned Mr. Floyd dryly. "Once for all, Floyd, I will have no nonsense of independence and pride from you. You are to me as my own son. I may talk much of Helen, because our love for women is of the kind that gives us the impulse to proclaim it, but she is scarcely more dear to me than you are. You are part of my life now: don't fret me and make me miserable by deserting me. Be as free as air and follow out every wish of your heart, yet, all the same, feel that your home is where my home is, your interests where mine are."

As soon as we landed we had news of my mother having joined Helen at The Headlands shortly after Mr. Raymond's death. Mr. Floyd wasted not an hour in New York, but went on to his daughter at once. I lingered behind him, detained in part by some delays at the custom-house. I longed to see my mother, but felt, though with but little of the old jealousy, that Mr. Floyd had almost the best right to see her first, because, now-a-days, I was always looking the truth square in the face, and realizing that it could not be long before cruel and irremediable loss was to encompass us, and that the rest of our lives we should have not substance, but shadowy memories only, in place of this dear friend of ours. So I let him speed on to The Headlands, and dreamed of the love-flush on the cheeks of the two women who met him there.

I knew comparatively little of my old set of friends, and of late Jack Holt had almost slipped out of my circle of correspondents. I was aware that his marriage had been delayed the previous year and the time fixed for Christmas, but neither Harry nor I had been advised of it, and my mother had only written that she heard there were fresh delays, and that the elder Holt had involved his firm in difficulties. I determined, therefore, to stop at Belfield on my way to The Headlands and see Jack and all the old friends I might still have remaining there. Of late years my passing associations had become so diffused with their endless transitions that every memory of my old home was becoming more and more fixed and permanent, the nucleus of my recollection distinct and unchangeable.

I reached Belfield early one morning late in May. The season was perhaps a little late, for the apple trees were still in bloom, and the village looked fair and virginal as a bride on her wedding-day. I walked along the wide pleasant streets with a curious pain. The years that lay between me and the last day I had paced these broad walks under the pale greenery of the elms seemed legendary and dreamlike. There was the schoolhouse on the hill, and the well-worn playground about it. Beyond lay the woods, half colored now with clear pellucid green, gleams of silver and shades of scarlet here and there. My mind reverted with clearness to the little nooks and dingles of the hills and meadows thereabouts: I remembered a woodland spring boiling up in a hollow of the greenest grass I ever saw, and in the copse beside it grew the most beautiful rose-tinted anemones. I could have gone to the foot of a great oak and found the root of white violets which had been one of my earliest and dearest secrets; and I wondered—with a longing inexpressibly strong to go and seek it—if there were still a nest in a little hollow I knew of, where in my time I had watched scores of yellow-beaked nestlings.

I went past the house where my mother and I had lived so many years. It was so changed I should not have recognized it, repainted and modernized with much show of glass and bow-windows. There were few people to be seen along the white walks until I met the stream from the post-office. Old men and boys, shy girls and children, came out with their letters and papers just as in the old time. Some of the men, grown corpulent and gray, I recognized with the old feeling of reverence and love, and stopped to speak with them. But Belfield life, slow and stagnant though it was, was busy enough to have filled their minds with fresher memories, and I was so nearly forgotten that there was small pleasure in reminding them of the lad who had grown from babyhood into a tall stripling among them. My sentiment passed. I looked about more coldly even at the street that led to the cottage where Georgy Lenox lived, and went on briskly to the great stone house of the Holts. Georgy would be there of course: impossible that another Easter could have passed without her being a bride. I wondered as I entered the open iron gate what she would say to me.

The place had seemed splendid to me as a boy, and I well remembered how all the beautiful wonders of the spring blossomed here as nowhere else. But now these grounds too seemed to have suffered a change: there was an air of neglect about the unpruned hedges, with straggling blossoms running riotously over fence and shrubbery; the beds of hyacinths and tulips were trampled, and as I neared the house I saw that the blinds swung carelessly and the old look of thrift and prosperity was quite absent. Still, I observed all this dreamily, wondering, as returned travellers are apt to do, if the change were in the things themselves or in my own eyes.

"Perhaps," thought I, "Jack and his wife live in New York," when, suddenly answering my doubt, Jack himself came down the avenue in his light wagon.

I stepped aside, standing still, and he regarded me at first absently, then with startled curiosity, and sharply drew his skittish mare back on her haunches. "Good God, Floyd!" said he, "how glad I am to see you!" We looked straight in each other's face for a time, and his features worked, as he regarded me, with some emotion. "You were going to the house?" said he. "Nobody could see you. I have been driving father to the factories to-day, and he is not so well after it, and my mother is with him. I have to be back at twelve, so jump in and come out with me."

I obeyed him. It was but two years since we had parted, but he had aged and seemed quite different from the Jack Holt of former times. He was roughly dressed, and, though scrupulously neat and shaven, looked, I am sure, fifteen years my senior. He touched his whip, and the mare plunged down the avenue at a pace too disconcerting to allow either of us to speak for a few moments, and we were at least a mile away before her swinging canter subsided into a trot.

"What is her name?" I asked, laughing. "It ought to be Mary Magdalen, for she has seven devils in her this morning."

"Don't you remember the Duchess?" he inquired with a flicker of something like a smile crossing his heavy face. "You christened her yourself."

I remembered the Duchess. The yearling colt had been given to him on his sixteenth birthday. He wanted to call her Georgy, but his mother forbade it: so we named her after that duchess of Devonshire who had made the name famous.

"You'll find I have forgotten nothing," I replied, "but my thoughts are such a medley that I can't settle them at once."

"When did you return?"

"Only four days ago: I have not seen my mother yet."

"And you have come to look me up? Floyd, that is kind."

Something in his cool, pleasant tones touched me powerfully. "I knew nothing about you," I blurted out. "Why, Jack, at this minute I'm not sure if you are married or not."

"I am not married," he said softly. He was not used to reply so quickly, and I waited for him to speak before I questioned him further. "I am well," he said presently, "and mother is in her usual health. Have you heard about my father?"

"Nothing. Both Harry and I have famished for news of you."

I could see a little trouble in his face: he would have preferred that somebody else should have broken his news to me. But he sighed, and went on without flinching. "My father had a paralytic stroke in December," he explained in his deliberate, gentle voice. "When once our eyes were opened we could easily comprehend that for months his mind had been failing. When the bad news came the accumulation of trouble was too much for him. We thought at first nothing could save him, but he rallied physically. His mind has quite gone, however," Jack added, his voice trembling: "his brain has softened."

I stared at him speechlessly: I knew by instinct that I had not heard the worst.

"The moment I saw you," pursued Jack, "my first thought was, 'I hope he knows the whole story.' You heard nothing of our failure?"

"Not a word."

"The firm of Holt & Strong suspended payment last December," said he with a deep flush rising to his temples. "There were two companies, you know: I was only in Holt & Co. Strong was in Europe. My poor father's weakness did not display itself openly, but took the form of mad secret speculations. It is a long story, Floyd. There were no bounds to his schemes, in which he involved not only himself, but others. He was president of the savings bank too, you may remember. The troubles began with the failure of a house in New York to which we owed something. He was pressed: there was a whisper of something wrong, and of course there came a run on the bank. I was not here. My father sent for me: when I came I found a riotous mob outside the closed doors, and he lay insensible in the bank parlor. He never recovered any real consciousness, and for weeks we worked in the dark. There was much to bear. I could have endured every loss without a murmur, had it not been for the cruelty of some of his smallest creditors."

He stopped for a few minutes, but when I would have spoken he motioned me to be silent, and presently went on: "There are men to-day who pretend to believe that my father's mental state is as perfect as ever—that he is merely shielding himself from punishment by shamming imbecility. Ah, well! let me continue. Just at this juncture one of our buildings was destroyed by fire. The insurance policy had lapsed, and he had failed to renew it. The factory was packed with goods ready for shipment. The loss to Holt & Strong was a quarter of a million of dollars." He stopped again, and I saw him moisten his dry lips. "The chief creditors," he resumed, "were honorable men. By the first of March we had agreed upon terms of adjustment. My mother gave up all she had. My sisters are angry with me that I allowed her to strip the house of everything that had possessed a moneyed value, and think it shameful that I despoiled her of her jewels. But such things did not count with my mother and me. I kept the Duchess—nothing else." He smiled sombrely as he pulled out his watch. It was the little silver one he had used when we played marbles together. "We paid fifty cents on the dollar," he said presently, "and by and by shall manage something of a dividend at the bank. It will give me plenty to do for years yet," he added with a peculiar smile.

"You have assumed your father's debts?" I exclaimed. "That seems a needless penalty, Jack."

"My father and I are as one," said he gently. "It was fortunate for me in every way that I was not my father's partner. When I entered Holt & Co. he gave up everything to me. I have the entire business now, and it leaves me little unoccupied time."

"You are doing well, I trust."

"Reasonably well." I knew the look on his heavy, sombre face—a patient but combative look, powerful as Fate itself.

"Do you mind telling me the rest, Jack?" I asked after a time. "If it hurts you don't open your lips."

The veins in his forehead swelled a little, yet he neither flinched nor reddened. "I suppose," he answered, his voice a little less clear and distinct, "you allude to my engagement to Miss Lenox. It was broken off when these troubles came. We were to have been married a year ago in June, but I was not quite free to take her travelling, and it seemed her wish to wait. The wedding-day was quite fixed for a fortnight after the date of my poor father's sickness. Of course I offered her her freedom at once when I realized my scanty prospects of ensuring her a luxurious future. Naturally, everything was broken off. I am hampered by circumstances. I shall never feel myself free to live even in ordinary comfort until my father's debts are paid to the last penny. My first duty is to my father and mother. My sisters are all married, have large families, and, above all, have lost the home feeling. We three are alone in the world in our reverses. When you see our home, Floyd, you won't wonder that I could not ask Georgy to come to it."

"But would she have come, Jack?" I stammered. "Was she faithful to you? would she not wait for you?"

"Georgy is not romantic," he said kindly, "and has not been brought up in a school which inspires the tenderest feelings. I should never have expected that sort of devotion from her, nor am I one to inspire it. I knew at once when the dark days came that everything was over. Blow after blow had struck me: just at that time that she should desert me was but one blow the more."

I threw my arm about him in the old way, but he did not turn now and smile into my face as when we were boys. This gloom was not so easily dispelled.

He himself ended the silence that I could not bring myself to break. "I have heard of a divided duty, but I can have no doubts, no dilemmas, as to mine. I believe that I am not fanciful—that I see realities just as they are. If ever man found work lying close to his hands, I have found it. If ever an entire and undivided responsibility rested upon human creature, it is mine. Every instinct of my heart, every decision of my intellect, alike shows me that my duty lies in the path which I am treading. Nobody on earth, nobody but God, knows just exactly what I have felt the few past months. I couldn't write to you and Harry. Life had always been a pleasant thing to me. My father was not a lovable man, nor was he in his home all that a son longs for in a father. Still, he was rich and respected; he represented a beneficent financial power; he controlled many interests, developed resources, carried out schemes which were useful alike to poor and rich. I used to be proud to hear it said, 'That is young Holt, son of Adam Holt of the —— Mills.' Now I am obliged to bear with meekness, when he is called dishonest, when he is classed with those who have suffered the punishment of convicted felons, when his pitiful infirmity of body and mind is sneered at. We are living in our house as transient guests: as soon as it can be sold we shall seek some humbler shelter. The pleasant household ways are all gone: everything that used to gladden our eyes has been carried away. My mother's eyes rest nowhere save on my father's face or mine: she cannot look at the bare places in the house, for she thinks too much then of her great calamity. All these are troubles which cut me deep: you don't know, Floyd, how disgrace burns into the soul—worse than bereavement, worse than death. I have been bereaved of all, and I seem to have tasted the bitterness of a thousand deaths. Still"—he turned abruptly and looked me in the eyes with a stiff white face—"there are times when I feel but one loss. There is strength in me, and, please God, by and by I shall shape things to their right ends again; but this other loss! I don't need to tell you," he went on huskily, "how above and beyond all other objects on earth Georgy Lenox has been to me. At times, retrievement, success, unsullied honor, all seem to me as nothing, since she is not to be at the end of them."

We had reached the factories now, and he resumed his usual calmness, and I could see in a moment that he was a business-man again. He asked me to stay and drive back with him, and dine and spend the night, urging it on the plea that his mother would like to see me—that she had so few pleasures. I consented against my wish, almost against my will.



CHAPTER XIV.

No one knows what change means, what frightful possibilities of sadness it covers, until one has such an experience as mine that night. In former times the Holt house had been a sort of fairyland to me: our own menage was simple and inexpensive, and, in contrast, the profusion and splendor of Jack's home had impressed me powerfully. Their expenditure was not moderated by what we call good taste, and they did not possess that fine grace of compassing elegance without ostentation which is one of the last results of culture; but as a boy I had missed nothing that money could buy in their house, and I had often thought how my mother would shine there. Mr. Holt had been a man to look up to with respect, although somewhat arrogant and dictatorial, and Mrs. Holt—good, easy soul!—had enjoyed her prosperity with an equal pride and joy in her husband, her children, her silver plate, her heavy silks and her jewels, which, displayed in their satin cases, were the chief show in Belfield for the women, who used to tiptoe up the grand staircase to Mrs. Holt's dressing-room, and come down with awe in their faces.

Mrs. Holt at this later time I write of was a sad, soft-eyed little woman, with a patient smile: she was so much of a lady that her dress was neat and pleasing, although of the plainest. She kissed me when I went in with Jack, and I felt like going on my knees before her. She treated Jack as if he were older than herself, although with the utmost tenderness qualifying the respect she gave him; but I was a boy to her still, and she looked lovingly in my face and told me that she knew I was a comfort to my mother. I had been a good deal of a man in my own eyes in Europe, but in these familiar places I did not feel much older than I had done six years before, full-grown although I was, and so tall that I had to stoop very low to meet the little woman's kiss.

"Here is father," said Mrs. Holt in a tender, cooing voice; and she went up to a feeble old man in an arm-chair and began telling him that this was Floyd come back—Floyd Randolph, whom he used to like so well years ago. Mr. Holt looked at me with hopeless, bleared eyes, and shook his head and complained in mumbling tones that dinner was not ready, that nobody took care of him, that he was neglected by wife and son.

Jack himself led his father to the table, and it was a hard task to guide the tottering footsteps, but not so hard perhaps as for the poor wife to tend him while he ate as if he were a baby. There are sad things upon which one may dwell, for some sorrows bring sweetness with them, and give meaning and perfume to a life, just as the night is almost lovelier in its shadows than the garish day; but I cannot write about Jack's troubles, for it was so pitiful to me to see this strong man so fretted, so bound, by the fine chains which duty sometimes forges for men. The meal we ate was of the poorest, but I think there is no bitterness in bearing personal deprivation, and I did not pity Jack that neither the taste of the palate nor the taste of the eye could be gratified at his board; but when I saw him playing backgammon with his father afterward I did pity him. The old man's hand shook so that his wife had to guide his wrist as he threw the dice, and he burst into senile tears if the throw did not suit him. But Jack was hopeful and cordial through it all, and would patiently tell his father little trifles of news about his business, and engage his attention so kindly that once or twice the heavy fallen features would almost gather expression again. At such times happy tears would start to Mrs. Holt's eyes. "I do believe father's getting better," she would say, looking at her son.

It was still early, however, when Jack and I were left alone. He had carried the poor old man to bed, and now for a few hours the burden had fallen from the son.

"Let us go out and walk about the old places," said he. "The house is dreary, is it not?"

"I have only thought of you all, Jack," was my answer. "My dreariness has not been induced by the look of the house. Still, when I do look around and see the rich carpets gone, the pictures, statues, all the thousand beautiful things we used to take pleasure in, I say to myself, 'This just man will have his reward.' Don't despond, Jack: I tell you, things will come right again."

"Thank you, Floyd," said he in his cool way. "I am better for having seen you. But let us talk of something besides my troubles to-night. It is a sweet evening."

He took my arm, and we walked out along the avenue into the street. It was a beautiful night, calm and warm, with a full moon shining down upon the deserted squares. We went up the hill and stood on the steps of the academy, then sat down upon a bench on the playground beneath the poplars, and found our initials there where we had cut them years before. Missing Dart in these old familiar places, it was natural for us to talk of him, for, well as Jack loved me, Harry was his dearest friend. A peculiar tenderness had always knit their hearts together, and it had been another sorrow to Holt that in all his trouble his cousin was too far away to give him a glance of his eyes, a grip of his strong hand.

I told him all I knew of Harry. We had not been mistaken in our estimate of his genius: he had not been in Rome three months before the famous Z——had become interested in him and allowed him to study in his atelier. Every one predicted success for the young artist, and dealers were already beginning to buy up his pictures, paying a mere song for studies to-day which years hence they expected to sell for a big sum on the strength of the reputation he would have gained. Harry's strong points were his unequalled distinctness of vision and his intensity of feeling for art. He put a passionate throb into every movement of his brush. When once an idea occurred to him as desirable to work out, it defined itself to his imagination with a reality, a power, an amplitude of detail, which blinded him for the time being to everything else, and he worked so faithfully that he stamped his conception and his meaning upon not only every figure, but every accessory of his picture; so that the most commonplace observer gazed at his canvas with some of the same feeling with which he gazed at an experience of life. But Z—— was not yet satisfied to have him attempt compositions, and he was spending much time over the curious processes by which the perfection of skill in art is attained—productive analyses of coloring, light, shadow and the mellowed harmonies of time-worn pictures.

"We shall be proud of Harry by and by," said Holt as I paused. "I hope he won't stay too long abroad. I have missed you so, Floyd!" And we fell to telling stories of our boyhood, and again and again Jack's laugh broke the silence of the night, for there were droll tales to tell. We heard the chimes of midnight before we stirred from our seat, and then we moved with some reluctance, for the moonlight was rare, and the light upon the water where the sea-line showed through the interstices of the trees was a silvery radiance too blessed to lose. But at last we rose and moved carelessly homeward. We did not take the nearest way, but turned as with one intention through another street than that by which we came. Our feet knew the way to a little Gothic cottage on the hill, and we stood outside silently for a time. No sight or sound of any creature stirring in the world but ourselves met eyes or ears. No light was in the windows, and the blinds of a casement beneath the gable were close drawn. I wondered if a white hand had closed them a few hours before, and if a fair sleep-flushed face and bright disordered hair lay on the pillow inside. Just then some bird, brooding over her three eggs in her nest, stirred drowsily and cooed softly at some delicious dream of love or maternity. It broke the spell, and we turned to go away.

"Don't fancy," said Jack, "that this is a habit of mine. I have not been here before since December."

"Is she here?"

"I have no idea. I never hear her name, and when I am in church I never turn to look."

I left Belfield early the next morning, and pursued my way to The Headlands. I had many thoughts of Jack as I went on, wondering if this cruel and irremediable wrong which Fate had inflicted was to shadow all his life. Indeed, I felt disheartened, for I had warm sympathies; and besides, the cruel prose of his experience broke upon the easy, pleasure-loving harmony of my life like the sudden crash of kettledrums in the midst of moribund flute melody. I had always possessed too much leisure not to have become saddened and perplexed at times with doubts before the eternal problem of life; and they all returned now, and not until I reached The Headlands in the late afternoon did I rouse myself into an anticipation of the pleasant life I was to meet.



CHAPTER XV.

I was not expected: no one met me at the station, and, finding no conveyance, I walked on myself to the place, and entered the grounds not more than an hour before sunset. Everything was curiously calm and at peace except the breakers, which moaned against the rocks below as the tide came in. The shadows were long upon the grass, and looked like things that had felt life all day, but now had coiled themselves up for sleep. Beyond the trees the fiery sun still shone, gilding the stately house with gold and resting lovingly upon the roses which clambered riotously over embrasures and abutments, lighting up the piazzas and columns with their bloom. I recognized a change at once in the aspect of the place: more windows and doors were open than formerly, and the porticoes showed signs of careless occupancy with their chairs and afghans, tables and a litter of books, papers and work. I stood before the door, gazing through the wide-columned vista of the hall, and the infinite seemed open before my eyes as I saw the blue and opal-tinted sea. But still there was no sound except the murmur from the shore, and nothing stirred except the sunbeams as they climbed the carved balustrade of the great staircase and gleamed on the frozen faces of a marble group in a niche. I did not ring at first, for it seemed as if my mother or Helen must come out—that they were close at hand, picking roses on the terrace or descending from their rooms. But it was Mills who presently issued from the dining-room and saw me. He greeted me as if I were one of the family, and ushered me into the library as he had done at the time of my first visit years before.

Sitting there quietly, I seemed for the first time to realize the fact of old Mr. Raymond's death. I saw his chair by the fireplace, and the low seat on which Helen and I had sat together many and many a time. I had not grieved at the old man's death, but had felt that weeping for the dead might sometimes be a less dreary task than bearing with the living; yet here I could not see these beautiful inanimate things, once his intimate surroundings, without a thrill of regret that he was gone.

A shadow fell across the doorway, and a young girl came in, one of the sunset gleams reflected from some of the endless mirrors of the house falling on her and lighting up her face. My first thought was, "She is almost a woman:" my second was, "I had never expected she would be so beautiful."

We had not spoken yet: she ran up to me eagerly and looked into my face, and I clasped her hands. When I saw that she was crying there seemed to me but one way of greeting the child. I took her in my arms and kissed her. It seemed strange, I think, to neither of us that we should meet in this way. But when we looked at each other now, I felt a curious glow over my face, and she hung her head and was blushing vividly, as I had never suspected the pale little Helen I had once known so well, with her aspect of almost severe purity, could ever blush. There was a new sort of beauty about her: a soft richness of tint and texture seemed added to cheek and lip, and the old imperious concentration of her glance was, for the moment, quite gone. Still, although I could easily see that she was frightened at her own temerity in allowing my more than brotherly freedom, I could not find it in my heart to repent it.

"Where is my mother, Helen?" I asked, taking her hand in mine to reassure her, for I saw that something was embarrassing her very much. "It seems I was not expected to-day?"

"Not so late as this," she explained; and presently I was talking freely with her, and she was listening without a particle of self-consciousness in her manner. It appeared that my mother and Mr. Floyd had gone out to drive, but would presently return to tea—that my mother had been longing for me, and they had all wondered why I had delayed coming. This was all very pleasant, uttered in the sweetest voice by my young hostess, and when she asked me if I would go out and see the sunset from the terrace, it was very easy to say that I would follow her anywhere.

She was a shy child still, I discovered, despite her tall figure, her pretty womanly shape and elegant air. My manhood was too recent a possession not to be rejoiced in when I saw that a woman's blushes came and went as she felt the weight of my glance. We went out of doors and saw the surges breaking on the shore, but the waves seemed happy that night, and lisped joyfully like children at their play. There was no voice of sorrow in all Nature: the birds circling about their nests began glad strains, then hushed them only to break forth again into fresh confused and joyful beginnings which they were too sleepy to finish. We talked of sorrow and loss, yet I think neither of us was very sorrowful, although Helen's tears flowed unchecked as she poured forth the simple narrative of her grandfather's last days—how he had never been so tender, so self-forgetful, as then; how he could not do enough to show his deep love for her; and then how, in the night, all at once, without a last look, word or caress, he was gone and his tenderness was but a memory.

"I felt at first," said Helen, "as if there were no longer anything for me to do in the world. It seemed a treason to poor grandpa that I saw how beautiful the crocuses were as they blossomed in the beds on the terrace here, and when the mayflowers came I did not dare to pick them except to put them on his grave. Then, you know, as not even papa knows, that with all my reverence for my grandfather I had still had a terrible sense of responsibility mingled with my love for him; and not even yet can I go out a few hours for a drive or a ride without my feeling every now and then, through all my pleasure with papa, a sudden pang of dread. After such times I run to his room: it is easy enough to believe then that he no longer has any need of me."

"You were all alone at first, Helen, until my mother came to you? Two weeks alone! It seems dreadful."

"Georgy Lenox was here, you know."

"Georgy Lenox here?" I echoed in surprise. "I never heard anything so strange. How did it happen?"

Helen looked at me in her turn in astonishment. "Why was it strange?" she asked, as if regarding the matter in a new light. "She was one of the family: she came to grandpapa's funeral. Cousin Charles Raymond himself invited all the Lenoxes, for Mr. Lenox's mother was a Raymond—was grandpa's own sister, I believe. Why was it strange?"

"Natural for her to come perhaps, but I should not have expected her to remain. You asked her, no doubt?"

"No-o-o," returned Helen doubtfully. "I don't know how it was. The house was filled with people for a week: then they went away and Georgy stayed. She said it was horrid for me to have no lady near me in my trouble. Cousin Charles was here all the time until your mother came, but his wife was ill in New York."

"And when my mother arrived Georgy left you?"

"No, indeed: she is still here. You see," said Helen with a little of her old imperious way when she took control of things, "Georgy was greatly disappointed at the terms of the will. She had been led to expect that she would be quite an heiress when grandpa died. I don't know who taught her to believe in so strange an idea, for, to tell the truth, grandpapa did not fancy Georgy. Poor girl! everything has gone wrong with her. She was to have been married to Mr. Holt, you know, but it is all quite broken off; and she was very unhappy about that. She hates being in Belfield, because she sees him all the time, and is reminded of what she is trying to forget. So I asked her to stay here for a little while. You are not angry to find her here, Floyd?"

I laughed with an indefinable feeling of embarrassment. "I shall be most happy to see Miss Lenox," I rejoined; "and if I were not, it would be great impertinence in me to question for a moment the doings of the lady of the house."

"I am not the lady of the house," said she, a little piqued. "Mrs. Randolph is that. I give no orders now: everybody goes to papa. He says I have governed too long, and that I must be a little girl again. It seems so strange sometimes to have nobody consult me: I do nothing all day long but enjoy myself."

"But I belong to the old regime," said I, "and to me you will always be the chatelaine. I remember how you used to give orders to Mills and Mrs. Black: I can still smell the aromatic odors of the store-room when we used to make the weekly survey together, and can hear you talking 'horse' solemnly with the coachman down at the stables. I am not at all sure if I shall like you so well as a gay young lady of pleasure, with all your thoughts on your dresses and your lovers."

"As if I should ever think about my dresses or my lovers!" she replied with deep disdain.

"What do you think about?"

"I think about papa," she rejoined, still indignantly: "I think about your mother and you. I have a great many nice things to think about without being taken up with those horrid subjects."

"'Horrid subjects'! Good gracious!" I exclaimed: "I intend some day to be somebody's lover: shall I be a 'horrid subject'?"

She laughed frankly, a delightful girlish laugh which showed her little pearly teeth. "It depends on how you behave," she said with a little nod. "Georgy Lenox has lovers: she tells me about them, and I think them horrid."

"Do they come to the house here?"

"Oh yes. One is a stout man with a red face. He wears a solitaire diamond in his necktie. Papa knows him: he was in Congress, and his name is Judge Talbot. Then there is a young man—not so young as you, but still young. He remembers you: he used to be in Belfield. He is Mr. Thorpe."

"Tony Thorpe here? What unlikely people I come across! Which is Miss Lenox's favorite admirer?"

"As if she would have favorites among such admirers! Georgy is the most beautiful girl in the world. Papa is not fond of her, but even he says she is a superb creature. Why does nobody like Georgy? Papa does not, and I am sure Mrs. Randolph does not, nor do you. Yet she is so beautiful, so winning, so clever!"

"You don't need to pity her for not gaining love," said I gravely. "My mother may not like her, because she knew her as a faulty child who did considerable mischief first and last; and Mr. Floyd dislikes her because—You know why he dislikes her, Helen. But many people love her: I think few women in the world have won so much devotion. I have just seen Jack Holt, who had to give her up, and I am far from believing that nobody likes her."

"But why did he give her up?" questioned Helen.

"Why did she give him up," I returned with heat, "except that he had lost his fortune, and instead of being able to endow her with all the good things of life, himself needed aid, sympathy, love and comfort?"

Helen stared at me: "But he told Georgy she was free."

"Suppose," said I passionately, "that a man had loved you from your earliest childhood, Helen—that instead of your being possessed of wealth and other facilities for making your life all you wished, you were poor and obscure, and this man had made every sacrifice to gratify every desire of your heart. Suppose you had read his soul like a printed page, and found every thought in it noble, lofty and pure; suppose you knew that his happiness depended on you—that without you he could not have one sacred personal hope,—when you found that he was poor instead of rich, would you throw him over as you put away a glove that is worn out, even though he told you you were free—that although you had shared his prosperity he shrank from letting you endure the pains of his adversity?"

Helen was looking at me with a curious look in her brilliant dark eyes, and still watched me when I paused.

"Would you have accepted such freedom?" I demanded, impatient that she did not respond.

"I would have died for him!" she exclaimed abruptly, but she said no more about Georgy or her lovers.

The sun had set, and the glory of the clouds was all reflected in the sea. The air grew chilly, and we went in and watched at the front door for Mr. Floyd and my mother to return from their drive. It seemed curiously like the old times, and once or twice I started at some sound, expecting to hear a querulous voice and see old Mr. Raymond with his fur wrappings crossing the hall leaning on Frederick, who carried his tiger-skin. Helen was too quick and sympathetic not to understand my startled look.

"He will never come any more," said she sadly. "He is sleeping up on the hill beside his wife and all his children. Had it not been for papa I should have felt that I must go there too, it seemed so strange and lonely for him."

Presently through the pale gloaming came my mother from her drive, and when I lifted her from the carriage and almost bore her up the steps in my arms, I felt a happiness and peace which seemed but the beginning of a blessed time. My mother had grown perhaps a little older in the last two years, but surely she had grown more beautiful. It was enough at first merely to look into her face: then when I followed her up to her room we told each other many, many things, but I invite none to follow me over that threshold.

"I took good care of your boy, Mary," said Mr. Floyd, coming up to us when we descended; and when I met my mother's look I felt again all the proud humility that a son can feel, beloved as I was beloved.

"He was not such a bad boy," pursued Mr. Floyd, ringing the bell and ordering tea, "and his faults, such as they were, belonged to his age.—Don't open your eyes, Helen, as if you expected to hear just what he did. I shall not betray him. All the world knows that when one is abroad one may commit enormities which there may be put inside your sleeve, while here they are as big as a meeting-house."

"I don't believe Floyd did anything wicked," remarked Helen with some spirit.

"We are at home now, Floyd," pursued he with an air of resignation, "and our little diversions are over. The eyes of two women are upon us. No more cakes and ale—nothing but rectitude, cold water, naps in the evening. I forgot, though, about our charming guest. While Miss Lenox is here ginger will be hot i' the mouth, and life will have a slight flavor of wickedness still."

"But where is Miss Lenox?" I asked.

"Miss Lenox is far too brilliant a young lady to stay constantly in a dull country-house," said Mr. Floyd. "The cottage people over at the Point raffolent, as our friends abroad say, upon the charming Miss Georgina. We have, after all, very little of her society. She goes on yachting-parties, to dinners, luncheons, picnics—everywhere, in fact, where the delicate lavender ribbons of slight mourning may be allowed. She has attended a dejeuner to-day, and we are every moment expecting that our gates of pearl will unclose and admit a celestial visitant."

"Now, papa," said Helen, "you shall not make fun of Georgy. Nobody does her justice."

"Don't they?" returned Mr. Floyd dryly. "Fiat justitia, then! Ruat caelum! One would follow the other in this case, I fear.—She generally, Floyd, brings home one or two in her train. You remember Antonio Thorpe? That young man is so often here that I am beginning to regard him as one of the regular drawbacks to existence, like draughts, indigestion, bills and other annoyances outrageously opposed to all our ideas of comfort, yet inevitable and to be borne with as good grace as may be."

"What on earth is Tony doing at the Point?"

"He dresses well," returned Mr. Floyd reflectively: "his hands are soft, his nails clean. I don't think he follows any occupation which demands manual labor. I can generally tell a man's business by his hands or his coat; but on Tony's irreproachable broadcloth not one shiny seam discloses what particular grist-mill he turns."

"Of course he has no grist-mill," said Helen. "I thought he was a man of fortune."

"I was the guardian of his youth," observed Mr. Floyd, "and when he was twenty-one I paid over to him intact the sum of money left to him by his father. It had originally been less than fifteen hundred dollars, but by lying untouched for nine years at compound interest it had nearly doubled. That was several years ago, and with the utmost frugality on his part I can't see how he could have worn such decent coats on the interest of that money all this time."

"But you put him into business half a dozen times," interposed my mother: "I suppose he made money."

"No, he never made any money. The only way Tony will make money honestly is by marrying a rich girl. Not that I assume him to be dishonest or a sharper, for I do think him a gentleman, after the fashion of Sir Fopling. He probably is considerably in debt, but floats himself from all danger of sinking by speculation or the like. Five times I set him at work to make his living: five times he was returned on my hands. His character possesses all the drawbacks of great genius, without any of its resources: he is proud, discontented, misunderstood, with a talent for failure."

"Is he a suitor of Miss Lenox's?" I asked. "He was never in the habit of admiring her."

"You can make up your mind," said Mr. Floyd with a shrug, thus dismissing the subject.—"Helen, my child, looking at this young man impartially and judicially, what do you think of him?" and he put his hand on my shoulder.

We were at tea, which was always an informal meal at The Headlands. Helen sat among the tea-cups, my mother had a little table by her sofa, and Mr. Floyd and I walked about carrying cream and sugar and cakes. I was on my way for a fresh cup when this question was put, and I went up to Helen and sat down beside her.

"Impartially and judicially," said I, "what do you think of me?"

Mr. Floyd took his seat on the other side of her, put his face close to hers and began to whisper all sorts of nonsense in her ear about me. "Tell him," said he, "to begin with, that he is a prig."

"But I don't know what a prig is."

"A prig is a handsome fellow born to create disturbance among the ladies."

She looked around at me and laughed. "Isn't he a goose?" she asked in a pretended whisper. "Where was it in Europe that he lost his brains? He has brought none of them home."

"It may have been at Damascus," said Mr. Floyd. "Did I tell you that after I fell through the trapdoor in Damascus and broke my ribs, they put a railing about the place and asked a piastre for a look at the spot where the American gentleman almost came to an untimely end?"

But Helen did not laugh: she put her arm about his neck and brought his cheek to her lip, and kept it there, giving it mute caresses now and then, while she smoothed his hair about his temples with her little hand.

"I'll take some more tea, if you please," remarked Mr. Floyd after a while in a meek voice.—"I'm obliged to endure a good deal of this sort of thing, my boy: it's not so unpleasant as it may look, but nevertheless it requires some stimulant to keep up an emotion of agreeable surprise. By the bye, what do you think of my little girl, now that she is quite grown up?"

"Don't dare to tell," said Helen. "I'm dreadfully vain all at once, for papa flatters me so that the rugged courtesy of the outside world would seem hard to me. Still, papa's compliments count for very little. When Georgy comes in presently just listen to what he says to her."

And precisely at this juncture there was a little commotion in the hall, and Miss Lenox did come in with Tony Thorpe. She had spoken to my mother, kissed Helen and answered Mr. Floyd's badinage before she saw me, yet when her eyes did turn toward me she showed no surprise.

"Have you come at last?" she inquired coolly, holding out her hand. "I am glad to see you again, Mr. Randolph."

I greeted her as calmly, and said, "How are you, Thorpe?" to her companion, with another shake of the hand. And then everybody sat down, and there was fresh tea brought. I noticed that Thorpe was quite assiduous in his attentions to Helen over the cups and saucers, and seemed as much at home in the house as a tame spaniel. Meanwhile, Miss Lenox had sat down by my mother and begun telling her the events of the day. The dejeuner had been given on a yacht in the bay, and had begun in mistake and ended in disaster: the wrong people had come, while the right ones had been kept away, like the invited guests in the Gospel. The sun had been too warm, the breeze too cool, the men who talked to her garrulous and stupid, and the women abominably over-dressed.

"Dear Helen," cried Georgy with effusion, "I have wished myself at home with you all day.—Dear Mrs. Randolph, tell me what you have been doing with yourselves;" and she wasted a slight caress on my mother.

"Our doings were nothing remarkable in themselves," said my mother gently, with a little smile—one of those smiles which women keep for use among themselves, and rarely give to men.

"Papa and Mrs. Randolph and I sat under a tree until dinner-time," said Helen. "We have been very idle, but had a delightful time nevertheless."

"Praying all the time that Miss Lenox was enjoying herself at the dejeuner," drawled Mr. Floyd.

Georgy had risen and was crossing the room, and now, passing Mr. Floyd, paused and looked down into his face as he surveyed her with a slightly satirical air.

"I am glad of anybody's prayers," she returned, quite unruffled, "but I am afraid, Mr. Floyd, yours are merely a pretty figure of speech."

Mr. Floyd suddenly sprang to his feet and walked up and down the room with a restless way he had. "I have it! I have it!" he exclaimed with a triumphant air. "It is a picture of a Wili of whom you remind me, Miss Lenox. I saw it in R——'s studio at Rome.—Don't you remember it, Floyd?"

I knew it very well, and was aware, besides, that R—— had got the face from Dart's sketch-book.

"What is a Wili?" inquired Georgy, looking at me. "You know I used to go to you for all my bits of knowledge when I was a little girl, Mr. Randolph."

I rose and crossed the room to her side. "A Wili," said I, "is a betrothed maiden who dies before her wedding-day. Your knowledge of your sex may tell you why it is that she is never at peace in her grave, but is impelled by some unconquerable love of life to rise every night and dance till morning."

"With whom does she dance? Her unfortunate lover?"

"Oh, where Wilis live you see them dancing together in the woods and fields by moonlight and starlight, their white arms wreathed about each other and their long hair floating. When a Wili meets a youth abroad in the night-time she beseeches him to dance with her; and the voice of the Wili is so sweet, her eyes so terribly beautiful, her clasp so horribly close, that whether he will or not he must join the fatal dance and keep pace with her eager, frenzied movements. When morning comes the Wili has gone back to her grave."

"And where is the young man?" asked Georgy.

"They find him dead on the grass," put in Thorpe, who was standing behind Helen's chair. "It is death to dance with a Wili."

"Both of you seem very experienced young men," remarked Miss Lenox calmly. "Did either of you ever meet with a Wili?"

"I have frequently met them on flowering meads," I returned, laughing, "but when they invite me to dance I tell them I am unable to dance with even the prettiest of live women, I am such a miserable cripple."

"It's rather a pretty story," mused Georgy, "but I don't quite see what it means.—Do you, Helen?"

"It seems to be a sort of warning to young men to keep in o' nights," returned Helen with a droll little air.

"Dead women never trouble me," said Thorpe, "but I have had no end of charming dances with live ones.—Do you waltz, Miss Floyd?"

"Oh yes. Miss Lenox and I waltz together whenever we can get any one to play for us."

"That must be a tame amusement," rejoined Thorpe with an ineffable air of conceit.

"Thanks for the neat compliment," said Georgy, "but neither Miss Floyd nor myself suffer from the tameness."

"Oh, allow me to explain—"

"We are not so dull but that we can understand even the most stupid bungle at a compliment of any awkward man," yawned Georgy. "Some time, by and by, when I am very rich, and so old that I don't care what happens nor how I offend my admirers, I intend to give to the world a woman's opinion upon the fascinations of men."

"Bravo! I hope I may live a hundred or so years in order to hear it," said Mr. Floyd. "However, Miss Georgy, it would be safe enough for you to tell us now that you hold men contemptible, only practising your coquetries upon them for your own amusement, quite indifferent whether your shafts hit or go astray. We could bear the ordeal, for we should know very well that circumstances must vindicate us. We are, after all, superior to even the highest simian types, and our poor fascinations shine by comparison with those of even the most intelligent baboon; so we should be certain that, in spite of your opinion of us, you would go on making yourself beautiful for our approbation to the end of your life, because you have, in fact, no other object worth spending your energies upon."

"I confess," said Georgy, with a peculiar glance at Mr. Floyd, "some men are worth any effort."

Thorpe, after many vain attempts to engage Helen in conversation, took his leave, and when I went to the door with him he begged me to stroll down the grounds to the gate. He had a three-mile walk before him for his pains in coming home in the carriage with Miss Lenox, but he vowed that the pleasure he always found at The Headlands recompensed him for any labor. He burst into enthusiastic talk about the old times at Belfield: he remembered the charm of my mother's house, he said, and the good times we boys had enjoyed together. How was Holt now-a-days? and where was Dart? Was it true that Jack himself had thrown Miss Lenox over, or was the fault on her side? "She is much admired," he went on. "How do you think her looking? She has many lovers and two or three suitors. There is Judge Talbot, with his mind set on winning her."

"What category of her admirers do you come in?"

"I am neither lover nor suitor," he rejoined lightly. "Miss Lenox and I are on excellent terms of camaraderie—no more. Were I to admire any woman from my heart, it would be the one I have just left. Is she not the rarest, sweetest, dearest Lady Disdain in the world?"

"I cannot guess to whom you refer," said I, "for I am at a loss how to excuse the familiarity of your speech in reference to any lady in the house except Miss Lenox."

"Now, Randolph," exclaimed Thorpe, putting his hand on my shoulder, "you shall not bluff me off so. I would cut my tongue out before I used it too freely in praising a young lady like Miss Floyd. I knew her as a child: her father is my best friend, my benefactor. Remember, if I spoke too freely, that my Southern blood gives me more trouble than the chilly currents in your Northern veins."

He spoke so eagerly, and with such perfect temper, that I was ashamed of my momentary outburst. I shook hands with him cordially at the gate, and walked back slowly, looking at the heavy bank of fog lying in the east over which the moon was peering, and thinking of my mother, of Helen, perhaps a little of Georgy, although my heart was swelling with anger toward her still: so I told myself again and again. Yet how beautiful she was, with a new and bewildering tenderness in her manner! What had softened her? Was it suffering?

When I returned to the parlor she had gone up stairs, tired with her excursion, I heard, and longing for a night's rest. I sat down by my mother, and we talked until midnight, while Helen sang ballads to her father in the next room in a rare contralto voice which had gained strength and richness since I heard it last.

When, finally, Mr. Floyd—who always put off going to bed as a final necessity—allowed me to go up stairs, I found inside my dressing-case a folded paper on which these lines were written: "The prettiest hour of the day at The Headlands is at seven o'clock in the morning, down among the rocks."

I should have felt no doubt whose hand had put the notelet there even if it had failed to breathe the perfume of violets, which no one who knew Georgy Lenox could hesitate to recognize.



CHAPTER XVI.

It was full two o'clock before I began to think of sleeping, but nevertheless I was on the rocks next morning at seven; and my punctuality was rewarded by the sight of Miss Lenox walking on the shore in a white dress. I clambered down and joined her before she seemed aware of my presence: then she turned and laughed softly in my face. "What an early riser you are!" she exclaimed. "You have brought excellent habits home from the lazy Old World."

"But it would be such a pity to miss 'the prettiest hour of the day'!" I retorted quickly.

"Were you surprised to meet me last night?" she asked.

"Perhaps so. I had at least not expected it. I was in Belfield on Wednesday, and supposed that you were there."

"You could easily have found out my whereabouts if you had called upon mamma. I should not have expected you to be in Belfield without going near our house."

"Mrs. Lenox has too often snubbed me in my boyhood for me to count upon her grace now," I returned. "But I hope your mother is very well."

But it was very droll to me that I had embarked upon something like an adventure for the sake of talking about old Mrs. Lenox. Still, Miss Georgy was well worth coming out to see with the flush of healthy sleep still upon cheek and lip and the morning light in her eyes.

"Mamma is well," said she soberly. "Poor papa too: though he is worked to death, he is still quite well."

"What does he do, then?" I asked. I knew that he was one of the book-keepers at the factories, but I wanted her to be the first to speak Jack's name.

"As soon as Mr. John Holt went into the business," she returned, very coolly, "he gave my father a position. He had promised to do it years before, and you know how well Jack keeps all his promises."

"Jack is faithful and true," I said, looking at her keenly. "No one will ever be able to say of him, 'That man has wronged me.'"

"What did he say about me?" she demanded suddenly, stopping short in her walk and facing me. "I shall have no disguises with you, Floyd: you know me too well. I never really loved Jack, good, kind and noble although I recognize him to be. When he offered me my freedom I took it. How could I have endured to wait for him, ruined, disgraced as he was, through the uncertainty and pain of years? It is impossible that he should be in a position to marry until my youth is passed."

Her voice was so tremulous and pleading, her eyes and lips so eloquent, that she needed no vindication. I pitied Jack more than ever, but still I no longer blamed her.

"You men have a hundred chances," she went on. "If the first fails you, you have no reason for despondency, for a better one is sure to come. We poor women find our golden opportunity but once. Do not call me mercenary or false. I was neither. I had been talked into a belief that I ought to marry Jack, but when the trial came all the potential reasons failed. Had I kept my engagement to him, I should have been a clog, an encumbrance, upon him: he is better off without me."

"Nothing but devoted love could have held you to him in his trouble," said I. "If you did not feel that, your bondage through a hopeless engagement would have been a terrible burden."

"Tell me what he said," she murmured coaxingly. "Is he angry with me? does he complain of me?"

"No: no man could have spoken of you more kindly."

"Is he forgetting me?"

I met her look and smile with a curious thrill that I thought I had lived down years ago.

"I am afraid, Georgy," said I, "that you are not one of those women whom men forget."

"Jack will forget me. He is wedded to his business: he is angry with the world, maddened, desperate. I have walked out behind him at church in Belfield, and he has not seen me: I have met him driving in the streets, and he has not turned his head. The men who once trusted and believed in his father treated him shamefully after his misfortunes came, and Jack resented it: he goes about the place seeing nobody, holding his head high, and showing the men he meets that he asks no favor of any one of them. All the softness has gone out of him."

I told her how wrong her idea of him was, and presently found myself repeating many things that he had said. Before I ended I had even let her hear of our midnight stroll about the place and our look at the gabled room where we believed her to be sleeping. This pleased her.

"That is not unlike you," she remarked with charming complacency, "but I never before heard of Jack's doing anything so poetic."

"Jack is not a man to write poems," said I, "but he is one of the men poets write about. After you had gone up stairs last night Helen sang to her father, and the words of one of her songs were Heine's: it reminded me of Holt beneath your window."

"One of those German songs? I understand nothing but English."

"They have translated it, and it runs like this:

Silent the streets by night overtaken: This house my darling's presence did grace; But she the town has long forsaken, Yet there stands the house in the selfsame place; And there stands a man who upward is staring, His hands hard wringing in outbursts of woe!"

I paused and looked into her face.

"That is not all of it?"

"No: I will tell you the rest some day."

"Did Jack 'wring his hands in outbursts of woe'?"

"Good Heavens, no! I presume we both stood with our hands in our pockets: I was smoking a cigar myself. It is only in poetry that one may be picturesque in one's grief now-a-days."

"Did you think of me when you stood there, Floyd?"

Her little fingers closed on the edge of my coat and she looked up in my eyes. I smiled demurely. I was determined to be quite the master of myself with Georgina. I had suffered too much from her in the past not to be on my guard. Still, it was hard to resist the upturned face—the face with which was associated all the passionate inspiration of my early life—the face I had carried in my mind and heart through all my wanderings, finding none to compare with it—the face which always came with flash and quickness when I felt the warm desire and longing to love somebody which youth must always know.

I kissed her.

She looked at me startled, and ran ten paces away and sat down upon a rock.

"Upon my word!" she exclaimed, bursting into light laughter, "you have learned pretty manners abroad!"

"I am so glad you like them," said I, going up to her.

"But I don't like them at all," she retorted, shaking her head. "You remind me of a toy I used to play with years ago—a very pretty, harmless, inoffensive-looking toy, but which when touched unguardedly changed all of a sudden into a dreadful little fiend that flew right up into your face. Such a surprise is enough to make one's hair turn gray."

"At any rate, I have vindicated myself from the charge of being, 'pretty, harmless and inoffensive,' have I not? As for the gray hairs, I don't see one."

"I quite admired you last night," sighed Georgy, "you looked so interesting and innocent. Now—"

"Have I then suffered in your estimation?"

"I shall remember hereafter," she said with a delightful little laugh, "to whom I am talking. Now let us forget all about it. There are other things I want to talk about. I want to ask you how you like Helen."

"How I like Helen?" I did not fancy her question: I had never approved her tone regarding her cousin. "I think Miss Floyd very beautiful, and a very elegant girl besides."

"Do you like her proud cold manner?"

"Is she proud and cold? Perhaps so to Thorpe: certainly, she is the most unaffected child where the rest of us are concerned."

"She never forgets her wealth and position. I do not blame her: in her place I should be quite spoiled. Think of it!" she went on, with such eagerness that tears stood in her eyes: "Mr. Raymond left her everything—everything except a hundred thousand dollars which he gave to a college. She is so rich that she can lose a hundred thousand dollars and never feel it. It did not belong to the property, but came from a deposit which had accumulated ever since she was a baby. She begged her grandfather to do some good with it: she did not want to have everything herself. Might he not have given it to me?—Helen would have liked that—but no: he hated me too well for that. It has all gone for a dreary old professorship in the college where he graduated sixty years ago. And I am as poor as ever!"

"But Helen is generous with her wealth, I am sure: she will do a great deal for you."

"She gave me the money to buy the dress I am wearing, the very shoes on my feet;" and she granted me a delicious glimpse of French slippers. "But do you suppose I like alms? If I am a beggar, Floyd, it is from necessity, not because I have not plenty of pride. The child means to be good to me, I suppose, but it makes me bitterly angry with her at times that she has the right to be gracious and condescending. I am such an unlucky girl!"

But she laughed while she complained, and I echoed her laugh when she said she was unlucky.

"You unlucky!" I exclaimed. "You are one of those women who have it in their power to have every wish in life granted."

"I am not so sure of that. Besides, it is hard for me to know what I want now-a-days. I used to think if a fairy came offering me the fulfilment of my dearest longing, it would be easy enough to secure lifelong happiness at once: I should have asked for wealth. But now they are comfortable at home: they would not know how to spend more money than papa earns at the factory. And I am comparatively rich: I have almost five hundred dollars in my purse, part of the thousand which Helen gave me a month ago. I cried myself to sleep last night, I was so unhappy; yet, all the same, I am not quite sure what I want. Life is so dull! That is what ails me, I think."

I looked at her in uncertainty as to her mood, but she left me in doubt, and began telling me about society at the Point, her friend Mrs. Woodruff, and the houseful of guests. She told me stories with some scandalous flavor about them, enough to give them a zest; she mimicked all the earnest people and spoke with contempt of all the shallow ones; she appeared to have fathomed all the petty under-currents which influenced people's actions, detected every shade of pretension and studied all the affectations and habits of the men and women she saw intimately. All this, too, without betraying any personal liking for one of them, and seeming to regard them all as mere puppets, to some of whom she attached herself when there was anything to gain, and from whom she withdrew herself when there was anything to lose. But she was too clever to allow me time to think what qualities of mind and heart lay behind this philosophy, and I was very much diverted.

"I must take you to see Mrs. Woodruff," she remarked. "You will be welcome in the set as flowers in May. You are spending the summer here, I suppose?"

"I have no plans. Where my mother is I shall be for the present, I have been separated from her so long."

"How beautiful! But about your future, Floyd? Have you a career decided upon, or are you to be a gentleman of leisure?"

I flushed: "My resolution is not taken as to what I shall be—certainly not an idle man."

"I can tell your fortune," she said in a low voice. "You need not cross my palm with silver for it, either."

"With gold, then?"

"I will tell it for love, but it is a golden fortune. You will marry Helen Floyd."

"No," said I with decision and some anger, "I shall never marry Helen. You do me too much honor. She would never look at me; and if she would there is something within me which forbids my marrying a rich woman. But it is nonsense. For Heaven's sake don't allude to it again! The man who marries her will be, to my thinking, the most fortunate of men, but—"

"We won't talk about it," said she good-naturedly. "There comes Mr. Thorpe to bid us good-morning. Astonishing how well he likes the walk to The Headlands!"

It was Thorpe indeed, carelessly but irreproachably dressed as usual, and looking at us with a smile of internal amusement, which he was probably too well-bred to express in words, for he merely drawled a good-morning and remarked on the beauty of the day.