"But there is revenge!" said the woman, with a fierce gleam of the eyes; "revenge on him and her!"

"No!" answered the General, gloomily. "To anger him, would be to make myself a beggar. I must bear this in silence."

"Not if he loves her yet."

"But, does he? What man ever remained faithful to a first love twenty years?"

A faint moan broke from the woman's lips, and dropping her face between her hands, she cowered at his feet, as if he had stricken her down with a blow, instead of those cruel words that no physical pain can equal, when they fall upon a woman's heart.

"What is the matter, Zillah? Why do you moan and droop in this fashion?" said the General, quite unconscious of the pang he had given.

The woman looked up; her eyes were heavy with pain, and a scarcely perceptible quiver stirred her mouth.

"He sold me, and I lived; this cannot kill me either," she murmured drearily.

"Oh," said the General, smiling, for he began to divine the cause of her stricken attitude. "But remember, Zillah, you were not my first love. I was no boy when we met, and it was of boyish dreams that I spoke."



CHAPTER LVIII.

GENERAL HARRINGTON'S TEMPTATION.

Zillah drew a deep breath, and raised herself up, like a panther which a ball has grazed. A wild illumination shot over her face, and seizing the General's hands, she kissed them passionately.

"Foolish creature," said the General, soothed in the depths of his vanity by this devotion.

"You did love me," she said, with a wistful look; "you did love me?"

"Yes—yes."

"And, it is all over?"

He looked down into her face. No girl of sixteen, in her first love quarrel, ever wore a look so full of anxiety, so tremulous with hope and doubt.

"Oh, I cannot say that, Zillah. There is something piquant, even picturesque, about you, that one does not readily forget, or ever dislike; besides, real earnest love is better worth having, after the domestic treason which I have just discovered."

Again the woman's eyes blazed forth their sudden joy. She arose from his feet, restless and eager.

"She has wronged you—she has embittered my life. I was your slave—let her become so. Then shall we both have vengeance!"

"And beggary with it," answered the General, bitterly. "No, no, Zillah, I am not so fond of vengeance as that; besides, hers is only a sin of feeling, and she seems to have suffered for it."

The woman turned white, till the dusky shadows under her eyes seemed black by contrast.

"A sin of feeling!" she almost shrieked, seizing the vellum book, and turning over the crushed leaves rapidly with her trembling hands. "You have not read all. You have only glanced at passages, perhaps!"

"And they have been sufficiently unpleasant. I do not care to search farther!"

Zillah still turned over the leaves, tearing them more than once in her rude haste. Her fierce eyes glanced from passage to passage. At length, like a hawk pouncing upon its prey, she opened the book wide, and pressed her hand hard upon a page which seemed more hastily written than the rest, for it was blotted and broken up, evidently full of exclamations and bursts of passionate thought.

"Read that!" said the woman, pressing her finger upon the page till the blood was strained back to the wrist, leaving the hand pallid as marble. "Read that!"

The General took up the journal, and read. Again that expression of white rage crept over his face, and a smile rose up to his mouth, coiling around it like a viper.

"Yes," he said, hoarsely. "This means something. It is her own confession."

"It is enough to crush her forever!" cried the woman.

"Yes, yes, that society may laugh at me as a dupe; vengeance is sweet, but I cannot afford it. To assail her, would be to arm him against me."

"And you will submit to this wrong?" cried the woman, while her eyes flashed fire and her lips writhed in scorn.

"Submit, no—my fiery Zillah; but the richest enjoyments of life should be tasted daintily—a noisy revenge is not to my taste."

"But you will live with this woman yet?"

The General smiled meaningly.

"She will, perhaps, remain under my roof."

"And you will not take away the name she has disgraced?" persisted Zillah, pale with suspense.

"You are a little too fast there, my friend. A name is never dishonored by anything kept secret within the bosom of a family. Disgrace is the scorn of society, and how can the world scorn that which it does not know?"

"But it shall know. I will myself proclaim this infamy!" cried the woman, clenching her hand, and shaking from head to foot with internal rage.

The General cast on her a look half-surprised, half-amused.

"Ah, Zillah, and who on earth of our world can you know, or—if that were possible—what would your word be against the life of a woman so universally admired and beloved, as my wife has been?"

"But, I will prove what I say by that book."

"Which is just now in my possession, where it is likely to remain. Be content, beautiful Zillah. The fate of Mabel Harrington rests with me. I shall not trust her to your jealous rage."

"To my jealous rage!" repeated Zillah, hardening down in her passion till she seemed turning to marble from a single effort of will. "I thought of your honor, not of my own wrongs. I struggle against contempt for the man whom I have so long and so miserably loved."

"Contempt, Zillah?"

"Yes, sir, contempt. Even your slave has a right to despise the man who connives at his own dishonor."

"Woman, are you mad!—but no matter. I am too weary for much anger. You should have remembered of old that I hate scenes. This has been gotten up with too much intensity. I am tired of it."

"I see, I see!" replied the woman, resuming her slave-like submission. "You are tired, with no one to care about it. Let me serve you once more."

Zillah went to a marble console in another part of the room, poured out a glass of wine, and, sinking gently at his feet, presented it after the Oriental fashion which he had taught her years before.

He took the wine and drank it off, dropping his hand carelessly upon her shoulder as he returned the glass. The woman sat gazing into his face, her brow knitted, and her eyes full of thought.

"Then you shrink from a public exposure in this matter?" she said at last, bending her head on one side and touching his hand with her lips, which fell upon it cold as ice, so deep was the craft and so cruel was the passion that prompted this caress.

"I shrink from purchasing revenge at the cost of everything that renders life worth having. Once for all, Zillah, to quarrel with James Harrington is to give up all that I enjoy. Of my wife's fortune, nothing but this old mansion, and some fragments of real estate, remain. My first wife, as you know, left every dollar of her property to James, else the marriage which has created all this turmoil would never have taken place. Up to this hour, the young man has given me almost the entire control of his income. Mrs. Harrington has no idea that her property has not always supplied our income. To assail them, is to expose my own losses at the gambling-table—both while I was her guardian and her husband—I only wish the accursed book had never reached my hands. So long as she was acknowledged the most correct and splendid woman in society, what was her heart and its secrets to me? I tell you, I am tied to silence in this matter, and your interference can but annoy me."

"Not if I point out the way by which the vengeance you pant for may enrich yourself," said the woman, arousing from her thoughtfulness.

"Oh, that would be a discovery, indeed."

"James Harrington loves the lady."

"I am not so sure of that; but, suppose it so, what then?"

"Legal separations are easy in this country. Let her go to one of those States where incompatibility of temper, absence, or caprice, is deemed sufficient reason for divorce. This will be generous, and they must be grateful for a forbearance that she has no right to expect. Half his fortune—nay, the whole of it—will be little to ask in return."

"Woman, has a fiend or angel put this thought into your head?"

"Both; if love is an angel, and hate a fiend."

"And, what can you expect from this?"

"Nothing!"

"Nothing! This is not true, Zillah!"

"Is it hoping much, when I only wish to be a slave again?"

"My poor Zillah; and did you, indeed, care for me so much?"

The woman fell down upon her knees, buried her face between both hands, and burst into a passion of tears.

The General was annoyed; there was something too much like a scene in the attitude and tears of his former slave. He leaned back in his chair, regarding her with a glance of cynical impatience. She caught the look, as her hands fell apart; and the hot blood that rushed over her face seemed to burn up her tears. She broke into a smile, and arose, sweeping a hand across her eyes fiercely, as if to punish them for weeping.

"There, there, I will go now. It is a long time since I have been so foolish."

General Harrington smiled; the flush of her face and the brilliant mist which tears had left in her eyes, reminded him of past years, when he had, from mere wantonness, provoked those passionate outbursts, in order to kindle up the beauty of her face.

"But you have forgotten to say how you obtained entrance into my private apartments. I trust no one saw you come in."

"No one that could recognize me. I became too well acquainted with the house when we stopped here with my old mistress, on our way to Europe, for any need of a door. The balconies are too near the ground for that."

"And how long had you been waiting in my bed-chamber, then?" continued the General, pleased with the prompt return of her cheerfulness.

"All the time that you were reading. I only sought to look on you again from a distance, and would have escaped without disturbing you, had it been possible."

The General smiled complacently. After the outrage suffered by his self-love, this devotion soothed him greatly.

"My poor Zillah!" he said, with a sort of compassion in his voice, "poor Zillah!"

She did not answer him, and when he turned a moment after to learn the cause, her place was empty. Like some gorgeous wild bird, she had lighted at his feet a moment, and flown away. But the vellum-book was in his hands, and her wicked counsel lay folded close among the evil things in his heart.



CHAPTER LIX.

A STORM IN THE WOODS.

And Lina wandered off, deep, deep into the woods—her head aching with overcharged thought, her heart lying wounded and cold in her bosom. Hour after hour she toiled on, wild with the pain of her new sorrow. It seemed to her that intense action could only bring rest. Thus, she clambered hill after hill, drew herself up the steep face of many a rock that, at another time, would have defied her efforts, and waded, knee-deep, in drifts of dead leaves that choked up the hollows. Sometimes she would stop suddenly, out of breath, and panting with the fatigue of her aimless exertions. But after looking wildly about, as if in fear of pursuit, she would dart off again, perhaps retreading the rough path she had left. At last, she sat down, exhausted, at the foot of a tree, and looked around in bitter despair as she saw the woods darken overhead, and felt a soft storm of snow flakes floating dreamily over her.

The poor child was numb and cold. Her very breath seemed turning to ice upon her lips. But for the little hound that crept up to her bosom, and lay patiently there, with its slender head laid upon her shoulder, and its limbs trembling with the cold, she would have perished. But the warmth from this little animal's body kept the vitality in her poor heart, and instead of death, a drowsiness fell upon her, which would perhaps have ended in a wakeless sleep. But just as she was sinking away into that deathly torpor from which few are aroused, a female figure came, floating like a dark bird of prey, through the storm, now obscured by the thick interlacing of naked branches, and again dimmed in her approach by the veil of virgin snow-flakes that filled the air.

The hound lifted its slender head, gave a faint whine and lay down again motionless, but with his vigilant eyes on the shadowy figure that approached. That pale face was evidently known to the dog, or he would not have rested there so peacefully, though it moved through the falling snow, like a phantom which might disappear with the slightest sound.

Close to the prostrate girl it came—that sinister, white face—and the figure stooped from under the folds of its black and ample cloak, to whisper in the cold ear of Lina French.

"Go to the house upon the hill-side. There your mother is waiting for you."

Lina struggled like one aroused from the thrall of a nightmare. The word mother had broken up the ice at her heart. She pushed the hound from her bosom, and staggering to her feet, looked to the right and left. No one was near. The pale quiver of the snow flakes, and the naked tree boughs, trembling and sighing together, was all that she could make out. But the word mother still sounded in her ear, and the sentence uttered to her sleep grew trumpet-toned, and seemed wailed back to her by the storm.

"'The house upon the hill-side!' where is it?" she cried. "Which way shall I go? Answer me, thou voice of the storm! is it north or south, to the right or left? Answer me—or if I am indeed mad, be silent and let me die!"

Then, through the drifting snow flakes that settled down heavier and heavier, there came a voice clear and musical, like the low tones of a flute, half-singing, half-speaking, which might have been the disguise of some voice that feared detection.

"To the southward—to the southward, where a hearth gives forth its white smoke, and your mother awaits her child."

Then, with a wild laugh, ending in sobs that wasted themselves on the silence, Lina sprang away southward, always with the storm beating in her face, and the snow weltering like a shroud around her feet.

Sometimes she would pause in a rift of the hills and look wistfully upon the bed of sere leaves and feathery snow, tempting her to sink down and die, with the grim hemlock boughs, plumed with snow wreaths drooping over her, and lulled by the gurgle of unseen waters wandering to the river, under their jewelled network of ice, but she resisted the impulse, and still bent her way to the south, while the little dog, so delicate and yet so faithful, rushed after her without a whine, as if he knew, gentle creature, that a cry of pain, added to her own sorrow, would be enough to smite away all her insane strength and leave her prostrate upon the white earth.

At last she came out of the woods upon a hill-side covered with the tangled undergrowth that follows a fire upon the hills. The trunk of an old cedar tree, blackened and charred to the roots, warned her of a close approach to the river, and in the distance she saw a wreath of dim smoke curling up through the snow. Leaving the cedar-tree on her right, Lina toiled up the hill, and crossed a ravine darkened with great white pines and spruce trees. At the bottom, a mountain stream broke through ten thousand fairy chains of ice, and melting the pearly foam of the snow as it fell, sent it leaping downward in a torrent that seemed half diamonds, half pearl drifts, under which the pure waters went singing softly on their way to the river.

Lina did not heed the gentle warning of the waters, but sprang forward in wild haste. Her step shattered the glittering ice right and left, and the cold water gushed over her feet and garments, but she moved on without pause, climbing up the banks of the stream till a smooth platform of snow, and a house whose windows were fitfully revealed by pale gleams of light, evidently from a half buried fire, stood before her.

She drew near to the house, standing there in the darkness, and began to stagger, for now the unnatural strength which had nerved her, gave way. The icy waters of the brook froze into fetters, around her ankles, and she fell, without a sigh or moan, with her face toward the earth.

The poor little hound, after pulling at her garments with piteous whines, set up a howl that rang mournfully over the snow waste around. Lina did not move. She was sensible, but utterly strengthless. All that she had suffered was lost in a single desire to be still, and sleep or die.

The howl of her poor, shivering companion, so sharp and plaintive in reality came to her ear as if from a great distance, and for once she struggled to call Fair-Star by name, and tell him where she was, but her lips gave forth no sound, and when the dog set up another cry, Lina did not hear it.



CHAPTER LX.

THE DARK-HOUSE.

In less than an hour after Lina French fell so helplessly upon the snow drifted around that old house, the storm swept by, and forcing the leaden clouds aside, came the moon, followed by ten thousand stars, that shone calmly and pure in the frosty atmosphere. Directly, bright scintillations of frost arose upon the white waste of snow, and the whole earth seemed crusted with diamond dust. The midnight was supremely beautiful, and the stillness around that old house had something that seemed holy in it, but now and then a faint howl broke over the glittering hills, which gave warning that sorrow, pain, and, perhaps, death were near.

A woman coming up from the shore heard the cry, and stopped to listen. She, too, was weary and panting from a toilsome struggle with the storm. But a cloak of soft Russian sables and a hood of crimson silk protected her as far as it was possible from the weather. Still her feet sunk heavily in the snow at each step, and her footprints filled with shadows as she passed on, blackening her way over the universal whiteness that covered the earth. Thus it had always been in her life—that woman never moved without leaving shadows and darkness behind her.

She came forward, guided by the wail of Fair-Star, tramping down the snow and breathing heavily, from her up-hill toil.

At last her searching eyes detected the black sleeve, which fell away from an arm flung upward, as if its owner had made a vain effort to prevent herself falling. And there prone upon the earth, her garments frozen stiff, till they rattled to the touch, and covered with a slight sprinkling of snow, which had fallen off in waves during her struggles to rise, the woman found Lina French.

A cold, half-sneering smile at the easy success of her own schemes, stole over the woman's face, but as she stooped and touched the cold hand with her finger, the smile gave way to a look of affright, and bending down, she raised the prostrate girl in her arms, tearing her garments up from the ice, and wrenching open a little gate, before which Lina had fallen, bore her into the house.

Fair-Star followed, shivering and whining, with a piteous attempt at joy, and, after a moment, both the mistress and her hound lay upon a mattress the woman had dragged from the next room, and spread upon the hearth-stone, which a bed of hot ashes had kept warm. With a look of wild apprehension, the woman whom we have seen in her rooms at New York, and later, in General Harrington's library—proceeded to divest the cold form before her of its frozen garments.

She took the fur mantle from her shoulders, and folded it over the insensible girl; then dragging blankets and quilts from the next room, heaped them over her, burying poor little Fair-Star up with his mistress, while she proceeded to rake open the fire and throw armful after armful of dry wood upon it. The woman was evidently well prepared for this task of humanity, for, as the fire blazed up and went roaring in a volume of flame through the chimney, she began to chafe the small hands and feet buried in those blankets, and from time to time rubbed the pale lips with brandy.

It was long before the half-perished girl began to feel the warmth, great as it was. The woman kept on her labor patiently, but she grew paler and more anxious each moment, fearing that the young creature was really dead. At last, the little hound, revived by the warmth, crept up to the pale bosom of his mistress, and began to lick her face. Either the animal warmth so close to her heart, or some more powerful impulse of nature followed this act with a thrill of life. Lina did not open her eyes, but softly, as the limbs move in a dream, her arms folded themselves over Fair-Star, and a tear stole from under her trembling lashes, chasing away those that had melted on her cheeks.

Zillah regarded her with a look of profound satisfaction. She had placed a cup of spiced wine on the hearth, ready for use, and with her soft voice and caressing touch, now bent over the girl.

"Take this," she said, holding the spicy draught to Lina's lips. "Drink, it is warm and invigorating—after that you can sleep."

Lina opened her eyes and looked dreamily at the woman, but her hands wandered as she attempted to take the cup, and she had no power to lift her head.

Zillah put her arm softly beneath the drooping head, and raised it to her bosom. Then with gentle words of persuasion she lifted the cup, and Lina drank off the wine with thirsty eagerness. Her eyes were open and lifted to the strange face bending over her with a glance, half wonder, half content, as we often remark in an infant when its hunger is satisfied, and it lies with drops of milk trembling like pearls upon the red of its lips.

"My child—my child!" whispered Zillah, pressing her lips down upon the forehead of the passive young creature, "my child!" As the kiss touched her forehead, Lina uttered a sharp cry, for, with that keen intuition, which is a rare and sometimes fatal gift, she felt the moral poison of that kiss in all her veins, and began to struggle in the woman's embrace, but without the power to cast it off.

Zillah's brow blackened, and her eyes shot forth gleams of anger, but the hushing tones of her voice were unbroken, and she made a gentle effort to cradle the restless head once more upon her bosom. Lina ceased to resist. Some narcotic had evidently been mingled with her drink, for the white lids fell drowsily over her eyes, and she surrendered herself more and more helplessly to that evil embrace, dropping at last into a heavy slumber, that seemed like death.

The woman soon wearied of her position, and after a little, thrust the sleeping girl from her bosom with a degree of loathing quite equal to that Lina had suffered under her first kiss.

"There is no danger that she will be found dead on my hands now," she muttered, huddling the blankets rudely over the prostrate girl, "let her sleep while I take a little care of myself. This awful night has almost killed me. I wonder the girl is alive."

The woman drew a chair close to one end of the hearth after preparing a fresh cup of the spiced wine, which she sipped with thoughtful slowness while her eyes were fixed on the pale face at her feet.

"This snow has proved unfortunate," she muttered. "I fear that no carriage will be able to cut through it, and in this place she will prove very troublesome. Still, Agnes may be trusted, even against the storm; the girl has a spirit that will conquer anything, when her passions are concerned. Heavens, how cold it is! I can hear the snow crack, the frost crusts it so suddenly over; the window-panes seem curtained over with lace, which the moonbeams are turning to silver; it is a bitter cold night. I fancy half an hour more would have settled all things for the young lady. How she sleeps; but there is unrest about her yet. She knits her brows and moans in her dreams, as if some enemy were near. Oh, ha! ha! my pretty hound, what is the matter now?"

Fair-Star had provoked this question by thrusting his head out from under the blankets, and giving a low bark, as if disturbed by something that he disliked.

"Hush!" said the woman, sharply. "Hush, sir!" and she listened keenly for the noise that had disturbed him.

It was a quick footstep on the snow-crust—a fluttering sound near the window; and then the keen eyes of the woman saw a hand softly brushing away the frost traceries on the window, and a human face looking through. Zillah arose with an eager look, and opened the door.

"Agnes, is it you?"

"I should like to know what other person you expect?" said the girl in a whisper.

"She is sound asleep, of course; trust you for that."

"Yes, yes," said the woman; "but, have you brought the carriage? Can anything penetrate this depth of snow?"

"Not a carriage, certainly; but I have a sleigh and two good horses outside. It will be a hard drag, but she must be out of his reach before morning."

"And you expect me to go out again, this bitter cold night?" said the woman, shuddering. "I would rather run some risks than attempt it."

"Nonsense, nonsense!" exclaimed the young woman, speaking more boldly as she saw the deathly nature of Lina's slumber. "The whole thing must be arranged before sunrise, and I safe at home again. This has been a terrible night; I almost despaired of reaching you!"

"And who comes with you?"

"Your own people; no one else."

"But the cold!"

"It is nothing, with cushions and plenty of buffalo robes. An hour will take you safely into the city. I must be let out on the way, and get home on foot. Come, are you ready?"

"In a moment—in a moment!" answered Zillah, gathering up her furs, and putting on a warm hood. "But, how can we get her dressed and out to the sleigh? Her clothes are like ice; they were absolutely frozen down!"

"Here, here!" cried Agnes, going into the inner room, and coming forth with some dark garments across her arms; "fortunately, I left these things at home. We must get them on, as she sleeps. There is no fear of waking her, I suppose?"

"No, no! Make haste, if it must be to-night!"

The two women lifted Lina from her couch upon the floor; arranged her in the garments that Agnes had selected; and, wrapping her in a large cloak, bore her between them out to a sleigh that had been drawn up near the house.

The driver appeared quite prepared for the singular appearance of a girl evidently insensible, for he flung back the fur robes without any appearance of curiosity; and, when the women had taken their places, drove away as rapidly as the drifted snow would permit.



CHAPTER LXI.

STRANGE PLANS.

When Lina awoke, she was alone in a chamber that seemed both unfamiliar and unpleasant, though sumptuous objects met her on every side. The atmosphere was stifling, as if some pastilles had just been burned in it, and a heavy pain in the head flung a mistiness all around. She was surprised to find herself dressed in garments strange as the room; but the heavy aching of all her limbs, and the glow of coming fever in her cheek, rendered connected thought impossible. She dropped asleep again, but only to be aroused by a soft tread that stole through her room, and the breath of some person bending downward, which made her shudder, as if it had been the poison of a upas tree floating across her mouth.

"Are you better, Lina? are you awake?"

"Who speaks?" cried the girl, starting wildly up. "Where am I—and who calls me Lina?"

"It is your mother who speaks—it is her house that shelters you."

"My mother? oh, Father of Heaven! now I remember: take me hence—take me hence!"

"My child," said the woman Zillah, stepping out from the curtains that had half concealed her; "let me look into your eyes, and see if they dare turn in scorn or rebukingly from mine. Sit up, girl, and let me read your face!"

"I cannot, I cannot; my head reels—my heart aches with a pain that will never go away;" cried the poor girl, bending forward and striving to shut out the woman's face with both her clasped hands. "God help me; I would rather die now!"

The woman went softly up to that excited young creature, and, placing one hand on her forehead, pressed her gently back upon the pillow from which she had started so wildly.

"I am your mother. Look at me—I am your mother!"

Lina lifted her feverish eyes, and looked in that face, so repulsive and yet so beautiful, with a strained, wild gaze, that burned with a brilliancy more terrible than fever.

"I do not know you!" she cried, dashing the woman's hands aside. "Let me rest—I do not know you!"

"But, I am your mother."

"Well, go on and tell the whole story!" cried Lina, with insane vehemence. "I know who my father is—he told me himself; but you, madam—you with those strange eyes, and that proud stoop of the head, how came you to be my mother? Don't you know that General Harrington has a wife, and that Ralph is her son. What are you, then, and what am I?"

"I was General Harrington's slave, and you are my daughter. You need not look at me, with those great wondering eyes. I would have broken this more kindly, but you receive me as if I were your slave—not his. You reject me—so be it; but my blood is in your veins, and my shame on your forehead. You cannot shake it off; it will cling around you like a curse, forever and ever. Now sleep if you can!"

A shrill cry broke from the poor young creature, who had fallen forward grovelling in the bed. She struggled to get up, but her limbs were numb, and refused to move. She flung her clasped hands wildly out, and the prayer that she strove to utter broke forth in a sound, that bore with it the last sane thought that she was to know for weeks.



CHAPTER LXII

THE TEMPTATION.

"Gen. Harrington wants to see you!"

A new chambermaid had been introduced into Gen. Harrington's household, and it was this woman who addressed James Harrington as he sat in the remote chamber which had fallen to his lot in a wing of the family mansion.

Harrington looked up as the mulatto presented herself, startled by the southern accent and appearance of the woman, which struck him disagreeably; when she moved away, with her indolent walk and indifferent air, he watched her with a sense of relief of which he was himself unconscious.

"The General am in his own room," she muttered in answer to his question, turning back as she spoke, "something don't seem to 'gree with him somehow this mornin', 'pears like he ain't right well."

The unpleasant impression left by this woman passed but partially away; trifles sometimes affect sensitive characters with a feeling of unrest long after the cause is displaced from the memory; disturbed by this shadowy feeling, James arose and sought General Harrington's room, wondering a little in his mind what the business might be which occasioned this unusual request for an interview. He passed the mulatto woman in one of the passages, who retreated to the wall and stood with her gaze bent on the floor as he passed, but the moment his back was turned the sleepy lids rose suddenly from over her black eyes that flamed out with evil passions, and a repulsive smile stirred her mouth till it worked like a nest of reptiles. Again an unpleasant sensation crept over James Harrington, and he hurried forward with an unconquerable desire to escape her presence.

He found General Harrington alone, surrounded by the luxurious appointments which distinguished his apartments above all others in the house; but the old man was restless and even pallid, as if some unusual moral force had been necessary to urge on this interview with a man against whom he meditated a temptation so atrocious.

For the first moment these two men stood regarding each other in silence. General Harrington stood up at his visitor's approach, but all his self-possession was insufficient to keep his limbs from trembling and the color from fleeing his face. The painful compression of his lips grew more rigid, and a cold glitter stole into his eyes as they met the calm questioning gaze fixed upon them.

"You desired to speak with me, sir," said James Harrington at length, with that gentle respect which had become a habit of self-control, rather than a genuine impulse of reverence for the man before him.

"Yes, sit down," said the General, with a cold harshness of tone so at variance with his usual bland insincerity, that James Harrington looked at him in grave surprise, as he drew a seat toward the library table. For a moment there was profound silence between the two; then the General turned stiffly in his chair, placed one hand on a book with broken clasps that lay before him, and spoke. There was something more than bitterness in his voice; it was harsh with poisonous malice.

"Mr. James Harrington, you loved my wife before I married her," he said, with rude abruptness, that made his auditor rise from his chair, pale and aghast.

"Sir, sir!" broke from his white lips.

"Before and since; before and since! Do you understand, sir, your hypocrisy is at last exposed? I say again"——

"Stop!" said James Harrington, lifting his hand with authority, though it shook like an aspen. "Stop, sir; you are dealing with things that only God himself has power to scrutinize. For my acts, sir, you have a right to arraign me; and there I will answer you with the frankness of a little child, for as childhood they are innocent."

James Harrington stood upright as he spoke, with one arm folded across his chest, guarding the secret which that old man was attempting to wrench from his heart with such ruthless cruelty.

"Innocent!" sneered the old man; "innocent! But I do not blame you, sir! Among men of honor, it is a gentleman's duty to lie broadly and boldly where a lady's reputation is at stake. You have enough of the Harrington blood in your veins to deny this woman's guilt with sufficient indignation; but I, sir, am not mad or blind enough to believe you."

The very might of his emotions kept James Harrington still as he listened to these scathing words. He sat down very quietly, and gazed into the old man's face, shocked to the soul, yet unable to comprehend the reality of a charge so atrocious.

"Will you explain?" he faltered.

"I have explained sufficiently, sir! You loved the lady, and she"——

"Hush! sir; say what you will of me, but do not dare to utter Mabel Harrington's name in this connection. The angels of Heaven are not more blameless than that woman."

"Indeed!" sneered the old man again, dashing open the book before him, and clenching his hand fiercely among its leaves. "Read, sir, read!"

James Harrington reached out his hands, and took the volume held toward him; it had been opened at random, and the passage that met his eye contained a pathetic appeal to Heaven for help to conquer the passion which Mabel confessed to herself as a grievous fault.

The blood rushed athwart James Harrington's forehead as he read; for through the mist that floated over his eyes and brain, he recognized Mabel's handwriting, and felt how coarsely her unhappiness was being revealed to his own heart, which had hardly dared to suspect it before. He was bewildered by the suddenness with which this subject had been forced upon him, and for a moment sat like one fascinated, gazing in pale wonder at the written characters that proved how much he had been beloved.

"Read on!" said the old man. "It is a book which makes research pleasant. Read it through, sir, and then, if you can, repeat the gentlemanly lie which contradicts her own written confession."

James closed the book reverently, and laid it down.

"I have been surprised into reading a few words that should have been kept sacred—it was not my fault, I was bewildered; but no power on earth could induce me to open that book again, though I am very certain nothing can be found in it which an angel need condemn; for, if an honorable and upright woman lives on earth, it is the lady who bears your name."

"You dare not read the proofs of her dishonor, and yours!"

"I deny that such proofs exist, or can exist!"

General Harrington opened the book, and glanced at the passage which had just been read.

"Even here, she confesses her love; you have seen it in her own handwriting—the whole world shall see not only this passage, but the whole book. I will scatter its pages broadcast over the country. See, then, if your denial will shield her from universal scorn."

"You could not do this!"

"I can!"

"She would die under the first bitter sneer."

"Let her die, then! The woman who marries a Harrington, should at least learn not to commit herself."

James Harrington shrunk back in his seat, appalled by the vision of humiliation that opened itself before him. He saw Mabel's name bandied from lip to lip with pity or sneers, by the very society in which she had been held in so much honor. He saw her reputation, so spotless now, consigned to a thousand reckless presses, each tearing her secret forth with its cruel iron fingers, crushing it into some slanderous shape between its ponderous cylinders, and hurling it, blackened with lies and coarse jests, scoffingly to the world.

He saw the effect of this murderous publicity upon Mabel herself, when it should recoil back to her. She, so generous, so kindly, and yet so proud—how would she endure this outrage upon feelings held secret almost from her prayers—feelings struggled against and forced back without a word of utterance, save when they broke forth in the pages of a journal locked so vigilantly from all eyes but her own; that luckless journal to open which seemed like pillaging her proud heart.

Would she yield at once to the extreme delicacy of her nature, and shrinking away from notice, perish under this rude publicity?—or, struggling against it, go mad, and die like an eagle striving to keep its wings poised on high, though pierced with a thousand arrows. He knew that she would resist to the last. The exquisite sensitiveness which rendered her so unlike ordinary women, was matched with a strength of will which would give suffering its keenest power. It would not be death—that is the relief of weaker natures—but relentless life—life full of those torturing agonies that trample every upspringing joy from the heart. Compared to this life, poisoned in all its sources, death would be a sweet dream to a woman like Mabel. The intense vitality of her own nature, would be its torment.

As this picture rose upon his brain, James Harrington shrouded his face, silent and appalled. His strong heart was racked to the centre—a tortuous strain closed in upon his nerves, and for the time, that stout, brave man was helpless as a child.

"You love this woman yet, I see."

General Harrington's voice had resumed its usual slow intonation. The first anger had left it with a harsh, cold attempt at composure; his eyes moved from object to object, and his soft white fingers worked nervously with the tassel of his dressing-gown: if at any moment of his life this old man could have been awkward, it must have been then, for he was too keen-sighted not to feel his own meanness, but not honest enough to crush it beneath his feet.

"You love this woman yet?"

James Harrington dashed the hands away from his pale face, and sat upright.

"Ask me that, or anything else that appertains only to my own feelings, and I will answer. I did love the woman you married with every power of my soul!"

"And now?"

"Now, sir, and from the day she took your name, she has been sacred to my thoughts, as an angel in Heaven."

General Harrington smiled incredulously.

"I have answered the simple truth, sir," said James, in reply to the smile.

Instead of being pleased with the honest simplicity of this answer, the old man looked disappointed; his brow clouded, and his eye fell.

"You would gladly have married her at the time, though?"

James again shrouded his eyes. These questions were so coldly put—so rudely forced upon him, that he could only answer by an inward shudder of repulsion.

"You are not a man to change in anything," continued the General. "You loved the woman once—I knew it at the time."

"Knew it, and yet married her!" cried James, with bitterness.

"You seemed to be playing a dog in the manger part—this might do for young fellows who were too timid for speech, or too certain for doubt. The lady was young, beautiful, rich, and appeared to give me the preference. You did not speak. I did; that is all."

"I was not selfishly silent, sir. Before my mother's unhappy death, I was dependent entirely on her bounty, and that you controlled. Mabel was an heiress. I was not mercenary, and hesitated to appear so. My mother loved her. She was very young, and your ward. It would have seemed like taking an unfair advantage of her inexperience, had I used my mother's hospitality as a means of reaching her favor. After that came a more painful reason for silence."

"And what was that, sir?" demanded the General, sharply.

"I learned that her fortune had disappeared; that, large as it was, her guardian, unable to control more than the income of his wife's property, had staked this poor orphan's wealth at the gaming-table, and lost it."

General Harrington half rose from his chair, and sat down again, looking at James in pale astonishment.

"To have declared my love under circumstances so disgraceful to my family, would have been to expose you, sir, both to my gentle mother and to the world. The will which gave Mabel her wealth, provided that a full settlement should be made on the day of her marriage. I had not the courage to hurry on an event that would brand my mother's husband with dishonor."

Still the General sat mute and pale, looking steadfastly on the floor; he seemed for a time unconscious that James had ceased to speak, but at last raising his head slowly, he cast a look that was almost fiendish on the younger Harrington.

"Go on, go on!" he said, hoarsely.

"I will, sir! Heaven knows it was my wish to bury this secret forever, but you force me to speak. My poor mother's sickness added new pain to my unhappy situation; she died"——

"And left me a beggar—you a rich man!" said the General, hoarsely. "I have not forgotten it!"

"Then," continued James, "I was free to marry the lady on equal terms—free to replace her fortune from my own inheritance, and keep your secret still from her knowledge—but it was no time for selfish affection, just as my angel mother was laid in a foreign grave. It required time before I could control so large a portion of the property that had been hers. I left you in Spain, sad, but hopeful, a few months would have brought me back prepared to save your honor and my own happiness. You know the rest!"



CHAPTER LXIII.

JAMES HARRINGTON'S GREAT STRUGGLE.

General Harrington arose, slowly, for his limbs trembled with intense rage, and it was with difficulty that he stood up.

"We know each other!" he said, shaking his finger at the younger Harrington, and drawing closer and closer, till it almost touched his face. "You have been the traitor in my household—plundered my closest secrets—alienated my wife; talk of dishonor, sir, what was mine compared to yours?"

But James Harrington had regained all his strength, and stood up firmly before the infuriated old man.

"I have said before, that from the hour this lady became your wife, the place of my sainted mother enshrined her. As I would have studied that mother's happiness, I gave myself and all that I possessed to her welfare and yours. My own tastes were simple, and I had no hopes. The larger portion of my income, you have always controlled."

"And always will command, or this woman's name shall become a by-word from Maine to Georgia!" exclaimed the General, resuming some control over his rage. "We comprehend each other now, and can talk plainly. You have learned some of my secrets, and shall know more. I have other debts of honor, and no ward's fortune to pay them with: her reputation or mine is at stake—one must save the other."

"I do not understand you, sir."

"You can very well comprehend that the contents of this precious book, will render anything like affection for Mrs. Harrington impossible to me. Indeed, the unhappy position in which your mother's death left me, not only penniless, but frightfully involved, enforced this second marriage. I can afford to forgive an outrage on affections that never existed. So while the lady's faithlessness does not affect my interests or my honor, I can endure it with self-complacency."

"I am shocked—astonished, sir, to hear you speak in this way!" said James, indignantly.

The old man smiled.

"You are a dreamer, sir, which I am not. Scenes and excitements are my abhorrence; we hold unpleasant relations toward each other. You are my step-son. The only child of my very distant cousin, a Harrington like myself, to whom, but for your birth, I was the direct heir. The property, a vast one, which might have been justly divided, fell to his widow, your mother, by will. I married the lady, thus, as any sensible man would have supposed, ensuring the inheritance which should have been mine, and which undoubtedly would have been mine, but the lady took it into her head to get jealous one fine day"——

"Stop, sir!" said James Harrington. "I guessed too well the cause of her death—the bitter sorrow which haunted my mother to her grave. She died a broken-hearted woman; do not take her name irreverently into your lips, or I shall forget myself."

"You are forgetting yourself, sir!" answered the General, waving his hand with gentle deprecation. "This is neither time nor place for heroics. I did but attempt to impress you with the fact, that your mother's unjust will had caused all this domestic turmoil. You took the property from me—I won the lady from you. Let us look upon the thing like sensible men, and make restitution."

"Restitution, sir! Restitution of a wasted life!"

"Do be composed—I am tired of storms. You love the lady—I do not. I want money—you care nothing for it."

"Well, sir, well?"

"Really, it is difficult coming to the point, while you look so excited; but, if you will listen tranquilly, all this may be settled."

James sat down, with one hand pressed to his forehead.

"Go on, sir. I am listening."

"It is but just, as I said before, that you disburse the bulk of a property which originally came from the Harrington family. Give me a deed, conveying two-thirds of that property to my unrestricted control during life—I have no ambition to make wills—and the secrets of this book are safe. The west is broad, and most conveniently accommodating when marriage ties become irksome. Mabel can take that direction for her summer travels, while I remain here. In three months the fashionable world may thank us for a week's gossip, which I can very well endure. The world is large—there is California, Australia, or Europe—her second marriage in any of these countries would never be heard of."

James Harrington started up, shaking from head to foot; and so white, that the General half-rose, tempted to flee his presence.

"Tempter, hoary-headed fiend, how dare you!" broke from his white lips.

The old man faltered a little as he went on, and an anxious restlessness of the eye betrayed more emotion than he cared to make apparent.

"I neither tempt nor persuade. We have done each other great injury; this lady has been the cause, and in some sort the victim. After reading that book, it is impossible for this household to contain us all. I will not submit to be turned out a beggar, nor to live an hour longer on your munificence. The plan I offer is the only one that can be peaceably acted upon."

"And the lady, Mrs. Harrington, does she know this?"

"Not a syllable. I have no fancy for hysterics, protestations, or fainting fits. The role of an injured husband, is not to my taste; and I should prefer that she base her complaints on my indifference, abandonment, infidelity, or whatever faults of that nature she pleases. I will take a trip to Paris, if that promises to facilitate matters."

"And, if I refuse?"

"Then the lady shall be quietly waited upon by my lawyer, and invited to leave my house. This book will not only be placed in evidence against her, but every line it contains shall be duplicated by thousands, and spread far and wide."

"Give me time—give me air. I cannot think or breathe!" answered James, struggling with himself amid a whirl of contending feelings, like a drowning man engulphed by a flood. "A few minutes, and I will speak again."

He arose, and walked unsteadily towards the library window, threw it open, and stepped out upon the balcony. There he strove to look the difficulty before him in the face—to meet the terrible temptation with courage. He dared not turn his thoughts, even for a moment, toward the possibility of the proposed divorce, but crushed it back resolutely, as if it had been a serpent attempting to charm his soul away. If a glow of delight had touched his heart with the first certainty of Mabel's love, it was gone now, quenched by a consciousness of the terrible dangers that were closing around her.

It was a bitter cold morning; all around him the earth lay sheeted with deep snow. The river was frozen over from shore to shore. Not a green thing was near, save the spruces and pines upon the shrouded lawn, and they drooped and moaned under a burden of cold whiteness, which the wind might disturb but fail to sweep away. The balcony was littered with slender icicles which had fallen from the gables above, and flashed out like shattered jewels from his impetuous footsteps as he trod them down, walking to and fro in the wild excitement that seized upon him. At another time he must have shuddered beneath the sharp wind that filled his hair and clothes with frost. But now, the fever in his blood burned too hotly not to feel the biting cold as a relief.

He leaned against a pillar of the balcony, shocked to the soul, and yet so indignant that the frozen particles that filled the air, flashed athwart his eyes like sparks of fire. The hand with which he strove to force back the painful rush of thought from his forehead, fell upon it like ice, but in a moment that too was burning. He tore off his cravat, and in vain exposed his bosom to the frost. He gathered handfuls of snow from where it had lodged in ridges on the stone balustrade, and pressed them to his forehead, hoping thus to slake the fever of his wild thoughts. A little time, and this fierce struggle must have killed him; for, not to have found some means of saving Mabel Harrington from the dangers that encompassed her, would have been a thousand deaths to him. Oh! how his bad angel toiled and struggled to fix that divorce upon his mind, as the best and only means of saving her. But the heart that swelled so tumultuously in his bosom, was honest and unselfish. He took hold of the temptation, firmly wrestled with, and hurled it aside, facing the right with heroic courage.

At last, his restless footsteps ceased; some new idea contracted his features, sweeping all the fire away. Slowly and steadily, like the beams of a star, thought followed thought, till his face grew luminous with generous resolution. The red fever had burned itself out on his forehead, leaving it pale and calm, while across his lips stole an expression so much more beautiful than a smile, that I cannot impress it upon the reader.



CHAPTER LXIV.

THE LIFE DEED.

James Harrington turned from the balcony, and entered the open window, composed and firm, but paler than before he went out.

General Harrington looked sharply up as James came forward, but did not speak; there was a force and dignity in his aspect that filled even that worldly old man with respect, amounting almost to awe. They sat down face to face; James leaning heavily against the table, General Harrington retreating far back in his chair, to avoid the firm glance of those eyes.

"There is another way of settling this matter," he said, plunging at once into the depths of the subject. "I have wealth which you desire. To obtain it you will sell your revenge on a helpless woman whose hand you have obtained, but whose love you have never sought. Your offer is specious, but to accept it would be wickedness in me, degradation to her. I know well that she would die rather than escape your vengeance on such terms. I reject them utterly!"

"It is well," said the old man, pale and trembling in his turn, "I have at least this left;" and gathering up Mabel's book, he seemed preparing to go out.

"But," said James Harrington, still with great self-possession, "I am ready to purchase the tranquillity of your wife on other terms. Give me that book—pledge your solemn word of honor that its contents shall never be mentioned again to mortal being—leave Mabel Harrington in the entire enjoyment of her home and station, exactly as she has received them during her married life, and I will at once give you entire control of my income during your natural life, only reserving for myself enough for a bare subsistence. I will leave this house to-morrow. Henceforth, I will hold no communication with you or your family. As you said, the world is broad—any place will answer for one who has no hopes."

The old man was so taken by surprise that he could not answer, but sat searching the face before him with eager scrutiny.

"And you will do this?"

"I will."

"Without entering into explanation with her, or any one else?"

"Explanations are impossible. The family will understand that I am suddenly called away; after that, any prolonged absence can be accounted for. But remember, sir, this lady's tranquillity must be assured beyond a chance of revocation; on that rests the validity of any deed I shall draw. The day and hour in which her position is in the slightest degree impaired, no matter from what cause, and I return, though it were from the uttermost ends of the earth, to resume my own and protect her."

"Have no fear," answered the general, with an impatient wave of the hand. "The shelter of my roof, and the protection of my name, will ensure all; these I promise never to withdraw."

"And that book?"

"Shall be kept secret as the grave!"

"It must be burned before I leave the room!"

The old man was about to hesitate, and demand the life-deed before he surrendered Mabel's journal; but there was a stern dignity in his step-son that checked the mean impulse. He knew well that no bond would be held more sacred than that man's word. James read the thought with a smile of contempt, and turned to leave the room.

"In half an hour I will return with the deed; keep the book till then!"

"No, no, it is here!" cried the General, flushing with shame.

But Harrington had gone, leaving him in a state of humiliation which no self-complacency could soften or conceal. After he had been left a little time, the old man went out upon the balcony, for a brilliant fire made the heat oppressive, cold as the day was; and there was a sensation of shame at his heart, that made his breath come heavily.

He was gone scarcely more than a minute, but that was long enough for the mulatto chambermaid to steal out from the bed-chamber, tear half a dozen pages from Mabel's journal, and creep back again, grasping the crushed paper in her hand as she glided through the door which opened behind the curtains of General Harrington's bed. The drapery was yet rustling from her sudden retreat, when the old gentleman returned to the library. He found the book as he had left it, and sat down with something of triumph but more of self-contempt, to await the return of his step-son.

Directly, James came back with the deed in his hand. The General took it, read it carefully section by section, folded it with studied deliberation; and taking up the journal, placed it in Harrington's hand with a forced smile and a scarcely perceptible bow.

As the book touched his hands, James Harrington grasped it with violence; a trembling fit seized upon him, and he shook like an aspen tree while carrying it to the fire. Opening the covers wide, he laid the fluttering pages down upon the flames, which darted through them like a nest of fiery vipers, and in an instant devoured poor Mabel Harrington's secret, over which the vellum covers writhed and curled like living things given up to torture.

Till the last fragment was consumed, James Harrington stood looking on, with the light falling upon his pale face, which revealed a depth of mournful tenderness that touched even that selfish old man with reverence. It seemed as if Mabel's heart had been given to the flames by his own hands. When all was consumed he turned away like one in a painful dream, and without speaking a word, left the room.

Two hours after, he quitted the house.



CHAPTER LXV.

WHO WAS LINA FRENCH?

James Harrington and Lina left the same roof within a few hours of each other, without warning or explanation. Was it strange that Mabel should be tortured with wild doubts, or that her son should believe the step-brother whom he had looked up to with such honest devotion, and the girl he had loved so truly, domestic conspirators who had been deceiving him all the time?

Poor Ralph! these doubts fell with cruel force on his generous nature. His confidence was all swept away—the best jewel of his life had fallen off. To him, love had no longer the holiness of truth. Household trust—faith in human goodness—all was disturbed. He was wild with indignation, torn with a thousand conflicting feelings; sometimes heart-broken with grief—again, reckless and defiant; then a spirit of bitter retaliation seized upon him. What was Lina, with her gentle affections and pretty reserves, that he should waste a life in regrets for her, while another, ardent, impassioned, and loving him madly, was pining to death for the affection he had thrown away so lavishly for nothing? What, after all, was there to charm more in one woman than another? Lina was false; why should he remain faithful?

These were wild, rash thoughts; but Ralph was young, tortured in his first love, and tempted by an artful, impassioned woman, whose perverse will carried the strength of fate with it.

Still, it was only at times that his heart rose hotly against its old nature. There was more of scorn and rage, mingled with the certainty that Agnes Barker loved him, than of real passion, but it assuaged the humiliation of Lina's falsehood, and the consciousness of her attachment diverted the grief that would otherwise have consumed him. Though maddened by all these conflicting passions, the young man had sought desperately after the lost girl from the moment her absence was discovered on the morning after the storm, but she seemed to have disappeared like a shadow from the earth; for from the hour when she left Ben Benson's boat-house, not a trace of her movements could be found.

For the third time, Ralph went down to the boat-house to question the old sailor, whom he found housed up, as he called it, in a fit of sullen grief, which it required some tact to break in upon.

Ben was sitting in his domicile before a rousing fire, which he now and then stooped to feed with hickory logs, till the whole room was filled with a warm glow of light. So many additions and ornaments had been added to the boat-house, that it took the appearance of a ship's cabin more than anything else. The fire revealed a trap-door in the centre of the room, which answered for a gangway, while coils of rope, carpenters' tools, cans of pitch, and bits of iron, all in their place and ship-shape, as Ben would have said, gave both a busy and maritime look to the premises.

Everything was very comfortable in the boat-house, but Ben kept piling on wood and raking out the coals with an iron bar, as if the heat and light were still insufficient, when in fact he thought nothing of either, but was making desperate efforts to work off the anxieties that had beset him like so many hounds, ever since his interview with Lina.

"What can a feller do now?" he said, looking wistfully up to the models of gun-boats, brigs, and clippers, that occupied the rude shelves and brackets on the wall, as if taking counsel from them. "I have sarched the woods from hill to hill, and nary a sign of her. She 'caint a gone and fell through the ice, for it's friz two feet thick; and, as for running away, or going for to kill herself, it wasn't in the gal to do no sich thing. Ben Benson, you was a brute, beast, and two or three sarpents to boot, not to tell the gal all she wanted to know. You obstinate old wretch, you've gone and done it now, and no mistake. It's as much as I can do to keep from knocking you on the head with a marlin-spike, you sneakin' old sea-dog! What if she was dead now, friz stiff agin a tree, or a lyin' in the bottom of the river, what would you think of yourself, I'd like to know?"

Thus half in muttered breath, half in thought, Ben gave forth the burden of his anxieties, till at last self-reproachful beyond endurance, he seized a fragment of pine wood, and opening his jack-knife with superfluous energy, began to whittle, as if his life depended on sharpening the stick to a point.

He was interrupted by the crunching sound of snow beneath footsteps that came in haste toward the boat-house. Ben cut a deep gash into the wood, and sat motionless, with his hand on the knife, listening.

"It's too heavy—she never trod down the snow-crust like that, poor bird!" and, resuming his work, Ben kicked the shavings he had made into the fire, and flung the mutilated pine after them.

"Is't you, mister Ralph?" said Ben, rising as the door opened, and seating himself moodily on a bench, that his guest might come to the fire. "You look flustered, and out of sorts, but this isn't no place to get ship-shape in. It's awful lonesome here, sin' that night."

"Then, you have heard nothing!"

"No, not a whisper. That fool, Ben Benson, has been sarching and sarching, like an old desarter as he is, but it ain't no sort o' good; the gal may be dead for what he cares—a toasting hisself before a fire, while she—may be Mr. James has hearn something."

"Mr. James Harrington has gone also," answered Ralph, bitterly. "It's no use searching further. They have fled together. James Harrington, the man whom I have looked up to all my life, the saint, the angel; he has disappeared as she did. They cheated me from the beginning. He has taken advantage of his wealth, and she—what chance had a poor fellow like me against his millions? It was hardly worth while to deceive me so shamefully though; but craft is natural to the sex, I believe." There was a struggle between grief and rage in the young man's voice, and while his eye blazed his lips began to quiver.

Ben slowly stooped forward, and resting an elbow on each knee, touched his fore-fingers thoughtfully together, while his eyes, clear and honest as those of a Newfoundland dog, were bent on the young man's face. At last he burst forth.

"Ralph Harrington, I should say, that next to that mule-headed feller, Ben Benson, as isn't worth the husks he sleeps on—you was the consarnedest fool that ever sot hisself up with an opinion. You talk agin wimmen afore the moustachoes are black on your upper lip, because there's something about one on 'em, as you can't make out. Then, there's Mister James, a man as that ere shark Ben Benson ain't afeared to swear by through thick and thin, the most gentlemanliest Harrington as ever drawd breath, you set up to speak again him, it's enough to agrivate a British admiral."

Ralph had scarcely heeded this speech, but stood with one elbow resting upon the rude shelf, that served as a mantelpiece, sullen and thoughtful.

"I was in hopes you would tell me something. Oh! Ben, it seems impossible to believe that fair, young creature so false," he said, at length giving way to the feelings that oppressed him, "what faith can one have in human nature after this?"

"Mister Ralph Harrington, you ain't no sailor, to talk in that ere way. There's many a stout ship as goes down in a storm, with its timbers sound and its masts standing. Then, agin, there's others as give themselves up to the storm, and lead off hither and yon, but get back to their reckoning, and do good sarvice arter all. Wimmen are like ships—some get unrigged—some founder—some go agin wind and weather, right in the teeth of the world, and some drift like poor little boats, without compass or rudder, but yet, the generality cast anchor in deep, clear water at last, and for one wreck, thousands and thousands come in with all sails set—only Mister Ralph, remember this. The craft that ales goes steadily and safe, cuts a still wake; but your leaky vessels makes any amount of whirlpools as they go down. It's only boys," continued Ben, taking the tobacco from his mouth, and casting it indignantly into the fire—"It's only boys as knows nothing, and men as knows too much, that ever speak in this ere wholesale way about wimmen. Ralph, you're young, that's all."

"I am distracted, Ben; Heaven knows how gladly I would believe her blameless, but her manner changed toward me so strangely, she was evidently premeditating this abandonment; but that she should go off—and with him, of all men upon earth. Oh! Ben, what man, not a fool, could persist in his faith, after that."

"I tell you, it wasn't that as driv the gal away. She wanted to know something as I wouldn't tell her. Something more'en Ben Benson reckoned on, was in her mind; she got discouraged because he wouldn't tell her."

"If I'd told her, she'd a been here now." Here Ben covered his face with both hands and cried out, "God forgive me! God forgive me!"



CHAPTER LXVI.

THREATS AND PERSUASIONS.

Directly after James Harrington left the General's room, the waiting-woman Zillah entered cautiously, and with breathless eagerness. She stood some moments partly behind the General's chair, before he regarded her. When he did look up, a faint color swept over his face, and he made a gesture of annoyance.

"You are not pleased to find me here so soon," she said quickly, for impatience had for the moment disturbed the wonderful self-control with which her interviews with General Harrington were invariably conducted. "Is it a sign this woman, who has outraged the name of wife, is to triumph over me always?"

"Zillah!" answered the General, angrily, "my relations with my wife are beyond your interference."

"Your wife!" exclaimed the woman with a fiendish sneer. "You can still call her that!"

"Zillah, be careful. I have permitted you to go in and out of my house in this surreptitious fashion unmolested, from regard to old attachments; but you shall not again interfere in my family arrangements. The charges that you have, I see now, been the means of making against Mrs. Harrington, are groundless. I will not have a word spoken—mark me—against that excellent lady."

"What!" said the woman hoarsely; "what does this mean?"

"It means, Zillah, that I am perfectly convinced not only of Mrs. Harrington's rectitude, but of her entire attachment to myself. As for Mr. James Harrington, his conduct has been unexceptionable—nay, magnanimous. We are a happy and united family, Zillah."

"A happy and united family!" almost shrieked the woman. "And has it all come to this—am I again spurned, again hurled back to the earth—Hagar thrust forth to wander forever and ever with her child in the broad desert—the world. I tell you, General Harrington, this shall not be!"

"Shall not—slave, how dare you?" cried the old man, rising haughtily.

"Slave, slave! Yes, I am your slave, for I love you, my master, love you with a madness this cold white lady never dreamed of. Do not crush me beneath this woman's feet—do not. For years and years I have lived on this one wish, to be your slave again. She, your wife, is faithless, false, cold as marble; put her away—send her forth, as I have been. The same God made us both, and should punish us both alike. I have been tortured long enough; take me home, master, take me home—a servant, a slave, anything; but send this woman from beneath your roof. She has had her life, I have a right to mine! Give it to me—give it to me for my love's sake, for our child's sake!"

The woman fell upon her knees as she spoke; her locked hands were uplifted, and wrung madly together—her eyes were full of wild, passionate tears. She looked, indeed, a Hagar coming back from the desert, where she had left her youth buried.

"Master, master, send her away, send her away!" she pleaded, in a burst of pathetic entreaty. "What has she been to you, that I was not? She is the mother of your child—so am I. She was your wife—I was your slave. She claimed rights, station, wealth, power, and returned nothing. I gave my soul, my being, every breath of my life, every pulse in my heart, and claimed only bonds. You fettered her with flowers—me with iron. I loved these chains, for they bound me to you—they have drawn me to your feet again. I will not give way to that woman a second time!"

The old man had been growing calm amid this passionate appeal. Strong feeling always annoyed him, and the woman seemed actuated by a species of madness, that filled him with repulsion. He turned from her with a look of quiet contempt.

"Why, Zillah, you should go on the stage. These wild paroxysms, half-pathetic, half-demoniac, tell splendidly with the public: a little dash of blasphemy now, and you are perfect. The best society would run wild about you—ladies, most of all, especially if they knew exactly who and what you were, Zillah."

The woman sprang to her feet, white as death; her eyes closing, her lips specked with foam. She attempted to speak, but the words writhed themselves to death on her lips without a sound.

How still intense rage can sometimes appear! The woman stood mute for more than a moment, in which General Harrington held his breath, awed, in spite of himself, by a force of passion he had never witnessed before.

"Zillah," he said at last, half-terrified, "Zillah, control yourself; this rage will injure you. Come, come, let us talk together more reasonably. You know how I dislike these wild flights of temper, and how little good they can effect. Take that hand from your bosom, girl; if you have a poniard there, let it stay sheathed. I do not fear you, at any rate."

"You need not," said the woman, in a hoarse whisper. "I could not strike, even while you were mocking me."

Her hand fell slowly downward as she spoke, leaving the hilt of a dagger just visible under her dress.

The General stepped toward her, took the dagger from her bosom, and cast it contemptuously on the fire.

"Have done with this acting, girl, and talk like a sensible woman, if you have really anything to say."

Zillah smiled scornfully, as he had done, while her eyes followed the dagger to its lodgment in the fire.

"It is the purpose, not the instrument, which is dangerous," she said, with pale self-possession, still speaking in hoarse undertones; "and, in order to reach that, you must clutch here."

Zillah pressed one hand hard on her heart as she spoke, and the old man could see that concentrated passion shook her from head to foot, still as she seemed.

"Zillah, this passion will prevent me ever seeing you again. I am no boy, to be terrified into concessions; as for violence, attempt it, and I will have you dealt with like any other house-breaker. In the North we have heavier chains than you have ever worn. You will find that the slavery which springs from crime, is a reality that you have not yet known. No more threats, then, if you ever hope to see your master again."

"I was wrong," said the woman, standing before him with the downcast look learned in her early bondage. "It was wounded love, not anger, against you, my master, that tortured me into this rash language. I came to tell you of L——of our child; she is very, very ill."

"What, Lina? poor child, no wonder she is heart-broken. Heaven knows I would have kept this miserable secret from her, but for Ralph! Where is she now?"

"In my own house, raving with brain fever!"

"And have you told her all?"

"Yes, and she, too, spurned me—every one repulses and scorns me, while that woman"——

"Hush! Zillah, you are getting fierce again, and that I will not submit to."

"No, no, master, it was grief for my child, not anger," said the woman, checking herself. "She is ill, very ill. The doctor thinks she must die."

"Indeed, I am grieved to hear it. Let her have every care; have a dozen physicians, if it is needful. Poor child—poor child!"

"You love her, then, this daughter of a slave?" said Zillah, with a fierce gleam in her eyes, as if jealous of his very love for her own child.

"Love her? Why she has always been a pet in the house—a beautiful, sweet-tempered creature, whom everyone loved. I think she is even dearer to me than Ralph himself."

Again the woman turned white.

"And you love her so much?"

"Again, Zillah: you are hard to please; but take good care of the child—in a day or two I will come to see her!"

"Indeed, to see her—her only."

"Have done with this paltry childishness, I am tired of it!" answered the General, with authority. "This comes of allowing you a foothold here. Remember I cannot have my privacy intruded on in future by these mysterious visits; they will become known to the family, and Mrs. Harrington may think them a just cause of complaint—a thing above all others to be avoided. I tell you, Zillah, this rash passion, which at your age should be controlled, inconveniences me very much; indeed, as a man of honor, I cannot encourage it farther."

Zillah's lips writhed, as if she were repeating over his last words in the scorn of her heart; but she stood immovable and silent, with her eyes bent on the floor.

"If money is needed for you or Lina, whose future I will liberally provide for, that can at any time be supplied to the extent of your wishes."

"I shall not need your money," answered the woman coldly.

"But you cannot be rich!"

"The master to whom you sold me left his property to be divided between some half dozen slaves, who received their freedom and the legacy together. I am spending mine; when it is gone, I can work."

"Then you reject all help from me?"

"I was your slave, General Harrington—twice bound, first by your laws, again by the will of my own heart, but I am no beggar; even when you loved me, I worked for my own bread."

"I am glad that you are so well provided for: now let this romance come to an end. We are no boy and girl, remember, Zillah; and, though it is very pleasant to feel that one heart at least proves faithful to the end, I cannot, in justice to Mrs. Harrington, admit you under the same roof with herself. Her peace of mind is important to me, very important, and her tranquillity must not be endangered by these wild visits. I will withdraw, now, and give you an opportunity to leave the house; be careful that no one sees you, especially Mrs. Harrington. Adieu! In two or three days, at most, I shall be able to see you and Lina."

The old gentleman waved his hand, in token of a friendly adieu, as he went, leaving his singular visitor standing in the middle of the room, so numbed in feeling or lost in thought, that she seemed unconscious of his departure.

It was more than a minute before the woman lifted her head; then her face was pale, and a deep smouldering purpose burned like fire in the depths of her eyes. She looked around wildly, as if searching for the man who had just left the room; then her recollection seemed to come back, and she went up to the table, examining everything upon it with eager haste. The journal was no longer there, but in its place she found a folded paper placed in a small portfolio, which bore the General's initials.

The paper shook in her hands as she unfolded it, for all her former agitation had come back; and, in her haste to read, the fire seemed to leap from her black eyes over the writing. It was the life-deed which had just passed between General Harrington and his son-in-law.

The woman laughed as she folded up the paper—a laugh of such bitter mockery that it started even herself, as if some other person had been reviling her.

"And has it ended in this, after years of plotting and privations that would have killed a common person? Have I ended in binding them more firmly together. This accounts for his solicitude for her welfare. This is why these visits of mine trouble him. They might break the compact which secures repose and reputation to Mabel Harrington, for so much money—and she is to triumph a second time! I am nothing—a weed, a bit of miserable night-shade that has poison in it, and nothing more."

As she muttered over these thoughts, more and more slowly, the woman folded her arms, and stood immovable for several minutes; her brow grew dark as midnight, and a strange, settled expression came up to her face, as if the poison she had just spoken of were diffusing itself through her entire system. At last she heard steps approaching the library, and hurried away through the disused entrance.



CHAPTER LXVII.

THE EVENING RIDE.

As Ralph Harrington was returning from Benson's cabin one night, he met Agnes Barker. It was yet early in the evening, but the sharp, frosty air rendered it singular that a young girl should have ventured into the cold, without some important object to urge her forth. Ralph had been touched, and a good deal subdued, by his conversation with Ben; and he would gladly have avoided this rencontre with the governess, who invariably left him excited and wretched with fresh doubts whenever he conversed with her. But Agnes came directly towards him, and he remarked that her manner of walking was excited, and like that of a person who had some important object to pursue.

"Mr. Ralph Harrington, you have been unjust to me. When I told you that Lina French was still in the neighborhood quietly domesticated, where your saintly step-brother could visit her at will, you disbelieved me, and cast discredit on my word. Since then, James Harrington has disappeared mysteriously as she did. I now say that he, also, is in the city, making preparations to take the girl South; in a few days she will leave it with him."

"Why should he take this course, Miss Barker, if it is true? My brother was wealthy, free, and has been for years his own master. If he loved Lina, there was no need of concealment—nothing but my own mad passion stood in the way, and Heaven knows that I was ready to take the heart from my bosom, could that have made him or her happier. There is a mystery in all this that I cannot fathom. My brother, so noble, so more than generous, could not have lived the life he has, to prove this traitor to himself and us at last."

"Then you still have faith in this girl?"

"I will not believe so ill of her as you seem to desire, until some farther explanation is had. She may love my brother, and he, I cannot well understand how any man could help loving her, for she was the purest, the most lovely character I ever knew."

"She was that character, it is well you say was," answered Agnes, with a dash of scorn in her voice; "for I am about to offer you proof of what she is."

Ralph turned white, and recoiled a step back. "Proof—proof, have you heard something, then?"

"Yes, I have heard from Miss Lina—she has sent for me. A private message, of which no one is to be informed."

"And, when are you going?—where is she now?" inquired Ralph, in breathless astonishment.

"Now," answered Agnes. "She has sent a conveyance from the city, which waits at a curve of the road. I may not return to-night—may never return. My occupation here is gone, and no one will regret me. I came unloved, and I go away the stranger I was then!"

It was dark, and Ralph could not see her face distinctly, but the sound of tears was in her voice.

"Not so—not so!" said he, impetuously. "You will be regretted—we, at least, are not strangers; I will go with you. If this girl is in the city, I will convince myself of the fact; then, if your suspicions were correct, she shall never occupy a thought of mine while I have existence."

"Go with me if you wish," said Agnes, mournfully; "it will be a few moments taken from the desolation of life that must follow; after that I shall be alone."

Ralph scarcely heeded her; a wild desire to see Lina, and convince himself of her falsehood, drove all other thoughts from his mind; but the words and voice which bespoke so much tender sorrow, were remembered afterward.

"Come, let us begone at once," he said, folding his paletot closely, and drawing her arm through his. "I thank Heaven this suspense will be ended to-morrow. I shall be a man again."

Agnes leaned heavily on his arm; the deep snow made walking difficult, and this was her excuse. Ralph only noticed it to lend her assistance; his thoughts ran wildly toward Lina French, the gentle, kind-hearted girl who had been so long a portion of his own life, and whose unworthiness he could not yet wholly realize.

A two-horse sleigh, crowded with buffalo robes, evidently the equipage of some wealthy establishment, stood on the highway where it swept down to General Harrington's mansion. Ralph helped his companion in, and they dashed off noiselessly as lightning, and almost as swift.

No word was spoken between the two during the ride. Agnes shivered now and then, as if with cold, and this aroused Ralph for an instant from the painful reverie into which he had fallen; but he only drew the fur robes more closely about her, and sunk into perfect unconsciousness of her presence once more. Thus, in profound silence they reached the city, and dashing onward, they drew up before the house to which Lina had been conveyed only a few weeks before.

"This is the house," said Agnes, pushing the fur robes from around her; and, without waiting for help, she sprang out, and mounted the steps just as the door was opened by some one from within. A single word passed between her and the servant, just as Ralph reached her side; but he only heard her inquiring in the ordinary way for the young lady who had just taken up her residence there.

The door was flung wide open, as if she had been expected, and the servant led the way into what, in the dim light, seemed a small drawing-room. The bland, warm atmosphere that filled this room would have been most welcome, under other circumstances, after the severe cold of the night; but now Ralph was hardly conscious either of the warmth, or an atmosphere of blooming plants which floated luxuriously around him. Rich jets of gas burned like fairy beads in the lower end of the room, dimly revealing the small conservatory from which this fragrance came, and affording a glimpse here and there of rich silk hangings and pictures upon the wall, whose gorgeousness forced itself upon the observation even in that dim twilight.

Ralph looked around with surprise; the place was so unlike anything he had expected to find, that for the moment he lost sight of the object of his coming. All at once he became conscious of a third presence—a soft flutter of garments, and the movement of some person advancing towards that portion of the room in which those tiny stars seemed burning. Directly a glow of light burst over the whole apartment. The stars had broken into brilliant jets of flame, and a tent of blossoms rose before him, like some fairy nook flooded with radiance.

Half-way between this background of plants and the place he occupied, stood a female, so gorgeously attired and so singular in her whole appearance, that the young man uttered an exclamation of surprise, which was answered by an angry start and an abrupt movement of the woman, who was evidently both astonished and displeased by his presence there.

"What is this?" she said, haughtily; "I gave no orders for the admission of strangers here."

Before Ralph could speak, Agnes Barker came forward, and stood for a moment looking steadily in the woman's face, thus concentrating her entire attention on herself.

"Madam, if you are the mistress of this house," she said, with great self-possession, "you will not consider this an intrusion, for it must have been with your knowledge that I was sent for to attend Miss French—the young lady who has lately taken up her residence here."

The woman stood for a moment as if struck dumb with astonishment, then a faint smile dawned on her mouth, which was at once displaced by angry glances cast upon Ralph Harrington.

"And this young gentleman, certainly he was not sent for?"

Again Agnes interrupted the explanation Ralph was ready to give.

"Your message, madam, was a strange one, and reached me after dark. Surely a young girl coming so far from home, might be expected to bring an escort."

"Besides," said Ralph, impetuously, "if Lina—if Miss French is here, I have a better right to see her than any one else; and if she is in this house, I must and will know her reasons for coming here."

"The young lady is in her room, and will receive no one at this time of night," answered the woman, firmly; "if you wish to see her, let it be at some more proper hour."

"But I, madam, have been summoned here by Miss French herself!" said Agnes, with that firmness which had marked her conduct since she entered the house. "Permit me to desire that you lead me to her room."

The woman looked keenly in her face a moment, as if about to contest the wish, but some new thought seemed to spring up; and answering abruptly, "Come, then," she left the room.



CHAPTER LXVIII.

RALPH FINDS LINA.

Ralph had been alone only a moment when Agnes came back, apparently in breathless haste.

"Be ready," she whispered, "follow me after a moment—the room is dark next to hers; be cautious and you can both see and hear what passes."

Before he could accept or reject her proposition, she was gone.

"It is but right," he reflected, controlling the first honorable impulse which revolted at this secret method of gaining information; "there is some mystery which can never be fathomed by straight-forward questions. I will not listen meanly; but proper or not, if Lina French is in this house I will speak with her!"

Obeying the impulse urged by these thoughts, he passed through the half open door, and following Agnes by the rustle of her dress, paused in the chamber she had designated, reluctant to enter the room beyond; for he saw at a glance that the bed which stood at one end was occupied. A white hand fell over the side, working nervously among the folds of the counterpane, as if the person who lay there was awake and ill at ease.

Breathless with emotions which crowded fast and painfully upon him, the young man sunk into a chair, and covering his face with both hands, strove thus to gain some portion of self-control; but the first tone of Lina's voice set him to trembling from head to foot, and it was a moment before he could see objects distinctly enough to recognize her in her white robe and among those snowy pillows.

"So you have come at last," she said, rising on one elbow and holding out her hand to Agnes, with a look of eager delight, which flushed her cheeks and kindled her blue eyes with a wild brilliancy the young man had never seen in them before; "tell me, oh, tell me how they all are—my dear, dear mamma, is she well? does she pine about my absence—does she talk of me?"

"Mrs. Harrington is grieved and very anxious," said Agnes Barker, gently, "why did you leave them so abruptly, Miss French?"

"I could not help leaving them. It was time. My presence there was sure to bring trouble and—and—don't ask me about it. Let me rest. Don't you understand that it has nearly killed me. It was great love that drove me away—nothing else. Still I did not mean to go just then. A few days would not have made so much difference, and they would have been heaven to me; oh, such heaven, such heaven, you cannot guess how precious every moment was at the last!"

"But why did you send for me?" questioned Agnes, gently. "Is it that you wish to go back?"

"Go back!" cried the poor girl, starting up with a flush of wild delight that faded away in an instant; "oh why did you say this cruel thing? It is too late—it is impossible; I can never go back, never, never, never!"

Lina fell back upon her pillows, and began to moan piteously, but made a brave attempt to stifle her sobs on the pillow.

"No, no, I did not send to you with that hope, only it was so hard to sit in this room day after day and hear nothing—not even that they hated me. I think that would have been better than this dull uncertainty. I only wanted to hear just one little word; my poor heart has asked for it so long, and now you tell me nothing."

"What can I tell you except that your flight has filled the whole household with grief and consternation."