For an hour or more, after the rest had scattered to their respective duties, she was left alone. Then Mrs. Perkin sent for her.

When she entered her room, she found her occupied with the cook, and was allowed to stand unnoticed.

"When shall I be able to see Mrs. Redmain, ma'am?" she asked, when the cook at length turned to go.

"Wait," rejoined Mrs. Perkin, with a quiet dignity, well copied, "until you are addressed, young woman."—Then first casting a glance at her, and perhaps perceiving on her countenance a glimmer of the amusement Mary felt, she began to gather a more correct suspicion of the sort of being she might possibly be, and hastily added, "Pray, take a seat."

The idea of making a blunder was unendurable to Mrs. Perkin, and she was most unwilling to believe she had done so; but, even if she had, to show that she knew it would only be to render it the more difficult to recover her pride of place. An involuntary twinkle about the corners of Mary's mouth made her hasten to answer her question.

"I am sorry," she said, "that I can give you no prospect of an interview with Mrs. Redmain before three o'clock. She will very likely not be out of her room before one.—I suppose you saw her at Durnmelling?"

"Yes, ma'am," answered Mary, "—and at Testbridge."

It kept growing on the housekeeper that she had made a mistake— though to what extent she sought in vain to determine.

"You will find it rather wearisome waiting," she said next; "— would you not like to help me with my work?"

Already she had the sunflowers under her creative hands.

"I should be very glad—if I can do it well enough to please you, ma'am," answered Mary. "But," she added, "would you kindly see that Mrs. Redmain is told, as soon as she wakes, that I am here?"

"Oblige me by ringing the bell," said Mrs. Perkin.—"Send Mrs. Folter here."'

A rather cross-looking, red-faced, thin woman appeared, whom she requested to let her mistress know, as soon as was proper, that there was a young person in the house who said she had come from Testbridge by appointment to see her.

"Yes, ma'am," said Folter, with a supercilious yet familiar nod to Mary; "I'll take care she knows."

Mary passed what would have been a dreary morning to one dependent on her company. It was quite three o'clock when she was at length summoned to Mrs. Redmain's boudoir. Folter, who was her guide thither, lingered, in the soft closing of the door, long enough to learn that her mistress received the young person with a kiss—almost as much to Mary's surprise as Folter's annoyance, which annoyance partly to relieve, partly to pass on to Mrs. Perkin, whose reception of Mary she had learned, Folter hastened to report the fact, and succeeded thereby in occasioning no small uneasiness in the bosom of the housekeeper, who was almost as much afraid of her mistress as the other servants were of herself. Some time she spent in expectant trepidation, but gradually, as nothing came of it, calmed her fears, and concluded that her behavior to Mary had been quite correct, seeing the girl had made it no ground of complaint.

But, although Hesper, being at the moment in tolerable spirits, in reaction from her depression of the day before, received Mary with a kiss, she did not ask her a question about her journey, or as to how she had spent the night. She was there, and looking all right, and that was enough. On the other hand, she did proceed to have her at once properly settled.

The little room appointed her looked upon a small court or yard, and was dark, but otherwise very comfortable. As soon as she was left to herself, she opened her boxes, put her things away in drawers and wardrobe, arranged her books within easy reach of the low chair Hesper had sent for from the drawing-room for her, and sat down to read a little, brood a little, and build a few castles in the air, more lovely than evanescent: no other house is so like its builder as this sort of castle.

About eight o'clock, Folter summoned her to go to Mrs. Redmain. By this time she was tired: she was accustomed to tea in the afternoon, and since her dinner with the housekeeper she had had nothing.

She found Mrs. Redmain dressed for the evening. As soon as Mary entered, she dismissed Folter.

"I am going out to dinner," she said. "Are you quite comfortable?"

"I am rather cold, and should like some tea," said Mary.

"My poor girl! have you had no tea?" said Hesper, with some concern, and more annoyance. "You are looking quite pale, I see! When did you have anything to eat?"

"I had a good dinner at one o'clock," replied Mary, with a rather weary smile.

"This is dreadful!" said Hesper. "What can the servants be about!"

"And, please, may I have a little fire?" begged Mary.

"Certainly," replied Hesper, knitting her brows with a look of slight anguish. "Is it possible you have been sitting all day without one? Why did you not ring the bell?" She took one of her hands. "You are frozen!" she said.

"Oh, no!" answered Mary; "I am far from that. You see nobody knows yet what to do with me.—You hardly know yourself," she added, with a merry look. "But, if you wouldn't mind telling Mrs. Perkin where you wish me to have my meals, that would put it all right, I think."

"Very well," said Hesper, in a tone that for her was sharp. "Will you ring the bell?"

She sent for the housekeeper, who presently appeared—lank and tall, with her head on one side like a lamp-post in distress, but calm and prepared—a dumb fortress, with a live garrison.

"I wish you, Mrs. Perkin, to arrange with Miss Marston about her meals."

"Yes, ma'am," answered Mrs. Perkin, with sedatest utterance.

"Mrs. Perkin," said Mary, "I don't want to be troublesome; tell me what will suit you best."

But Mrs. Perkin did not even look at her; standing straight as a rush, she kept her eyes on her mistress.

"Do you desire, ma'am, that Miss Marston should have her meals in the housekeeper's room?" she asked.

"That must be as Miss Marston pleases," answered Hesper. "If she prefer them in her own, you will see they are properly sent up."

"Very well, ma'am!—Then I wait Miss Marston's orders," said Mrs. Perkin, and turned to leave the room. But, when her mistress spoke again, she turned again and stood. It was Mary, however, whom Hesper addressed.

"Mary," she said, apparently foreboding worse from the tone of the housekeeper's obedience than from her occurred neglect, "when I am alone, you shall take your meals with me; and when I have any one with me, Mrs. Perkin will see that they are sent to your room. We will settle it so."

"Thank you," said Mary.

"Very well, ma'am," said Mrs. Perkin.

"Send Miss Marston some tea directly," said Hesper.

Scarcely was Mrs. Perkin gone when the brougham was announced. Mary returned to her room, and in a little while tea, with thin bread and butter in limited quantity, was brought her. But it was brought by Jemima, whose face wore a cheerful smile over the tray she carried: she, at least, did not grudge Mary her superior place in the household.

"Do you think, Jemima," asked Mary, "you could manage to answer my bell when I ring?"

"I should only be too glad, miss; it would be nothing but a pleasure to me; and I'd jump to it if I was in the way; but if I was up stairs, which this house ain't a place to hear bells in, sure I am nobody would let me know as you was a-ringin'; and if you was to think as how I was giving of myself airs, like some people not far out of this square, I should be both sorry and ashamed—an' that's more'n I'd say for my place to Mrs. Perkin, miss."

"You needn't be afraid of that, Jemima," returned Mary. "If you don't answer when I ring, I shall know, as well as if you told me, that you either don't hear or can't come at the moment. I sha'n't be exacting."

"Don't you be afeared to ring, miss; I'll answer your bell as often as I hear it."

"Could you bring me a loaf? I have had nothing since Mrs. Perkin's dinner; and this bread and butter is rather too delicately cut," said Mary.

"Laws, miss, you must be nigh clemmed!" said the girl; and, hastening away, she soon returned with a loaf, and butter, and a pot of marmalade sent by the cook, who was only too glad to open a safety-valve to her pleasure at the discomfiture of Mrs. Perkin.

"When would you like your breakfast, miss?" asked Jemima, as she removed the tea-things.

"Any time convenient," replied Mary.

"It's much the same to me, miss, so it's not before there's bilin' water. You'll have it in bed, miss?"

"No, thank you. I never do."

"You'd better, miss."

"I could not think of it."

"It makes no more trouble—less, miss, than if I had to get it when the room-breakfast was on. I've got to get the things together anyhow; and why shouldn't you have it as well as Mrs. Perkin, or that ill-tempered cockatoo, Mrs. Folter? You're a lady, and that's more'n can be said for either of them—justly, that is."

"You don't mean," said Mary, surprised out of her discretion, "that the housekeeper and the lady's-maid have breakfast in bed?"

"It's every blessed mornin' as I've got to take it up to 'em, miss, upon my word of honor, with a soft-biled egg, or a box o' sardines, new-opened, or a slice o' breakfast bacon, streaky. An' I do not think as it belongs proper to my place; only you see, miss, the kitchen-maid has got to do it for the cook, an' if I don't, who is there? It's not them would let the scullery-maid come near them in their beds."

"Does Mrs. Perkin know that the cook and the lady's-maid have it as well as herself?"

"Not she, miss; she'd soon make their coffee too 'ot! She's the only lady down stairs—she is! No more don't Mrs. Folter know as the cook has hers, only, if she did, it wouldn't make no differ, for she daren't tell. And cook, to be sure, it ain't her breakfast, only a cup o' tea an' a bit o' toast, to get her heart up first."

"Well," said Mary, "I certainly shall not add another to the breakfasts in bed. But I must trouble you all the same to bring it me here. I will make my bed, and do out the room myself, if you will come and finish it off for me."

"Oh, no, indeed, miss, you mustn't do that! Think what they'd say of you down stairs! They'd despise you downright!"

"I shall do it, Jemima. If they were servants of the right sort, I should like to have their good opinion, and they would think all the more of me for doing my share; as it is, I should count it a disgrace to care a straw, what they thought. We must do our work, and not mind what people say."

"Yes, miss, that's what my mother used to say to my father, when he wouldn't be reasonable. But I must go, miss, or I shall catch it for gossiping with you—that's what she'll call it."

When Jemima was gone, Mary fell a-thinking afresh. It was all very well, she said to herself, to talk about doing her work, but here she was with scarce a shadow of an idea what her work was! Had any work been given her to do in this house? Had she presumed in coming—anticipated the guidance of Providence, and was she therefore now where she had no right to be? She could not tell; but, anyhow, here she was, and no one could be anywhere without the fact involving its own duty. Even if she had put herself there, and was to blame for being there, that did not free her from the obligations of the position, and she was willing to do whatever should now be given her to do. God was not a hard master; if she had made a mistake, he would pardon her, and either give her work here, where she found herself, or send her elsewhere. I need not say that thinking was not all her care; for she thought in the presence of Him who, because he is always setting our wrong things right, is called God our Saviour.



CHAPTER XXVII.

MR. AND MRS. HELMER

The next morning, Mary set out to find Letty, from whom, as I have said, she had heard but twice since her marriage. Mary had written again about a month ago, but had had no reply. The sad fact was, that, ever since she left Testbridge, Letty, for a long time, without knowing it, had been going down hill. There have been many whose earnestness has vanished with the presence of those whose influence awoke it. Letty's better self seemed to have remained behind with Mary; and not even if he had been as good as she thought him, could Tom himself have made up to her for the loss of such a friend.

But Letty had not found marriage at all the grand thing she had expected. With the faithfulness of a woman, however, she attributed her disappointment to something inherent in marriage, nowise affecting the man whom marriage had made her husband.

That he might be near the center to which what little work he did gravitated, Tom had taken a lodging in a noisy street, as unlike all that Letty had been accustomed to as anything London, except in its viler parts, could afford. Never a green thing was to be looked upon in any direction. Not a sweet sound was to be heard.

The sun, at this time of the year, was seldom to be seen in London anywhere; and in Lydgate Street, even when there was no fog, it was but askance, and for a brief portion of the day, that he shone upon that side where stood their dusty windows. And then the noise!—a ceaseless torrent of sounds, of stony sounds, of iron sounds, of grinding sounds, of clashing sounds, of yells and cries—of all deafening and unpoetic discords! Letty had not much poetry in her, and needed what could be had from the outside so much the more. It is the people of a land without springs that must have cisterns. It is the poetic people without poetry that pant and pine for the country. When such get hold of a poet, they expect him to talk poetry, or, at least, to talk about poetry! I fancy poets do not read much poetry, and except to their peers do not often care to talk about it. But to one like Letty, however little she may understand or even be aware of the need, the poetic is as necessary as rain in summer; while, to one so little skilled in the finding of it, there was none visible, audible, or perceptible about her—except, indeed, what, of poorest sort for her uses, she might discover bottled in some circulating library: there was one—blessed proximity!—within ten minutes' walk of her.

Once a week or so, some weeks oftener, Tom would take her to the play, and that was, indeed, a happiness—not because of the pleasure of the play only or chiefly, though that was great, but in the main because she had Tom beside her all the time, and mixed up Tom with the play, and the play with Tom.

Alas! Tom was not half so dependent upon her, neither derived half so much pleasure from her company. Some of his evenings every week he spent at houses where those who received him had not the faintest idea whether he had a wife or not, and cared as little, for it would have made no difference: they would not have invited her. Small, silly, conceited Tom, regarding himself as a somebody, was more than content to be asked to such people's houses. He thought he went as a lion, whereas it was merely as a jackal: so great is the love of some for wild beasts in general, that they even think something of jackals. He was aware of no insult to himself in asking him whether as a lion or any other wild beast, nor of any to his wife and himself together in not asking her with him. While she sat in her dreary lodging, dingily clad and lonely, Tom, dressed in the height of the fashion, would be strolling about grand rooms, now exchanging a flying shot of recognition, now pausing to pay a compliment to this lady on her singing, to that on her verses, to a third, where he dared, on her dress; for good-natured Tom was profuse of compliments, not without a degree and kind of honesty in them; now singing one of his own songs to the accompaniment of some gracious goddess, now accompanying the same or some other gracious goddess as she sang —for Tom could do that well enough for people without a conscience in their music; now in the corner of a conservatory, now in a cozy little third room behind a back drawing-room, talking nonsense with some lady foolish enough to be amused with his folly. Tom meant no harm and did not do much—was only a human butterfly, amusing himself with other creatures of a day, who have no notion that death can not kill them, or they might perhaps be more miserable than they are. They think, if they think at all, that it is life, strong in them, that makes them forget death; whereas, in truth, it is death, strong in them, that makes them forget life. Like a hummingbird, all sparkle and flash, Tom flitted through the tropical delights of such society as his "uncommon good luck" had gained him admission to, forming many an evanescent friendship, and taking many a graceful liberty for which his pleasant looks, confident manners, and free carriage were his indemnity—for Tom seemed to have been born to show what a nice sort of a person a fool, well put together, may be—with his high-bred air, and his ready replies, for he had also a little of that social element, once highly valued, now less countenanced, and rare—I mean wit.

He had, indeed, plenty of all sorts of brains; but no amount of talent could reveal to him the reason or the meaning of the fact that wedded life was less interesting than courtship; for the former, the reason lay in himself, and of himself proper he knew, as I have said, next to nothing; while the latter, the meaning of the fact, is profound as eternity. He had no notion that, when he married, his life was thereby, in a lofty and blessed sense, forfeit; that, to save his wife's life, he must yield his own, she doing the same for him—for God himself can save no other way. But the notion of any saving, or the need of it, was far from Tom; nor had Letty, for her part, any thought of it either, except from the tyranny of her aunt. Not the less, in truth, did they both want saving—very much saving—before life could be to either of them a good thing. It is only its inborn possibility of and divine tendency toward blossoming that constitute life a good thing. Life's blossom is its salvation, its redemption, the justification of its existence—and is a thing far off with most of us. For Tom, his highest notion of life was to be recognized by the world for that which he had chosen as his idea of himself —to have the reviews allow him a poet, not grudgingly, nor with abatement of any sort, but recognizing him as the genius he must contrive to believe himself, or "perish in" his "self-contempt." Then would he live and die in the blessed assurance that his name would be for over on the lips and in the hearts of that idol of fools they call posterity-divinity as vague as the old gray Fate, and less noble, inasmuch as it is but the supposed concave whence is to rebound the man's own opinion of himself.

While jewelly Tom was idling away time which yet could hardly be called precious, his little brown wife, as I have said, sat at home—such home as a lodging can be for a wife whose husband finds his interest mainly outside of it—inquired after by nobody, thought of by nobody, hardly even taken up by her own poor, weary self; now trying in vain after interest in the feeble trash she was reading; now getting into the story for the last half of a chapter, to find herself, when the scene changed at the next, as far out and away and lost as ever; now dropping the book on her knee, to sit musing—if, indeed, such poor mental vagaries as hers can be called even musing!—ignorant what was the matter with her, hardly knowing that anything was the matter, and yet pining morally, spiritually, and psychically; now wondering when Tom would be home; now trying to congratulate herself on his being such a favorite, and thinking what an honor it was to a poor country girl like her to be the wife of a man so much courted by the best society—for she never doubted that the people to whose houses Tom went desired his company from admiration of his writings. She had not an idea that never a soul of them or of their guests cared a straw about what he wrote— except, indeed, here and there, a young lady in her first season, who thought it a grand thing to know an author, as poor Letty thought it a grand thing to be the wife of one. Hail to the coming time when, those who write books outnumbering those who do not, a man will be thought no more of because he can write than because he can sit a horse or brew beer! In that happy time the true writer will be neither an atom the more regarded nor disregarded; he will only be less troubled with birthday books, requests for autographs, and such-like irritating attentions. From that time, also, it may be, the number of writers will begin to diminish; for then, it is to be hoped, men will begin to see that it is better to do the inferior thing well than the superior thing after a middling fashion. The man who would not rather be a good shoemaker than a middling author would be no honor to the shoemakers, and can hardly be any to the authors. I have the comfort that in this all authors will agree with me, for which of us is now able to see himself middling? Honorable above all honor that authorship can give is he who can.

It was through some of his old college friends that Tom had thus easily stepped into the literary profession. They were young men with money and friends to back them, who, having taken to literature as soon as they chipped the university shell, were already in the full swing of periodical production, when Tom, to quote two rather contradictory utterances of his mother, ruined his own prospects and made Letty's fortune by marrying her. I can not say, however, that they had found him remunerative employment. The best they had done for him was to bring him into such a half sort of connection with a certain weekly paper that now and then he got something printed in it, and now and then, with the joke of acknowledging an obligation irremunerable, the editor would hand him what he called an honorarium, but what in reality was a five-pound note. When such an event occurred, Tom would feel his bosom swell with the imagined dignity of supporting a family by literary labor, and, forgetful of the sparseness of his mother's doles, who delighted to make the young couple feel the bitterness of dependence, would immediately, on the strength of it, invite his friends to supper—not at the lodging where Letty sat lonely, but at some tavern frequented by people of the craft. It was at such times, and in the company of men certainly not better than himself, that Tom's hopes were brightest, and his confidence greatest: therefore such seasons were those of his highest bliss. Especially, when his sensitive but poor imagination was stimulated from the nerve-side of the brain, was Tom in his glory; and it was not the "few glasses of champagne," of which he talked so airily, that had all the honor of crowning him king of fate and poet of the world. Long after midnight, upon such and many other occasions, would he and his companions sit laughing and jesting and drinking, some saying witty things, and all of them foolish things and worse; inventing stories apropos of the foibles of friends, and relating anecdotes which grew more and more irreverent to God and women as the night advanced, and the wine gained power, and the shame-faced angels of their true selves, made in the image of God, withdrew into the dark; until at last, between night and morning, Tom would reel gracefully home, using all the power of his will—the best use to which it ever was put—to subdue the drunkenness of which, even in its embrace, he had the lingering honor to be ashamed, that he might face his wife with the appearance of the gentleman he was anxious she should continue to consider him.

It was an unhappy thing for Tom that his mother, having persuaded her dying husband, "for Tom's sake," to leave the money in her power, should not now have carried her tyranny further, and refused him money altogether. He would then have been compelled to work harder, and to use what he made in procuring the necessaries of life. There might have been some hope for him then. As it was, his profession was the mere grasping after the honor of a workman without the doing of the work; while the little he gained by it was, at the same time, more than enough to foster the self-deception that he did something in the world. With the money he gave her, which was never more than a part of what his mother sent him, Letty had much ado to make both ends meet; and, while he ran in debt to his tailor and bootmaker, she never had anything new to wear. She did sometimes wish he would take her out with him a little oftener of an evening; for sometimes she felt so lonely as to be quite unable to amuse herself: her resources were not many in her position, and fewer still in herself; but she always reflected that he could not afford it, and it was long ere she began to have any doubt or uneasiness about him—long before she began even to imagine it might be well if he spent his evenings with her, or, at least, in other ways and other company than he did. When first such a thought presented itself, she banished it as a disgrace to herself and an insult to him. But it was no wonder if she found marriage dull, poor child!—after such expectations, too, from her Tom!

What a pity it seems to our purblind eyes that so many girls should be married before they are women! The woman comes at length, and finds she is forestalled—that the prostrate and mutilated Dagon of a girl's divinity is all that is left her to do the best with she can! But, thank God, in the faithfully accepted and encountered responsibility, the woman must at length become aware that she has under her feet an ascending stair by which to climb to the woman of the divine ideal.

There was at present, however, nothing to be called thought in the mind of Letty. She had even lost much of what faculty of thinking had been developed in her by the care of Cousin Godfrey. That had speedily followed the decay of the aspiration kindled in her by Mary. Her whole life now—as much of it, that is, as was awake—was Tom, and only Tom. Her whole day was but the continuous and little varied hope of his presence. Most of the time she had a book in her hands, but ever again book and hands would sink into her lap, and she would sit staring before her at nothing. She was not unhappy, she was only not happy. At first it was a speechless delight to have as many novels as she pleased, and she thought Tom the very prince of bounty in not merely permitting her to read them, but bringing them to her, one after the other, sometimes two at once, in spendthrift profusion. The first thing that made her aware she was not quite happy was the discovery that novels were losing their charm, that they were not sufficient to make her day pass, that they were only dessert, and she had no dinner. When it came to difficulty in going on with a new one long enough to get interested in it, she sighed heavily, and began to think that perhaps life was rather a dreary thing— at least considerably diluted with the unsatisfactory. How many of my readers feel the same! How few of them will recognize that the state of things would indeed be desperate were it otherwise! How many would go on and on being only butterflies, but for life's dismay! And who would choose to be a butterfly, even if life and summer and the flowers were to last for ever!

"I would," I fancy this and that reader saying.

"Then," I answer, "the only argument you are equal to, is the fact that life nor summer nor the flowers do last for ever."

"I suppose I am made a butterfly," do you say? "seeing I prefer to be one."

"Ah! do you say so, indeed? Then you begin to excuse yourself, and what does that mean? It means that you are no butterfly, for a butterfly—no, nor an angel in heaven—could never begin excusing the law of its existence. Butterfly-brother, the hail will be upon you."

I may not then pity Letty that she had to discover that novels taken alone serve one much as sweetmeats ad libitum do children, nor that she had to prove that life has in it that spiritual quinine, precious because bitter, whose part it is to wake the higher hunger.

Tom talked of himself as on the staff of "The Firefly"—such was the name of the newspaper whose editor sometimes paid him—a weekly of great pretense, which took upon itself the mystery of things, as if it were God's spy. It was popular in a way, chiefly in fashionable circles. As regarded the opinions it promulgated, I never heard one, who understood the particular question at any time handled, say it was correct. Its writers were mostly young men, and their passion was to say clever things. If a friend's book came in their way, it was treated worse or better than that of a stranger, but with impartial disregard for truth in either case; yet many were the authors who would go up endless back stairs to secure from that paper a flattering criticism, and then be as proud of it as if it had been the genuine and unsought utterance of a true man's conviction; and many were the men, immeasurably the superiors of the reviewers, and in a general way acquainted with their character, who would accept as conclusive upon the merits of a book the opinions they gave, nor ever question a mode of quotation by which a book was made to show itself whatever the reviewer chose to call it. A scandalous rumor of any kind, especially from the region styled "high life," often false, and always incorrect, was the delight both of the paper and of its readers; and the interest it thus awoke, united to the fear it thus caused, was mainly what procured for such as were known to be employed upon it the entree of houses where, if they had had a private existence only, their faces would never have been seen. But, to do Tom justice, he wrote nothing of this sort: he was neither ill-natured nor experienced enough for that department; what he did write was clever, shallow sketches of that same society into whose charmed precincts he was but so lately a comer that much was to him interesting which had long ceased to be observed by eyes turned horny with the glare of the world's footlights; and, while these sketches pleased the young people especially, even their jaded elders enjoyed the sparkling reflex of what they called life, as seen by an outsider; for they were thereby enabled to feel for a moment a slight interest in themselves objectively, along with a galvanized sense of existence as the producers of history. These sketches did more for the paper than the editor was willing to know or acknowledge.

But "The Firefly" produced also a little art on its own account— not always very original, but, at least, not a sucking of life from the labor of others, as is most of that parasitic thing miscalled criticism. In this branch Tom had a share, in the shape of verse. A ready faculty was his, but one seldom roused by immediate interest, and never by insight. It was not things themselves, but the reflection of things in the art of others, that moved him to produce. Coleridge, I think, says of Dryden, that he took fire with the running of his own wheels: so did Tom; but it was the running of the wheels of others that set his wheels running. He was like some young preachers who spend a part of the Saturday in reading this or that author, in order to get up the mental condition favorable to preaching on the Sunday. He was really fond of poetry; delighted in the study of its external elements for the sake of his craft; possessed not only a good but cultivated ear for verse, which is a rare thing out of the craft; had true pleasure in a fine phrase, in a strong or brilliant word; last and chief, had a special faculty for imitation; from which gifts, graces, and acquirements, it came, that he could write almost in any style that moved him—so far, at least, as to remind one who knew it, of that style; and that every now and then appeared verses of his in "The Firefly."

As often as this took place, Letty was in the third heaven of delight. For was not Tom's poetry unquestionably superior to anything else the age could produce? was the poetry Cousin Godfrey made her read once to be compared to Tom's? and was not Tom her own husband? Happy woman she!

But, by the time at which my narrative has arrived, the first mist of a coming fog had begun to gather faintly dim in her heart. When Tom would come home happy, but talk perplexingly; when he would drop asleep in the middle of a story she could make nothing of; when he would burst out and go on laughing, and refuse to explain the motive—how was she to avoid the conclusion forced upon her, that he had taken too much strong drink? and, when she noted that this condition reappeared at shorter and shorter intervals, might she not well begin to be frightened, and to feel, what she dared not allow, that she was being gradually left alone—that Tom had struck into a diverging path, and they were slowing parting miles from each other?



CHAPTER XXVIII.

MARY AKD LETTY.

When her landlady announced a visitor, Letty, not having yet one friend in London, could not think who it should be. When Mary entered, she sprang to her feet and stood staring: what with being so much in the house, and seeing so few people, the poor girl had, I think, grown a little stupid. But, when the fact of Mary's presence cleared itself to her, she rushed forward with a cry, fell into her arms, and burst out weeping. Mary held her fast until she had a little come to herself, then, pushing her gently away to the length of her arms, looked at her.

She was not a sight to make one happy. She was no longer the plump, fresh girl that used to go singing about; nor was she merely thin and pale, she looked unhealthy. Things could not be going well with her. Had her dress been only disordered, that might have been accidental, but it looked neglected—was not merely dingy, but plainly shabby, and, to Mary's country eyes, appeared on the wrong side of clean. Presently, as those eyes got accustomed to the miserable light, they spied in the skirt of her gown a perfunctory darn, revealing but too evidently that to Letty there no longer seemed occasion for being particular. The sadness of it all sunk to Mary's heart: Letty had not found marriage a grand affair!

But Mary had not come into the world to be sad or to help another to be sad. Sorrowful we may often have to be, but to indulge in sorrow is either not to know or to deny God our Saviour. True, her heart ached for Letty; and the ache immediately laid itself as close to Letty's ache as it could lie; but that was only the advance-guard of her army of salvation, the light cavalry of sympathy: the next division was help; and behind that lay patience, and strength, and hope, and faith, and joy. This last, modern teachers, having failed to regard it as a virtue, may well decline to regard as a duty; but he is a poor Christian indeed in whom joy has not at least a growing share, and Mary was not a poor Christian—at least, for the time she had been learning, and as Christians go in the present aeon of their history. Her whole nature drew itself together, confronting the destroyer, whatever he might be, in possession of Letty. How to help she could not yet tell, but sympathy was already at its work.

"You are not looking your best, Letty," she said, clasping her again in her arms.

With a little choking, Letty assured her she was quite well, only rather overcome with the pleasure of seeing her so unexpectedly.

"How is Mr. Helmer?" asked Mary.

"Quite well—and very busy," answered Letty—a little hurriedly, Mary thought. "—But," she added, in a tone of disappointment, "you always used to call him Tom!"

"Oh!" answered Mary, with a smile, "one must be careful how one takes liberties with married people. A certain mysterious change seems to pass over some of them; they are not the same somehow, and you have to make your acquaintance with them all over again from the beginning."

"I shouldn't think such people's acquaintance worth making over again," said Letty.

"How can you tell what it may be worth?" said Mary, "—they are so different from what they were? Their friendship may now be one that won't change so easily."

"Ah! don't be hard on me, Mary. I have never ceased to love you."

"I am so glad!" answered Mary. "People don't generally take much to me—at least, not to come near me. But you can be friends without having friends," she added, with a sententiousness she had inherited.

"I don't quite understand you," said Letty, sadly; "but, then, I never could quite, you know. Tom finds me very stupid."

These words strengthened Mary's suspicion, from the first a probability, that all was not going well between the two; but she shrunk from any approach to confidences with one of a married pair. To have such, she felt instinctively, would be a breach of unity, except, indeed, that were already, and irreparably, broken. To encourage in any married friend the placing of a confidence that excludes the other, is to encourage that friend's self-degradation. But neither was this a fault to which Letty could have been tempted; she loved her Tom too much for it: with all her feebleness, there was in Letty not a little of childlike greatness, born of faith.

But, although Mary would make Letty tell nothing, she was not the less anxious to discover, that she might, if possible, help. She would observe: side-lights often reveal more than direct illumination. It might be for Letty, and not for Mrs. Redmain, she had been sent. He who made time in time would show.

"Are you going to be long in London, Mary?" asked Letty.

"Oh, a long time!" answered Mary, with a loving glance.

Letty's eyes fell, and she looked troubled.

"I am so sorry, Mary," she said, "that I can not ask you to come here! We have only these two rooms, and—and—you see—Mrs. Helmer is not very liberal to Tom, and—because they—don't get on together very well—as I suppose everybody knows—Tom won't— he won't consent to—to—"

"You little goose!" cried Mary; "you don't think I would come down on you like a devouring dragon, without even letting you know, and finding whether it would suit you!—I have got a situation in London."

"A situation!" echoed Letty. "What can you mean, Mary? You haven't left your own shop, and gone into somebody else's?"

"No, not exactly that," replied Mary, laughing; "but I have no doubt most people would think that by far the more prudent thing to have done."

"Then I don't," said Letty, with a little flash of her old enthusiasm. "Whatever you do, Mary, I am sure will always be the best."

"I am glad I have so much of your good opinion, Letty; but I am not sure I shall have it still, when I have told you what I have done. Indeed, I am not quite sure myself that I have done wisely; but, if I have made a mistake, it is from having listened to love more than to prudence."

"What!" cried Letty; "you're married, Mary?"

And here a strange thing, yet the commonest in the world, appeared; had her own marriage proved to Letty the most blessed of fates, she could not have shown more delight at the idea of Mary's. I think men find women a little incomprehensible in this matter of their friends' marriage: in their largerheartedness, I presume, women are able to hope for their friends, even when they have lost all hope for themselves.

"No," replied Mary, amused at having thus misled her. "It is neither so bad nor so good as that. But I was far from comfortable in the shop without my father, and kept thinking how to find a life, more suitable for me. It was not plain to me that my lot was cast there any longer, and one has no right to choose difficulty; for, even if difficulty be the right thing for you, the difficulty you choose can't be the right difficulty. Those that are given to choosing, my father said, are given to regretting. Then it happened that I fell in love—not with a gentleman—don't look like that, Letty—but with a lady; and, as the lady took a small fancy to me at the same time, and wanted to have me about her, here I am."

"But, surely, that is not a situation fit for one like you, Mary!" cried Letty, almost in consternation; for, notwithstanding her opposition to her aunt's judgment in the individual case of her friend, Letty's own judgments, where she had any, were mostly of this world. "I suppose you are a kind of—of—companion to your lady-friend?"

"Or a kind of lady's-maid, or a kind of dressmaker, or a kind of humble friend—something like a dog, perhaps—only not to be quite so much loved and petted; In truth, Letty, I do not know what I am, or what I am going to be; but I shall find out before long, and where's the use of knowing, any more than anything else before it's wanted?"

"You take my breath away, Mary! The thing doesn't seem at all like you! It's not consistent!—Mary Marston in a menial position! I can't get a hold of it!"

"You remind me," said Mary, laughing, "of what my father said to Mr. Turnbull once. They were nearer quarreling then than ever I saw them. You remember my father's way, Letty—how he would say a thing too quietly even to smile with it? I can't tell you what a delight it is to me to talk to anybody that knew him!—Mr. Turnbull imagined he did not know what he was about, for the thoughts my father was thinking could not have lived a moment in Mr. Turnbull. 'You see, John Turnbull,' my father said, 'no man can look so inconsistent as one whose principles are not understood; for hardly in anything will that man do as his friend must have thought he would.'—I suppose you think, Letty," Mary went on, with a merry air, "that, for the sake of consistency, I should never do anything but sell behind a counter?"

"In that case," said Letty, "I ought to have married a milkman, for a dairy is the only thing I understand. I can't help Tom ever so little!—But I suppose it wouldn't be possible for two to write poetry together, even if they were husband and wife, and both of them clever!"

"Something like it has been tried, I believe," answered Mary, "but not with much success. I suppose, when a man sets himself to make anything, he must have it all his own way, or he can't do it."

"I suppose that's it. I know Tom is very angry with the editor when he wants to alter anything he has written. I'm sure Tom's right, too. You can't think how much better Tom's way always is!- -He makes that quite clear, even to poor, stupid me. But then, you know, Tom's a genius; that's one thing there's no doubt of!—But you haven't told me yet where you are."

"You remember Miss Mortimer, of Durnmelling?"

"Quite well, of course."

"She is Mrs. Redmain now: I am with her."

"You don't mean it! Why, Tom knows her very well! He has been several times to parties at her house."

"And not you, too?" asked Mary.

"Oh, dear, no!" answered Letty, laughing, superior at Mary's ignorance. "It's not the fashion in London, at least for distinguished persons like my Tom, to take their wives to parties."

"Are there no ladies at those parties, then?"

"Oh, yes!" replied Letty, smiling again at Mary's ignorance of the world, "the grandest of ladies—duchesses and all. You don't know what a favorite Tom is in the highest circles!"

Now Mary could believe almost anything bearing on Tom's being a favorite, for she herself liked him a great deal more than she approved of him; but she could not see the sense of his going to parties without his wife, neither could she see that the height of the circle in which he was a favorite made any difference. She had old-fashioned notions of a man and his wife being one flesh, and felt a breach of the law where they were separated, whatever the custom—reason there could be none. But Letty seemed much too satisfied to give her any light on the matter. Did it seem to her so natural that she could not understand Mary's difficulty? She could not help suspecting, however, that there might be something in this recurrence of a separation absolute as death—for was it not a passing of one into a region where the other could not follow?—to account for the change in her.—The same moment, as if Letty divined what was passing in Mary's thought, and were not altogether content with the thing herself, but would gladly justify what she could not explain, she added, in the tone of an unanswerable argument:

"Besides, Mary, how could I get a dress fit to wear at such parties? You wouldn't have me go and look like a beggar! That would be to disgrace Tom. Everybody in London judges everybody by the clothes she wears. You should hear Tom's descriptions of the ladies' dresses when he comes home!"

Mary was on the verge of crying out indignantly, "Then, if he can't take you, why doesn't he stop at home with you?" but she bethought herself in time to hold her peace. She settled it with herself, however, that Tom must have less heart or yet more muddled brains than she had thought.

"So, then," reverted Letty, as if willing to turn definitively from the subject, "you are actually living with the beautiful Mrs. Redmain! What a lucky girl you are! You will see no end of grand people! You will see my Tom sometimes—when I can't!" she added, with a sigh that went to Mary's heart.

"Poor thing!" she said to herself, "it isn't anything much out of the way she wants—only a little more of a foolish husband's company!"

It was no wonder that Tom found Letty dull, for he had just as little of his own in him as she, and thought he had a great store—which is what sends a man most swiftly along the road to that final poverty in which even that which he has shall be taken from him.

Mary did not stay so long with Letty as both would have liked, for she did not yet know enough of Hesper's ways. When she got home, she learned that she had a headache, and had not yet made her appearance.



CHAPTER XXIX.

THE EVENING STAR.

Notwithstanding her headache, however, Mrs. Redmain was going in the evening to a small fancy-ball, meant for a sort of rehearsal to a great one when the season should arrive. The part and costume she had chosen were the suggestion of her own name: she would represent the Evening Star, clothed in the early twilight; and neither was she unfit for the part, nor was the dress she had designed altogether unsuitable either to herself or to the part. But she had sufficient confidence neither in herself nor her maid to forestall a desire for Mary's opinion. After luncheon, therefore, she sent for Miss Marston to her bedroom.

Mary found her half dressed, Folter in attendance, a great heap of pink lying on the bed.

"Sit down, Mary," said Hesper, pointing to a chair; "I want your advice. But I must first explain. Where I am going this evening, nobody is to be herself except me. I am not to be Mrs. Redmain, though, but Hesper. You know what Hesper means?"

Mary said she knew, and waited—a little anxious; for sideways in her eyes glowed the pink of the chosen Hesperian clouds, and, if she should not like it, what could be done at that late hour.

"There is my dress," continued the Evening Star, with a glance of her eyes, for Folter was busied with her hair; "I want to know your opinion of it." Folter gave a toss of her head that seemed to say, "Have not I spoken?" but what it really did mean, how should other mortal know? for the main obstructions to understanding are profundity and shallowness, and the latter is far the more perplexing of the two.

"I should like to see it on first," said Mary: she was in doubt whether the color—bright, to suggest the brightest of sunset- clouds—would suit Hesper's complexion. Then, again, she had always associated the name Hesper with a later, a solemnly lovely period of twilight, having little in common with the color so voluminous in the background.

Hesper had a good deal of appreciative faculty, and knew therefore when she liked and when she did not like a thing; but she had very little originative faculty—so little that, when anything was wrong, she could do next to nothing to set it right. There was small originality in taking a suggestion for her part from her name, and less in the idea, following by concatenation, of adopting for her costume sunset colors upon a flimsy material, which might more than hint at clouds. She had herself, with the assistance of Sepia and Folter, made choice of the particular pink; but, although it continued altogether delightful in the eyes of her maid, it had, upon nearer and pro-longed acquaintance, become doubtful in hers; and she now waited, with no little anxiety, the judgment of Mary, who sat silently thinking.

"Have you nothing to say?" she asked, at length, impatiently.

"Please, ma'am," replied Mary, "I must think, if I am to be of any use. I am doing my best, but you must let me be quiet."

Half annoyed, half pleased, Hesper was silent, and Mary went on thinking. All was still, save for the slight noises Folter made, as, like a machine, she went on heartlessly brushing her mistress's hair, which kept emitting little crackles, as of dissatisfaction with her handling. Mary would now take a good gaze at the lovely creature, now abstract herself from the visible, and try to call up the vision of her as the real Hesper, not a Hesper dressed up—a process which had in it hope for the lady, but not much for the dress upon the bed. At last Folter had done her part.

"I suppose you must see it on!" said Hesper, and she rose up.

Folter jerked herself to the bed, took the dress, arranged it on her arms, got up on a chair, dropped it over her mistress's head, got down, and, having pulled it this way and that for a while, fastened it here, undone it there, and fastened it again, several times, exclaimed, in a tone whose confidence was meant to forestall the critical impertinence she dreaded:

"There, ma'am! If you don't look the loveliest woman in the room, I shall never trust my eyes again."

Mary held her peace, for the commonplace style of the dress but added to her dissatisfaction with the color. It was all puffed and bubbled and blown about, here and there and everywhere, so that the form of the woman was lost in the frolic shapelessness of the cloud. The whole, if whole it could be called, was a miserable attempt at combining fancy and fashion, and, in result, an ugly nothing.

"I see you don't like it!" said Hesper, with a mingling of displeasure and dismay. "I wish you had come a few days sooner! It is much too late to do anything now. I might just as well have gone without showing it to you!—Here, Folter!"

With a look almost of disgust, she began to pull off the dress, in which, a few hours later, she would yet make the attempt to enchant an assembly.

"O ma'am!" cried Mary, "I wish you had told me yesterday. There would have been time then.—And I don't know," she added, seeing disgust change to mortification on Hesper's countenance, "but something might be done yet."

"Oh, indeed!" dropped from Folter's lips with an indescribable expression.

"What can be done?" said Hesper, angrily. "There can be no time for anything."

"If only we had the stuff!" said Mary. "That shade doesn't suit your complexion. It ought to be much, much darker—in fact, a different color altogether."

Folter was furious, but restrained herself sufficiently to preserve some calmness of tone, although her face turned almost blue with the effort, as she said:

"Miss Marston is not long from the country, ma'am, and don't know what's suitable to a London drawing-room."

Her mistress was too dejected to snub her impertinence.

"What color were you thinking of, Miss Marston?" Hesper asked, with a stiffness that would have been more in place had Mary volunteered the opinion she had been asked to give. She was out of temper with Mary from feeling certain she was right, and believing there was no remedy.

"I could not describe it," answered Mary. "And, indeed, the color I have in my mind may not be to be had. I have seen it somewhere, but, whether in a stuff or only in nature, I can not at this moment be certain."

"Where's the good of talking like that—excuse me, ma'am—it's more than I can bear—when the ball comes off in a few hours?" cried Folter, ending with eyes of murder on Mary.

"If you would allow me, ma'am," said Mary, "I should like much to try whether I could not find something that would suit you and your idea too. However well you might look in that, you would owe it no thanks. The worst is, I know nothing of the London shops."

"I should think not!" remarked Folter, with emphasis.

"I would send you in the brougham, if I thought it was of any use," said Hesper. "Folter could take you to the proper places."

"Folter would be of no use to me," said Mary. "If your coachman knows the best shops, that will be enough."

"But there's no time to make up anything," objected Hesper, despondingly, not the less with a glimmer of hope in her heart.

"Not like that," answered Mary; "but there is much there as unnecessary as it is ugly. If Folter is good at her needle—"

"I won't take up a single stitch. It would be mere waste of labor," cried Folter.

"Then, please, ma'am," said Mary, "let Folter have that dress ready, and, if I don't succeed, you have something to wear."

"I hate it. I won't go if you don't find me another."

"Some people may like it, though I don't," said Mary.

"Not a doubt of that!" said Folter.

"Ring the bell," said her mistress.

The woman obeyed, and the moment afterward repented she had not given warning on the spot, instead. The brougham was ordered immediately, and in a few minutes Mary was standing at a counter in a large shop, looking at various stuffs, of which the young man waiting on her soon perceived she knew the qualities and capabilities better than he.

She had set her heart on carrying out Hesper's idea, but in better fashion; and after great pains taken, and no little trouble given, left the shop well satisfied with her success. And now for the greater difficulty!

She drove straight to Letty's lodging, and, there dismissing the brougham, presented herself, with a great parcel in her arms, for the second time that day, at the door of her room, as unexpected as the first, and even more to the joy of her solitary friend.

She knew that Letty was good at her needle. And Letty was, indeed, even now, by fits, fond of using it; and on several occasions, when her supply of novels had for a day run short, had asked a dressmaker who lived above to let her help her for an hour or two: before Mary had finished her story, she was untying the parcel, and preparing to receive her instructions. Nor had they been at work many minutes, when Letty bethought her of calling in the help of the said dressmaker; so that presently there were three of them busy as bees—one with genius, one with experience, and all with facility. The notions of the first were quickly taken up by the other two, and, the design of the dress being simplicity itself, Mary got all done she wanted in shorter time than she had thought possible. The landlady sent for a cab, and Mary was home with the improbability in more than time for Mrs. Redmain's toilet. It was with some triumph, tempered with some trepidation, that she carried it to her room.

There Folter was in the act of persuading her mistress of the necessity of beginning to dress: Miss Marston, she said, knew nothing of what she had undertaken; and, even if she arrived in time, it would be with something too ridiculous for any lady to appear in—when Mary entered, and was received with a cry of delight from Hesper; in proportion to whose increasing disgust for the pink robe, was her pleasure when she caught sight of Mary's colors, as she undid the parcel: when she lifted the dress on her arm for a first effect, she was enraptured with it—aerial in texture, of the hue of a smoky rose, deep, and cloudy with overlying folds, yet diaphanous, a darkness dilute with red.

Silent as a torture-maiden, and as grim, Folter approached to try the filmy thing, scornfully confident that the first sight of it on would prove it unwearable. But Mary judged her scarcely in a mood to be trusted with anything so ethereal; and begged therefore that, as the dress had, of necessity, been in many places little more than run together, and she knew its weak points, she might, for that evening, be allowed the privilege of dressing Mrs. Redmain. Hesper gladly consented; Folter left the room; Mary, now at her ease, took her place; and presently, more to Hesper's pleasure than Mary's surprise, for she had made and fixed in her mind the results of minute observation before she went, it was found that the dress fitted quite sufficiently well, and, having confined it round the waist with a cincture of thin pale gold, she advanced to her chief anxiety—the head-dress.

For this she had chosen such a doubtful green as the sky appears through yellowish smoke—a sad, lovely color—the fair past clouded with the present—youth not forgotten, but filmed with age. They were all colors of the evening, as it strives to keep its hold of the heavens, with the night pressing upon it from behind. In front, above the lunar forehead, among the coronal masses, darkly fair, she fixed a diamond star, and over it wound the smoky green like a turbaned vapor, wind-ruffled, through which the diamonds gleamed faintly by fits. Not once would she, while at her work, allow Hesper to look, and the self-willed lady had been submissive in her hands as a child of the chosen; but the moment she had succeeded—for her expectations were more than realized—she led her to the cheval-glass. Hesper gazed for an instant, then, turning, threw her arms about Mary, and kissed her.

"I don't believe you're a human creature at all!" she cried. "You are a fairy godmother, come to look after your poor Cinderella, the sport of stupid lady's-maids and dressmakers!"

The door opened, and Folter entered.

"If you please, ma'am, I wish to leave this day month," she said, quietly.

"Then," answered her mistress, with equal calmness, "oblige me by going at once to Mrs. Perkin, and telling her that I desire her to pay you a month's wages, and let you leave the house to-morrow morning.—You won't mind helping me to dress till I get another maid—will you, Mary?" she added; and Folter left the room, chagrined at her inability to cause annoyance.

"I do not see why you should have another maid so long as I am with you, ma'am," said Mary. "It should not need many days' apprenticeship to make one woman able to dress another."

"Not when she is like you, Mary," said Hesper. "It is well the wretch has done my hair for to-night, though! That will be the main difficulty."

"It will not be a great one," said Mary, "if you will allow me to undo it when you come home."

"I begin almost to believe in a special providence," said Hesper. "What a blessed thing for me that you came to drive away that woman! She has been getting worse and worse."

"If I have driven her away," answered Mary, "I am bound to supply her place."

As they talked, she was giving her final touches of arrangement to the head-dress—with which she found it least easy to satisfy herself. It swept round from behind in a misty cloak, the two colors mingling with and gently obscuring each other; while, between them, the palest memory of light, in the golden cincture, helped to bring out the somber richness, the delicate darkness of the whole.

Searching now again Hesper's jewel-case, Mary found a fine bracelet of the true, the Oriental topaz, the old chrysolite—of that clear yellow of the sunset-sky that looks like the 'scaped spirit of miser-smothered gold: this she clasped upon one arm; and when she had fastened a pair of some ancient Mortimer's garnet buckles in her shoes, which she had insisted should be black, and taken off all the rings that Hesper had just put on, except a certain glorious sapphire, she led her again to the mirror; and, if there Hesper was far more pleased with herself than was reasonable or lovely, my reader needs not therefore fear a sermon from the text, "Beauty is only skin-deep," for that text is out of the devil's Bible. No Baal or Astarte is the maker of beauty, but the same who made the seven stars and Orion, and His works are past finding out. If only the woman herself and her worshipers knew how deep it is! But the woman's share in her own beauty may be infinitely less than skin-deep; and there is but one greater fool than the man who worships that beauty—the woman who prides herself upon it, as if she were the fashioner and not the thing fashioned.

But poor Hesper had much excuse, though no justification. She had had many of the disadvantages and scarce one of the benefits of poverty. She had heard constantly from childhood the most worldly and greedy talk, the commonest expression of abject dependence on the favors of Mammon, and thus had from the first been in preparation for marrying money. She had been taught no other way of doing her part to procure the things of which the Father knows we have need. She had never earned a dinner; had never done or thought of doing a day's work—of offering the world anything for the sake of which the world might offer her a shilling to do it again; she had never dreamed of being of any use, even to herself; she had learned to long for money, but had never been hungry, never been cold: she had sometimes felt shabby. Out of it all she had brought but the knowledge that this matter of beauty, with which, by some blessed chance, she was endowed, was worth much precious money in the world's market— worth all the dresses she could ever desire, worth jewels and horses and servants, adoration and adulation—everything, in fact, the world calls fine, and the devil offers to those who, unscared by his inherent ugliness, will fall down and worship him.



CHAPTER XXX.

A SCOLDING.

The Evening Star found herself a success—that is, much followed by the men and much complimented by the women. Her triumph, however, did not culminate until the next appearance of "The Firefly," containing a song "To the Evening Star," which everybody knew to stand for Mrs. Redmain. The chaos of the uninitiated, indeed, exoteric and despicable, remained in ignorance, nor dreamed that the verses meant anybody of note; to them they seemed but the calf-sigh of some young writer so deep in his first devotion that he jumbled up his lady-love, Hesper, and Aphrodite, in the same poetic bundle—of which he left the string-ends hanging a little loose, while, upon the whole, it remained a not altogether unsightly bit of prentice-work. Tom had not been at the party, but had gathered fire enough from what he heard of Hesper's appearance there to write the verses. Here they are, as nearly as I can recall them. They are in themselves not worth writing out for the printers, but, in their surroundings, they serve to show Tom, and are the last with which I shall trouble the readers of this narrative.

"TO THE EVENING STAR.

"From the buried sunlight springing, Through flame-darkened, rosy loud, Native sea-hues with thee bringing, In the sky thou reignest proud!

"Who is like thee, lordly lady, Star-choragus of the night! Color worships, fainting fady, Night grows darker with delight!

"Dusky-radiant, far, and somber, In the coolness of thy state, From my eyelids chasing slumber, Thou dost smile upon my fate;

"Calmly shinest; not a whisper Of my songs can reach thine ear; What is it to thee, O Hesper, That a heart should long or fear?"

Tom did not care to show Letty this poem—not that there was anything more in his mind than an artistic admiration of Hesper, and a desire to make himself agreeable in her eyes; but, when Letty, having read it, betrayed no shadow of annoyance with its folly, he was a little relieved. The fact was, the simple creature took it as a pardon to herself.

"I am glad you have forgiven me, Tom," she said.

"What do you mean?" asked Tom.

"For working for Mrs. Redmain with your hands," she said, and, breaking into a little laugh, caught his cheeks between those same hands, and reaching up gave him a kiss that made him ashamed of himself—a little, that is, and for the moment, that is: Tom was used to being this or that a little for the moment.

For this same dress, which Tom had thus glorified in song, had been the cause of bitter tears to Letty. He came home too late the day of Mary's visit, but the next morning she told him all about both the first and the second surprise she had had —not, however, with much success in interesting the lordly youth.

"And then," she went on, "what do you think we were doing all the afternoon, Tom?"

"How should I know?" said Tom, indifferently.

"We were working hard at a dress—a dress for a fancy-ball!"

"A fancy-ball, Letty? What do you mean? You going to a fancy- ball!"

"Me!" cried Letty, with merry laugh; "no, not quite me. Who do you think it was for?"

"How should I know?" said Tom again, but not quite so indifferently; he was prepared to be annoyed.

"For Mrs. Redmain!" said Letty, triumphantly, clapping her hands with delight at what she thought the fun of the thing, for was not Mrs. Redmain Tom's friend?—then stooping a little—it was an unconscious, pretty trick she had—and holding them out, palm pressed to palm, with the fingers toward his face.

"Letty," said Tom, frowning—and the frown deepened and deepened; for had he not from the first, if in nothing else, taken trouble to instruct her in what became the wife of Thomas Helmer, Esq.?— "Letty, this won't do!"

Letty was frightened, but tried to think he was only pretending to be displeased.

"Ah! don't frighten me, Tom," she said, with her merry hands now changed to pleading ones, though their position and attitude remained the same.

But he caught them by the wrists in both of his, and held them tight.

"Letty," he said once more, and with increased severity, "this won't do. I tell you, it won't do."

"What won't do, Tom?" she returned, growing white. "There's no harm done."

"Yes, there is," said Tom, with solemnity; "there is harm done, when my wife goes and does like that. What would people say of me, if they were to come to know—God forbid they should!—that your husband was talking all the evening to ladies at whose dresses his wife had been working all the afternoon!—You don't know what you are doing, Letty. What do you suppose the ladies would think if they were to hear of it?"

Poor, foolish Tom, ignorant in his folly, did not know how little those grand ladies would have cared if his wife had been a char- woman: the eyes of such are not discerning of fine social distinctions in women who are not of their set, neither are the family relations of the bohemians they invite of the smallest consequence to them.

"But, Tom," pleaded his wife, "such a grand lady as that! one you go and read your poetry to! What harm can there be in your poor little wife helping to make a dress for a lady like that?"

"I tell you, Letty, I don't choose my wife to do such a thing for the greatest lady in the land! Good Heavens! if it were to come to the ears of the staff! It would be the ruin of me! I should never hold up my head again!"

By this time Letty's head was hanging low, like a flower half broken from its stem, and two big tears were slowly rolling down her cheeks. But there was a gleam of satisfaction in her heart notwithstanding. Tom thought so much of his little wife that he would not have her work for the greatest lady in the land! She did not see that it was not pride in her, but pride in himself, that made him indignant at the idea. It was not "my wife," but "my wife" with Tom. She looked again up timidly in his face, and said, her voice trembling, and her cheeks wet, for she could not wipe away the tears, because Tom still held her hands as one might those of a naughty child:

"But, Tom! I don't exactly see how you can make so much of it, when you don't think me—when you know I am not fit to go among such people."

To this Tom had no reply at hand: he was not yet far enough down the devil's turnpike to be able to tell his wife that he had spoken the truth—that he did not think her fit for such company; that he would be ashamed of her in it; that she had no style; that, instead of carrying herself as if she knew herself somebody—as good as anybody there, indeed, being the wife of Tom Helmer—she had the meek look of one who knew herself nobody, and did not know her husband to be anybody. He did not think how little he had done to give the unassuming creature that quiet confidence which a woman ought to gather from the assurance of her husband's satisfaction in her, and the consciousness of being, in dress and everything else, pleasing in his eyes, therefore of occupying the only place in the world she desires to have. But he did think that Letty's next question might naturally be, "Why do you not take me with you?" No doubt he could have answered, no one had ever asked her; but then she might rejoin, had he ever put it in any one's way to ask her? It might even occur to her to in-quire whether he had told Mrs. Redmain that he had a wife! and he had heart enough left to imagine it might mortally hurt her to find he lived a life so utterly apart from hers—that she had so little of the relations though all the rights of wifehood. It was no wonder, therefore, if he was more than willing to change the subject. He let the poor, imprisoned hands drop so abruptly that, in their abandonment, they fell straight from her shoulders to her sides.

"Well, well, child!" he said; "put on your bonnet, and we shall be in time for the first piece at the Lyceum."

Letty flew, and was ready in five minutes. She could dress the more quickly that she was delayed by little doubt as to what she had better wear: she had scarcely a choice. Tom, looking after his own comforts, left her to look after her necessities; and she, having a conscience, and not much spirit, went even shabbier than she yet needed.



CHAPTER XXXI.

SEPIA.

As naturally as if she had been born to that very duty and no other, Mary slid into the office of lady's-maid to Mrs. Redmain, feeling in it, although for reasons very different, no more degradation than her mistress saw in it. If Hesper was occasionally a little rude to her, Mary was not one to accept a rudeness—that is, to wrap it up in resentment, and put it away safe in the pocket of memory. She could not help feeling things of the kind—sometimes with indignation and anger; but she made haste to send them from her, and shut the doors against them. She knew herself a far more blessed creature than Hesper, and felt the obligation, from the Master himself, of so enduring as to keep every channel of service open between Hesper and her. To Hesper, the change from the vulgar service of Folter to the ministration of Mary was like passing from a shallow purgatory to a gentle paradise. Mary's service was full of live and near presence, as that of dew or summer wind; Folter handled her as if she were dressing a doll, Mary as if she were dressing a baby; her hands were deft as an angel's, her feet as noiseless as swift. And to have Mary near was not only to have a ministering spirit at hand, but to have a good atmosphere all around—an air, a heaven, out of which good things must momently come. Few could be closely associated with her and not become aware at least of the capacity of being better, if not of the desire to be better.

In the matter of immediate result, it was a transition from decoration to dress. If in any sense Hesper was well dressed before, she was in every sense well dressed now—dressed so, that is, as to reveal the nature, the analogies, and the associations of her beauty: no manner of dressing can make a woman look more beautiful than she is, though many a mode may make her look less so.

There was one in the house, however, who was not pleased at the change from Folter to Mary: Sepia found herself in consequence less necessary to Hesper. Hitherto Hesper had never been satisfied without Sepia's opinion and final approval in that weightiest of affairs, the matter of dress; but she found in Mary such a faculty as rendered appeal to Sepia unnecessary; for she not only satisfied her idea of herself, and how she would choose to look, but showed her taste as much surer than Sepia's as Sepia's was readier than Hesper's own. Sepia was equal to the dressing of herself—she never blundered there; but there was little dependence to be placed upon her in dressing another. She cared for herself, not for another; and to dress another, love is needful—love, the only true artist—love, the only opener of eyes. She cared nothing to minister to the comfort or beautification of her cousin, and her displeasure did not arise from the jealousy that is born of affection. So far as Hesper's self was concerned, Sepia did not care a straw whether she was well or ill dressed; but, if the link between them of dress was severed, what other so strong would be left? And to find herself in any way a less object in Hesper's eyes, would be to find herself on the inclined plane of loss, and probable ruin.

Another, though a smaller, point was, that hitherto she had generally been able so to dress Hesper as to make of her more or less a foil to herself. My reader may remember that there was between Hesper and Sepia, if not a resemblance, yet a relation of appearance, like, vaguely, that between the twilight and the night; seen in certain positions and circumstances, the one would recall the other; and it was therefore a matter of no small consequence to Sepia that the relation of her dress to Hesper's should be such as to give herself any advantage to be derived in it from the relation of their looks. This was far more difficult, of course, when she had no longer a voice in the matter of Hesper's dress, and when the loving skill of the new maid presented her rival to her individual best. Mary would have been glad to help her as well, but Sepia drew back as from a hostile nature, and they made no approximation. This was more loss to Sepia than she knew, for Mary would have assisted her in doing the best when she had no money, a condition which often made it the more trying that she had now so little influence over her cousin's adornment. To dress was a far more difficult, though not more important, affair with Sepia than with Hesper, for she had nothing of her own, and from, her cousin no fixed allowance. Any arrangement of the kind had been impossible at Durnmelling, where there was no money; and here, where it would have been easy enough, she judged it better to give no hint in its direction, although plainly it had never suggested itself to Hesper. There was nothing of the money-mean in her, any more than in her husband. They were of course, as became people of fashion, regular and unwearied attendants of the church of Mammon, ordering all their judgments and ways in accordance with the precepts there delivered; but they were none of Mammon's priests or pew-openers, money-grubs, or accumulators. They gave liberally where they gave, and scraped no inferior to spend either on themselves or their charities. They had plenty, it is true; but so have many who withhold more than is meet, and take the ewe- lamb to add to their flock. For one thing, they had no time for that sort of wickedness, and took no interest in it. So Hesper, although it had not come into her mind to give her the ease of a stated allowance, behaved generously to Sepia—when she thought of it; but she did not love her enough to be love-watchful, and seldom thought how her money must be going, or questioned whether she might not at the moment be in want of more. There are many who will give freely, who do not care to understand need and anticipate want. Hence at times Sepia's purse would be long empty before the giving-thought would wake in the mind of Hesper. When it woke, it was gracious and free.

Had Sepia ventured to run up bills with the tradespeople, Hesper would have taken it as a thing of course, and settled them with her own. But Sepia had a certain politic pride in spending only what was given her; also she saw or thought she saw serious reason for avoiding all appearances of taking liberties; from the first of Mr. Redmain's visits to Durnmelling, she had been aware, with an instinct keen in respect of its objects, though blind as to its own nature, that he did not like her, and soon satisfied herself that any overt attempt to please him would but ripen his dislike to repugnance; and her dread was that he might make it a condition with Mr. Mortimer that Hesper's intimacy with her should cease; whereas, if once they were married, the husband's disfavor would, she believed, only strengthen the wife's predilection. Having so far gained her end, it remained, however, almost as desirable as before that she should do nothing to fix or increase his dislike—nay, that, if within the possible, she should become pleasing to him. Did not even hate turn sometimes to its mighty opposite? But she understood so little of the man with whom she had to deal that her calculations were ill-founded.

She was right in believing that Mr. Redmain disliked her, but she was wrong in imagining that he had therefore any objection to her being for the present in the house. He certainly did not relish the idea of her continuing to be his wife's inseparable companion, but there would be time enough to get rid of her after he had found her out. For she had not long been one of his family, before he knew, with insight unerring, that she had to be found out, and was therefore an interesting subject for the exercise of his faculty of moral analysis. He was certain her history was composed mainly of secrets. As yet, however, he had discovered nothing.

I must just remind my reader of the intellectual passion I have already mentioned as characterizing Mr. Redmain's mental constitution. His faults and vices were by no means peculiar; but the bent to which I refer, certainly no virtue, and springing originally from predominant evil, was in no small degree peculiar, especially in the degree to which, derived as it was from his father, he had in his own being developed it. Most men, he judged with himself, were such fools as well as rogues, that there was not the least occasion to ask what they were after: they did but turn themselves inside out before you! But, on the other hand, there were not a few who took pains, more or less successful, to conceal their game of life; and such it was the delight of his being to lay bare to his own eyes-not to those of other people; that, he said, would be to spoil his game! Men were his library, he said-his history, his novels, his sermons, his philosophy, his poetry, his whole literature—and he did not like to have his books thumbed by other people. Human nature, in its countless aspects, was all about him, he said, every mask crying to him to take it off. Unhappily, it was but the morbid anatomy of human nature he cared to study. For all his abuse of it, he did not yet recognize it as morbid, but took it as normal, and the best to be had. No doubt, he therein judged and condemned himself, but that he never thought of—nor, perceived, would it have been a point of any consequence to him.

From the first, he saw through Mr. Mortimer, and all belonging to him, except Miss Yolland: she soon began to puzzle—and, so far, to please him, though, as I have said, he did not like her. Had he been a younger man, she would have captivated him; as it was, she would have repelled him entirely, but that she offered him a good subject. He said to himself that she was a bad lot, but what sort of a bad lot was not so clear as to make her devoid of interest to him; he must discover how she played her life-game; she had a history, and he would fain know it. As I have said, however, so far it had come to nothing, for, upon the surface, Sepia showed herself merely like any other worldly girl who knows "on which side her bread is buttered."

The moment he had found, or believed he had found, what there was to know about her, he was sure to hate her heartily. For some time after his marriage, he appeared at his wife's parties oftener than he otherwise would have done, just for the sake of having an eye upon Sepia; but had seen nothing, nor the shadow of anything—until one night, by the merest chance, happening to enter his wife's drawing-room, he caught a peculiar glance between Sepia and a young man—not very young—who had just entered, and whom he had not seen before.

To not a few it seemed strange that, with her unquestioned powers of fascination, she had not yet married; but London is not the only place in which poverty is as repellent as beauty is attractive. At the same time it must be confessed there was something about her which made not a few men shy of her. Some found that, if her eyes drew them within a certain distance, there they began to repel them, they could not tell why. Others felt strangely uncomfortable in her presence from the first. Not only much that a person has done, but much of what a person is capable of, is, I suspect, written on the bodily presence; and, although no human eye is capable of reading more than here and there a scattered hint of the twilight of history, which is the aurora of prophecy, the soul may yet shudder with an instinctive foreboding it can not explain, and feel the presence, without recognizing the nature, of the hostile.

Sepia's eyes were her great power. She knew the laws of mortar- practice in that kind as well as any officer of engineers those of projectiles. There was something about her engines which it were vain to attempt to describe. Their lightest glance was a thing not to be trifled with, and their gaze a thing hardly to be withstood. Sustained and without hurt defied, it could hardly be by man of woman born. They were large, but no fool would be taken with mere size. They were as dark as ever eyes of woman, but our older poets delighted in eyes as gray as glass: certainly not in their darkness lay their peculiar witchery. They were grandly proportioned, neither almond-shaped nor round, neither prominent nor deep-set; but even shape by itself is not much. If I go on to say they were luminous, plainly there the danger begins. Sepia's eyes, I confess, were not lords of the deepest light—for she was not true; but neither was theirs a surface light, generated of merely physical causes: through them, concentrating her will upon their utterance, she could establish a psychical contact with almost any man she chose. Their power was an evil, selfish shadow of original, universal love. By them she could produce at once, in the man on whom she turned their play, a sense as it were of some primordial, fatal affinity between her and him—of an aboriginal understanding, the rare possession of but a few of the pairs made male and female. Into those eyes she would call up her soul, and there make it sit, flashing light, in gleams and sparkles, shoots and coruscations—not from great, black pupils alone—to whose size there were who said the suicidal belladonna lent its aid—but from great, dark irids as well—nay, from eyeballs, eyelashes, and eyelids, as from spiritual catapult or culverin, would she dart the lightnings of her present soul, invading with influence as irresistible as subtile the soul of the man she chose to assail, who, thenceforward, for a season, if he were such as she took him for, scarce had choice but be her slave. She seldom exerted their full force, however, without some further motive than mere desire to captivate. There are women who fly their falcons at any game, little birds and all; but Sepia did not so waste herself: her quarry must be worth her hunt: she must either love him or need him. Love! did I say? Alas! if ever holy word was put to unholy use, love is that word! When Diana goes to hell, her name changes to Hecate, but love among the devils is called love still!

In more than one other country, whatever might be the cause, Sepia had found the men less shy of her than here; and she had almost begun to think her style was not generally pleasing to English eyes. Whether this had anything to do with the fact that now in London she began to amuse herself with Tom Helmer, I can not say with certainty; but almost if not quite the first time they met, that morning, namely, when first he called, and they sat in the bay-window of the drawing-room in Glammis Square, she brought her eyes to play upon him; and, although he addressed "The Firefly" poem to Hesper in the hope of pleasing her, it was for the sake of Sepia chiefly that he desired the door of her house to be an open one to him. Whether at that time she knew he was a married man, it is hardly necessary to inquire, seeing it would have made no difference whatever to one like her, whose design was only to amuse herself with the youth, and possibly to make of him a screen. She went so far, however, as to allow him, when there was opportunity, to draw her into quiet corners, and even to linger when the other guests were gone, and he had had his full share of champagne. Once, indeed, they remained together so long in the little conservatory, lighted only by an alabaster lamp, pale as the moon in the dawning, that she had to unbolt the door to let him out. This did not take place without coming to the knowledge of both Mr. and Mrs. Redmain; but the former was only afraid there was nothing in it, and was far from any wish to control her; and Sepia herself was the in-formant of the latter. To her she would make game of her foolish admirer, telling how, on this and that occasion, it was all she could do to get rid of him.



CHAPTER XXXII.

HONOR.

Having now gained a partial insight into Letty's new position, Mary pondered what she could do to make life more of life to her. Not many knew better than she that the only true way to help a human heart is to lift it up; but she knew also that every kind of loving aid tends more or less to that uplifting; and that, if we can not do the great thing, we must be ready to do the small: if we do not help in little things, how shall we be judged fit to help in greater? We must help where we can, that we may help where we can not. The first and the only thing she could for a time think of, was, to secure for Letty, if possible, a share in her husband's pleasures.

Quietly, yet swiftly, a certain peaceful familiarity had established itself between Hesper and Mary, to which the perfect balance of the latter and her sense of the only true foundation of her position contributed far more than the undefined partiality of the former. The possibility of such a conversation as I am now going to set down was one of the results.

"Do you like Mr. Helmer, ma'am?" asked Mary one morning, as she was brushing her hair.

"Very well. How do you know anything of him?"

"Not many people within ten miles of Testbridge do not know Mr. Helmer," answered Mary.

"Yes, yes, I remember," said Hesper. "He used to ride about on a long-legged horse, and talked to anybody that would listen to him. But there was always something pleasing about him, and he is much improved. Do you know, he is considered really very clever?"

"I am not surprised," rejoined Mary. "He used to be rather foolish, and that is a sign of cleverness—at least, many clever people are foolish, I think."

"You can't have had much opportunity for making the observation, Mary!"

"Clever people think as much of themselves in the country as they do in London, and that is what makes them foolish," returned Mary. "But I used to think Mr. Helmer had very good points, and was worth doing something for—if one only knew what."

"He does not seem to want anything done for him," said Hesper.

"I know one thing you could do for him, and it would be no trouble," said Mary.

"I will do anything for anybody that is no trouble," answered Hesper. "I should like to know something that is no trouble."

"It is only, the next time you ask him, to ask his wife," said Mary.

"He is married, then?" returned Hesper with indifference. "Is the woman presentable? Some shopkeeper's daughter, I suppose!"

Mary laughed. "You don't imagine the son of a lawyer would be likely to marry a shopkeeper's daughter!" she said.

"Why not?" returned Hesper, with a look of non-intelligence.

"Because a professional man is so far above a tradesman."

"Oh!" said Hesper. "—But he should have told me if he wanted to bring his wife with him. I don't care who she is, so long as she dresses decently and holds her tongue. What are you laughing at, Mary?"

Hesper called it laughing, but Mary was only smiling.

"I can't help being amused," answered Mary, "that you should think it such an out-of-the-way thing to be a shopkeeper's daughter, and here am I all the time, feeling quite comfortable, and proud of the shopkeeper whose daughter I am."

"Oh! I beg your pardon," exclaimed Hesper, growing hot for, I almost believe, the first time in her life, and therein, I fear, showing a drop of bad blood from somewhere, probably her father's side of the creation; for not even the sense of having hurt the feelings of an inferior can make the thoroughbred woman of the world aware of the least discomfort; and here was Hesper, not only feeling like a woman of God's making, but actually showing it!—"How cruel of me!" she went on. "But, you see, I never think of you—when I am talking to you—as—as one of that class!"

Mary laughed outright this time: she was amused, and thought it better to show it, for that would show also she was not hurt. Hesper, however, put it down to insensibility.

"Surely, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary, "you can not think the class to which I belong in itself so objectionable that it is rude to refer to it in my hearing!"

"I am very sorry," repeated Hesper, but in a tone of some offense: it was one thing to confess a fault; another to be regarded as actually guilty of the fault. "Nothing was further from my intention than to offend you. I have not a doubt that shopkeepers are a most respectable class in their way—"

"Excuse me, dear Mrs. Redmain," said Mary again, "but you quite mistake me. I am not in the least offended. I don't care what you think of the class. There are a great many shopkeepers who are anything but respectable—as bad, indeed, as any of the nobility."

"I was not thinking of morals," answered Hesper. "In that, I dare say, all classes are pretty much alike. But, of course, there are differences."

"Perhaps one of them is, that, in our class, we make respectability more a question of the individual than you do in yours."

"That may be very true," returned Hesper. "So long as a man behaves himself, we ask no questions."

"Will you let me tell you how the thing looks to me?" said Mary.

"Certainly. You do not suppose I care for the opinions of the people about me! I, too, have my way of looking at things."

So said Hesper; yet it was just the opinions of the people about her that ruled all those of her actions that could be said to be ruled at all. No one boasts of freedom except the willing slave— the man so utterly a slave that he feels nothing irksome in his fetters. Yet, perhaps, but for the opinions of those about her, Hesper would have been worse than she was.

"Am I right, then, in thinking," began Mary, "that people of your class care only that a man should wear the look of a gentleman, and carry himself like one?—that, whether his appearance be a reality or a mask, you do not care, so long as no mask is removed in your company?—that he may be the lowest of men, but, so long as other people receive him, you will, too, counting him good enough?"

Hesper held her peace. She had by this time learned some facts concerning the man she had married which, beside Mary's question, were embarrassing.

"It is interesting," she said at length, "to know how the different classes in a country regard each other." But she spoke wearily: it was interesting in the abstract, not interesting to her.

"The way to try a man," said Mary, "would be to turn him the other way, as I saw the gentleman who is taking your portrait do yesterday trying a square—change his position quite, I mean, and mark how far he continued to look a true man. He would show something of his real self then, I think. Make a nobleman a shopkeeper, for instance, and see what kind of a shopkeeper he made. If he showed himself just as honorable when a shopkeeper as he had seemed when a nobleman, there would be good reason for counting him an honorable man."

"What odd fancies you have, Mary!" said Hesper, yawning.

"I know my father would have been as honorable as a nobleman as he was when a shopkeeper," persisted Mary.

"That I can well believe—he was your father," said Hesper, kindly, meaning what she said, too, so far as her poor understanding of the honorable reached.

"Would you mind telling me," asked Mary, "how you would define the difference between a nobleman and a shopkeeper?"

Hesper thought a little. The question to her was a stupid one. She had never had interest enough in humanity to care a straw what any shopkeeper ever thought or felt. Such people inhabited a region so far below her as to be practically out of her sight. They were not of her kind. It had never occurred to her that life must look to them much as it looked to her; that, like Shylock, they had feelings, and would bleed if cut with a knife. But, although she was not interested, she peered about sleepily for an answer. Her thoughts, in a lazy fashion, tumbled in her, like waves without wind—which, indeed, was all the sort of thinking she knew. At last, with the decision of conscious superiority, and the judicial air afforded by the precision of utterance belonging to her class—a precision so strangely conjoined with the lack of truth and logic both—she said, in a tone that gave to the merest puerility the consequence of a judgment between contending sages:

"The difference is, that the nobleman is born to ease and dignity and affluence, and the—shopkeeper to buy and sell for his living."

"Many a nobleman," suggested Mary, "buys and sells without the necessity of making a living."

"That is the difference," said Hesper.

"Then the nobleman buys and sells to make money, and the shopkeeper to make a living?"

"Yes," granted Hesper, lazily.

"Which is the nobler end—to live, or to make money?" But this question was too far beyond Hesper. She did not even choose to hear it.

"And," she said, resuming her definition instead, "the nobleman deals with great things, the shopkeeper with small."

"When things are finally settled," said Mary—"Gracious, Mary!" cried Hesper, "what do you mean? Are not things settled for good this many a century? I am afraid I have been harboring an awful radical!—a—what do they call it?—a communist!"

She would have turned the whole matter out of doors, for she was tired of it.

"Things hardly look as if they were going to remain just as they are at this precise moment," said Mary. "How could they, when, from the very making of the world, they have been going on changing and changing, hardly ever even seeming to standstill?"

"You frighten me, Mary! You will do something terrible in my house, and I shall get the blame of it!" said Hesper, laughing.

But she did in truth feel a little uncomfortable. The shadow of dismay, a formless apprehension overclouded her. Mary's words recalled sentiments which at home she had heard alluded to with horror; and, however little parents may be loved or respected by their children, their opinions will yet settle, and, until they are driven out by better or worse, will cling.