"I'd say he was purty sassy, indade. Of coorse I'd say that to meself, for ye can't talk to a judge as aisy an' free as to a lawyer. Well, I'd say manny pleasant things. Arthur was gone tin years, but I knew him an' he knew me the minute we set eyes on aich other. Then, agin, I knew him out of his father. He doesn't favor the mother at all, for she's light an' he's dark. There's a dale o' the Dillon in him. Then, agin, how manny things he tould me of the times we had together, an' he even asked me if Teresa Flynn, his sweetheart afore he wint off, was livin' still. Oh, as thrue as ye're sittin' there! Poor thing, she was married. An' he remembered how fond he was o' rice puddin' ice cold. An' he knew Louis Everard the minute he shtud forninst him in the door. But what's the use o' talkin'? I cud tell ye for hours all the things he said an' did to show he was Arthur Dillon."

"Has he any marks on his body that would help to identify him, if he undertook to get the gold mine that belongs to him?"

"Artie had only wan mark on him as a boy ... he was the most spotless child I ever saw ... an' that was a mole on his right shoulder. He tuk it wid him to California, an' he brought it back, for I saw it meself in the same spot while he was sick, an' I called his attintion to it, an' he was much surprised, for he had never thought of it wanst."

"It's my opinion," said Curran solemnly, "that he can prove his identity without exposing his life in the west. I hope to persuade him to it. Maybe the photographs of himself and his father would help. Have you any copies of them?"

"There's jist two. I wudn't dare to take thim out of his room, but if ye care to walk up-stairs, Mr. Curran, an' luk at thim there, ye're welcome. He an' his mother are away the night to a gran' ball."

They entered Arthur's apartments together, and Judy showed the pictures of Arthur Dillon as a boy of fourteen, and of his youthful father; old daguerreotypes, but faithful and clear as a likeness. Judy rattled on for an hour, but the detective had achieved his object. She had no share in the secret.

Arthur Dillon was his father's son, for her. He studied the pictures, and carefully examined the rooms, his admiration provoking Judy into a display of their beauties. With the skill and satisfaction of an artist in man-hunting, he observed how thoroughly the character of the young man displayed itself in the trifles of decoration and furnishing.

The wooden crucifix with the pathetic figure in bronze on the wall over the desk, the holy water stoup at the door, carved figures of the Holy Family, a charming group, on the desk, exquisite etchings of the Christ and the Madonna after the masters, a prie-dieu in the inner room with a group of works of devotion: and Edith had declared him no Catholic. Here was the refutation.

"He is a pious man," Curran said.

"And no wan sees it but God and himself. So much the betther, I say," Judy remarked. "Only thim that had sorra knows how to pray, an' he prays like wan that had his fill of it."

The tears came into the man's eyes at the indications of Arthur's love for poor Erin. Hardness was the mark of Curran, and sin had been his lifelong delight; but for his country he had kept a tenderness and devotion that softened and elevated his nature at times. Of little use and less honor to his native land, he felt humbled in this room, whose books, pictures, and ornaments revealed thought and study in behalf of a harried and wretched people, yet the student was not a native of Ireland. It seemed profane to set foot here, to spy upon its holy privacy. He felt glad that its details gave the lie so emphatically to Edith's instincts.

The astonishing thing was the absence of Californian relics and mementoes. Some photographs and water colors, whose names Curran mentally copied for future use, pictured popular scenes on the Pacific slope; but they could be bought at any art store. Surely his life in the mines, with all the luck that had come to him, must have held some great bitterness, that he never spoke of it casually, and banished all remembrances.

That would come up later, but Curran had made up his mind that no secret of Arthur's life should ever see the light because he found it. Not even vengeful Edith, and she had the right to hate her enemy, should wring from him any disagreeable facts in the lad's career. So deeply the detective respected him!

In the place of honor, at the foot of his bed, where his eyes rested on them earliest and latest, hung a group of portraits in oil, in the same frame, of Louis the beloved, from his babyhood to the present time: on the side wall hung a painting of Anne in her first glory as mistress of the new home in Washington Square; opposite, Monsignor smiled down in purple splendor; two miniatures contained the grave, sweet, motherly face of Mary Everard and the auburn hair and lovely face of Mona.

"There are the people he loves," said Curran with emotion.

"Ay, indade," Judy said tenderly, "an' did ever a wild boy like him love his own more? Night an' day his wan thought is of them. The sun rises an' sets for him behind that picther there," pointing to Louis' portraits. "If annythin' had happened to that lovely child last Spring he'd a-choked the life out o' wan woman wid his own two hands. He's aisy enough, God knows, but I'd rather jump into the say than face him when the anger is in him."

"He's a terrible man," said Curran, repeating Edith's phrase.

He examined some manuscript in Arthur's handwriting. How different from the careless scrawl of Horace Endicott this clear, bold, dashing script, which ran full speed across the page, yet turned with ease and leisurely from the margin. What a pity Edith could not see with her own eyes these silent witnesses to the truth. Beyond the study was a music-room, where hung his violin over some scattered music. Horace Endicott hated the practising of the art, much as he loved the opera. It was all very sweet, just what the detective would have looked for, beautiful to see. He could have lingered in the rooms and speculated on that secret and manly life, whose currents were so feebly but shiningly indicated in little things. It occurred to him that copies of the daguerreotypes, Arthur at fourteen and his father at twenty-five, would be of service in the search through California. He spoke of it to Judy.

"Sure that was done years ago," said Judy cautiously. "Anne Dillon wouldn't have it known for the world, ye see, but I know that she sint a thousand o' thim to the polis in California; an' that's the way she kem across the lad. Whin he found his mother shtill mournin' him, he wrote to her that he had made his pile an' was comin' home. Anne has the pride in her, an' she wants all the world to believe he kem home of himself, d'ye see? Now kape that a secret, mind."

"And do you never let on what I've been telling you," said Curran gravely. "It may come to nothing, and it may come to much, but we must be silent."

She had given her word, and Judy's word was like the laws of the Medes and Persians. Curran rejoiced at the incident of the daguerreotypes, which anticipated his proposed search in California. Vainly however did he describe the result of his inquiry for Edith. She would have none of his inferences. He must try to entrap Anne Dillon and the priest, and afterwards he might scrape the surface of California.



CHAPTER XXIX.

THE NERVE OF ANNE.

Curran laid emphasis in his account to his wife on the details of Arthur's rooms, and on the photographs which had helped to discover the lost boy in California. Edith laughed at him.

"Horace Endicott invented that scheme of the photographs," said she. "The dear clever boy! If he had been the detective, not a stupid like you! I saw Arthur Dillon in church many times in four years, and I tell you he is not a Catholic born, no matter what you saw in his rooms. He's playing the part of Arthur Dillon to the last letter. Don't look at me that way, Dick or I'll scratch your face. You want to say that I am crazy over this theory, and that I have an explanation ready for all your objections."

"I have nothing to say, I am just working on your lines, dearie," he replied humbly.

"Just now your game is busy with an affair of the heart. He won't be too watchful, unless, as I think, he's on our tracks all the time. You ought to get at his papers."

"A love affair! Our tracks!" Curran repeated in confusion.

"Do you think you can catch a man like Arthur napping?" she sneered. "Is there a moment in the last four years that he has been asleep? See to it that you are not reported to him every night. But if he is in love with Honora Ledwith, there's a chance that he won't see or care to see what you are doing. She's a lovely girl. A hint of another woman would settle his chances of winning her. I can give her that. I'd like to. A woman of her stamp has no business marrying."

She mused a few minutes over her own statements, while Curran stared. He began to feel that the threads of this game were not all in his hands.

"You must now go to the priest and Anne Dillon," she resumed, "and say to them plump ... take the priest first ... say to them plump before they can hold their faces in shape: do you know Horace Endicott? Then watch the faces, and get what you can out of them."

"That means you will have Arthur down on you next day."

"Sure," catching her breath. "But it is now near the end of the season. When he comes to have it out with me, he will find himself face to face with Sonia. If it's to be a fight, he'll find a tiger. Then we can run away to California, if Sonia says so."

"You are going to bring Sonia down, then?"

"You suggested it. Lemme tell you what you're going to find out to-day. You're going to find out that Monsignor knew Horace Endicott. After that I think it would be all right to bring down Sonia."

Little use to argue with her, or with any woman for that matter, once an idea lodged so deep in her brain. He went to see Monsignor, with the intention of being candid with him: in fact there was no other way of dealing with the priest. In his experience Curran had found no class so difficult to deal with as the clergy. They were used to keeping other people's secrets as well as their own. He did not reveal his plan to Edith, because he feared her criticism, and could not honestly follow her methods. He had not, with all his skill and cunning, her genius for ferreting.

Monsignor, acquainted with him, received him coldly. Edith's instructions were, ask the question plump, watch his face, and then run to Anne Dillon before she can be warned by the Monsignor's messenger. Looking into the calm, well-drilled countenance of the priest, Curran found it impossible to surprise him so uncourteously. Anyway the detective felt sure that there would be no surprise, except at the mere question.

"I would like to ask you a question, Monsignor," said Curran smoothly, "which I have no right to ask perhaps. I am looking for a man who disappeared some time ago, and the parties interested hope that you can give some information. You can tell me if the question is at all impertinent, and I will go. Do you know Horace Endicott?"

There was no change in the priest's expression or manner, no starting, no betrayal of feeling. Keeping his eyes on the detective's face, he repeated the name as one utters a half-forgotten thing.

"Why has that name a familiar sound?" he asked himself.

"You may have read it frequently in the papers at the time Horace Endicott disappeared," Curran suggested.

"Possibly, but I do not read the journals so carefully," Monsignor answered musingly. "Endicott, Endicott ... I have it ... and it brings to my mind the incident of the only railroad wreck in which I have ever had the misfortune to be ... only this time it was good fortune for one poor man."

Very deliberately he told the story of the collision and of his slight acquaintance with the young fellow whose name, as well as he could remember, was Endicott. The detective handed him a photograph of the young man.

"How clearly this picture calls up the whole scene," said Monsignor much pleased. "This is the very boy. Have you a copy of this? Do send me one."

"You can keep that," said Curran, delighted at his progress, astonished that Edith's prophecy should have come true. Naturally the next question would be, have you seen the young man since that time? and Curran would have asked it had not the priest broken in with a request for the story of his disappearance. It was told.

"Of course I shall be delighted to give what information I possess," said Monsignor. "There was no secret about him then ... many others saw him ... of course this must have been some time before he disappeared. But let me ask a question before we go any further. How did you suspect my acquaintance with a man whom I met so casually? The incident had almost faded from my mind. In fact I have never mentioned it to a soul."

"It was a mere guess on the part of those interested in finding him."

"Still the guess must have been prompted by some theory of the search."

"I am almost ashamed to tell it," Curran said uneasily. "The truth is that my employers suspect that Horace Endicott has been hiding for years under the character of Arthur Dillon."

Monsignor looked amazed for a moment and then laughed.

"Interesting for Mr. Dillon and his friends, particularly if this Endicott is wanted for any crime...."

"Oh, no, no," cried the detective. "It is his wife who is seeking him, a perfectly respectable man, you know ... it's a long story. We have chased many a man supposed to be Endicott, and Mr. Dillon is the latest. I don't accept the theory myself. I know Dillon is Dillon, but a detective must sift the theories of his employers. In fact my work up to this moment proves very clearly that of all our wrong chases this is the worst."

"It looks absurd at first sight. I remember the time poor Mrs. Dillon sent out her photographs, scattered a few hundred of them among the police and the miners of California, in the hope of finding her lost son. That was done with my advice. She had her first response, a letter from her son, about the very time that I met young Endicott. For the life of me I cannot understand why anyone should suppose Arthur Dillon...."

He picked up the photograph of Endicott again.

"The two men look as much alike as I look like you. I'm glad you mentioned the connection which Dillon has with the matter. You will kindly leave me out of it until you have made inquiries of Mr. Dillon himself. It would not do, you understand, for a priest in my position to give out any details in a matter which may yet give trouble. I fear that in telling you of my meeting with Endicott I have already overstepped the limits of prudence. However, that was my fault, as you warned me. Thanks for the photograph, a very nice souvenir of a tragedy. Poor young fellow! Better had he perished in the smash-up than to go out of life in so dreary a way."

"If I might venture another——"

"Pardon, not another word. In any official and public way I am always ready to tell what the law requires, or charity demands."

"You would be willing then to declare that Arthur Dillon——"

"Is Mrs. Dillon's son? Certainly ... at any time, under proper conditions. Good morning. Don't mention it," and Curran was outside the door before his thoughts took good shape; so lost in wonder over the discovery of Monsignor's acquaintance with Endicott, that he forgot to visit Anne Dillon. Instead he hurried home with the news to Edith, and blushed with shame when she asked if he had called on Anne. She forgave his stupidity in her delight, and put him through his catechism on all that had been said and seen in the interview with Monsignor.

"You are a poor stick," was her comment, and for the first time in years he approved of her opinion. "The priest steered you about and out with his little finger, and the corner of his eye. He did not give you a chance to ask if he had ever seen Horace Endicott since. Monsignor will not lie for any man. He simply refuses to answer on the ground that his position will not permit it. You will never see the priest again on this matter. Arthur Dillon will bid you stand off. Well, you see what my instinct is now! Are you more willing to believe in it when it says: Arthur Dillon is Horace Endicott?"

"Not a bit, sweetheart."

"I won't fight with you, since you are doing as I order. Go to Anne Dillon now. Mind, she's already prepared by this time for your visit. You may run against Arthur instead of her. While you are gone I shall write to Sonia that we have at last found a clue, and ask her to come on at once. Dillon may not give us a week to make our escape after he learns what we have been doing. We must be quick. Go, my dear old stupid, and bear in mind that Anne Dillon is the cunningest cat you've had to do with yet."

She gave an imitation of the lady that was funny to a degree, and sent the detective off laughing, but not at all convinced that there was any significance in his recent discovery. He felt mortified to learn again for the hundredth time how a prejudice takes the edge off intellect. Though certain Edith's theory was wrong, why should he act like a donkey in disproving it? On the contrary his finest skill was required, and methods as safe as if Dillon were sure to turn out Endicott. He sharpened his blade for the coming duel with Anne, whom Monsignor had warned, without doubt. However, Anne had received no warning and she met Curran with her usual reserve. He was smoothly brutal.

"I would like to know if you are acquainted with Mr. Horace Endicott?" said he.

Anne's face remained as blank as the wall, and her manner tranquil. She had never heard the name before, for in the transactions between herself and her son only the name of Arthur Dillon had been mentioned, while of his previous life she knew not a single detail. Curran not disappointed, hastened, after a pause, to explain his own rudeness.

"I never heard the name," said Anne coldly. "Nor do I see by what right you come here and ask questions."

"Pardon my abruptness," said the detective. "I am searching for a young man who disappeared some years ago, and his friends are still hunting for him, still anxious, so that they follow the most absurd clues. I am forced to ask this question of all sorts of people, only to get the answer which you have given. I trust you will pardon me for my presumption for the sake of people who are suffering."

His speech warned her that she had heard her son's name for the first time, that she stood on the verge of exposure; and her heart failed her, she felt that her voice would break if she ventured to speak, her knees give way if she resented this man's manner by leaving the room. Yet the weakness was only for a moment, and when it passed a wild curiosity to hear something of that past which had been a sealed book to her, to know the real personality of Arthur Dillon, burned her like a flame, and steadied her nerves. For two years she had been resenting his secrecy, not understanding his reasons. He was guarding against the very situation of this moment.

"Horace Endicott," she repeated with interest. "There is no one of that name in my little circle, and I have never heard the name before. Who was he? And how did he come to be lost?"

And she rose to indicate that his reply must be brief.

Curran told with eloquence of the disappearance and the long search, and gave a history of Endicott's life in nice detail, pleased with the unaffected interest of this severe but elegant woman. As he spoke his eye took in every mark of feeling, every gesture, every expression. Her self-command, if she knew Horace Endicott, remained perfect; if she knew him not, her manner seemed natural.

"God pity his poor people," was her fervent comment as she took her seat again. "I was angry with you at first, sir," looking at his card, "and of a mind to send you away for what looked like impertinence. But it's I would be only too glad to give you help if I could. I never even heard the young man's name. And it puzzles me, why you should come to me."

"For this reason, Mrs. Dillon," he said with sincere disgust. "The people who are hunting for Horace Endicott think that Arthur Dillon is the man; or to put it in another way, that you were deceived when you welcomed back your son from California. Horace Endicott and not Arthur Dillon returned."

"My God!" cried she, and sat staring at him; then rose up and began to move towards the door backwards, keeping an eye upon him. Her thought showed clear to the detective: she had been entertaining a lunatic. He laughed.

"Don't go," he said. "I know what you imagine, but I'm no lunatic. I don't believe that your son is an impostor. He is a friend of mine, and I know that he is Arthur Dillon. But a man in my business must do as he is ordered by his employers. I am a detective."

For a minute she hesitated with hand outstretched to the bell-rope. Her mind acted with speed; she had nothing to fear, the man was friendly, his purpose had failed, whatever it was, the more he talked the more she would learn, and it might be in her power to avert danger by policy. She went back to her seat, having left it only to act her part. Taking the hint provided by Curran, she pretended belief in his insanity, and passed to indignation at this attempt upon her happiness, her motherhood. This rage became real, when she reflected that the Aladdin palace of her life was really threatened by Curran's employers. To her the prosperity and luxury of the past five years had always been dream-like in its fabric, woven of the mists of morning, a fairy enchantment, which might vanish in an hour and leave poor Cinderella sitting on a pumpkin by the roadside, the sport of enemies, the burden of friends. How near she had been to this public humiliation! What wretches, these people who employed the detective!

"My dear boy was absent ten years," she said, "and I suffered agony all that time. What hearts must some people have to wish to put me through another time like that! Couldn't any wan see that I accepted him as my son? that all the neighbors accepted him? What could a man want to deceive a poor mother so? I had nothing to give him but the love of a mother, and men care little for that, wild boys care nothing for it. He brought me a fortune, and has made my life beautiful ever since he came back. I had nothing to give him. Who is at the bottom of this thing?"

The detective explained the existence and motives of a deserted, poverty-stricken wife and child.

"I knew a woman would be at the bottom of it," she exclaimed viciously, feeling against Sonia a hatred which she knew to be unjust. "Well, isn't she able to recognize her own husband? If I could tell my son after ten years, when he had grown to be a man, can't she tell her own husband after a few years? Could it be that my boy played Horace Endicott in Boston and married that woman, and then came back to me?"

"Oh, my dear Mrs. Dillon," cried the detective in alarm, "do not excite yourself over so trifling a thing. Your son is your son no matter what our theories may be. This Endicott was born and brought up in the vicinity of Boston, and came from a very old family. Your suspicion is baseless. Forget the whole matter I beg of you."

"Have you a picture of the young man?"

He handed her the inevitable photograph reluctantly, quite sure that she would have hysterics before he left, so sincere was her excitement. Anne studied the portrait with keen interest, it may be imagined, astonished to find it so different from Arthur Dillon. Had she blundered as well as the detective? Between this portrait and any of the recent photographs of Arthur there seemed no apparent resemblance in any feature. She had been exciting herself for nothing.

"Wonderful are the ways of men," was her comment. "How any one ..." her brogue had left her ... "could take Arthur Dillon for this man, even supposing he was disguised now, is strange and shameful. What is to be the end of it?"

"Just this, dear madam," said Curran, delighted at her returning calmness. "I shall tell them what you have said, what every one says, and they'll drop the inquiry as they have dropped about one hundred others. If they are persistent, I shall add that you are ready to go into any court in the land and swear positively that you know your own son."

"Into twenty courts," she replied with fervor, and the tears, real tears came into her eyes; then, at sight of Aladdin's palace as firm as ever on its frail foundations, the tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Precisely. And now if you would be kind enough to keep this matter from the ears of Mr. Dillon ... he's a great friend of mine ... I admire him ... I was with him in the little expedition to Ireland, you know ... and it was to save him pain that I came to you first ... if it could be kept quiet——"

"I want it kept quiet," she said with decision, "but at the same time Arthur must know of these cruel suspicions. Oh, how my heart beats when I think of it! Without him ten years, and then to have strangers plan to take him from me altogether ... forever ... forever ... oh!"

Curran perspired freely at the prospect of violent hysterics. No man could deal more rudely with the weak and helpless with right on his side, or if his plans demanded it. Before a situation like this he felt lost and foolish.

"Certainly he must know in time. I shall tell him myself, as soon as I make my report of the failure of this clue to my employers. I would take it as a very great favor if you would permit me to tell him. It must come very bitter to a mother to tell her son that he is suspected of not being her son. Let me spare you that anguish."

Anne played with him delightfully, knowing that she had him at her mercy, not forgetting however that the sport was with tigers. Persuaded to wait a few days while Curran made his report, in return he promised to inform her of the finding of poor Endicott at the proper moment. The detective bowed himself out, the lady smiled. A fair day's work! She had learned the name and the history of the young man known as Arthur Dillon in a most delightful way. The doubt attached to this conclusion did not disturb her. Wonderful, that Arthur Dillon should look so little like the portrait of Horace Endicott! More wonderful still that she, knowing Arthur was not her son, had come to think of him, to feel towards him, and to act accordingly, as her son! Her rage over this attempt upon the truth and the fact of their relationship grew to proportions.



CHAPTER XXX.

UNDER THE EYES OF HATE.

Edith's inference from the interviews with the Monsignor and Anne did justice to her acuteness. The priest alone knew the true personality of Arthur. From Anne all but the fact of his disappearance had been kept, probably to guard against just such attempts as Curran's. The detective reminded her that her theory stood only because of her method of selection from his investigations. Nine facts opposed and one favored her contention: therefore nine were shelved, leaving one to support the edifice of her instincts or her suspicions. She stuck out her tongue at him.

"It shows how you are failing when nine out of ten facts, gathered in a whole day's work, are worthless. Isn't that one fact, that the priest knew Horace Endicott, worth all your foolish reasonings? Who discovered it? Now, will you coax Sonia Endicott down here to have a look at this Arthur Dillon? Before we start for California?"

He admitted humbly that the lady would not accept his invitation, without stern evidence of a valuable clue. The detectives had given her many a useless journey.

"She'll be at the Everett House to-morrow early in the morning," said Edith proudly. "Want to know why, stupid? I sent her a message that her game had been treed at last ... by me."

He waved his hands in despair.

"Then you'll do the talking, Madam Mischief."

"And you'll never say a word, even when asked. What! would I let you mesmerize her at the start by telling her how little you think of my idea and my plans? She would think as little of them as you do, when you got through. No! I shall tell her, I shall plan for her, I shall lead her to the point of feeling where that long experience with Horace Endicott will become of some use in piercing the disguise of Arthur Dillon. You would convince her she was not to see Horace Endicott, and of course she would see only Arthur Dillon. I'll convince her she is to see her runaway husband, and then if she doesn't I'll confess defeat."

"There's a good deal in your method," he admitted in a hopeless way.

"We are in for it now," she went on, scorning the compliment. "By this time Arthur Dillon knows, if he did not before, that I am up to mischief. He may fall on us any minute. He will not suffer this interference: not because he cares two cents one way or the other, but because he will not have us frightening his relatives and friends, telling every one that he is two. Keep out of his way so that he shall have to come here, and to send word first that he is coming. I'll arrange a scene for him with his Sonia. It may be sublime, and again it may be a fizzle. One way or the other, if Sonia says so, we'll fly to the west out of his way. The dear, dear boy!"

"He'll dear you after that scene!"

"Now, do you make what attempts you may to find out where he keeps his money, he must have piles of it, and search his papers, his safe...."

"He has nothing of the kind ... everything about him is as open as the day ... it's an impertinence to bother him so ... well, he can manage you, I think ... no need for me to interfere or get irritated."

Then she had a tantrum, which galled the soul of Curran, except that it ended as usual in her soft whimpering, her childish murmuring, her sweet complaint against the world, and her falling asleep in his arms. Thus was he regularly conquered and led captive.

They went next day at noon to visit Sonia Endicott at the Everett House, where she had established herself with her little boy and his nurse. Her reception of the Currans, while supercilious in expression, was really sincere. They represented her hope in that long search of five years, which only a vigorous hate had kept going. Marked with the characteristics of the cat, velvety to eye and touch, insolent and elusive in her glance, undisciplined, she could act a part for a time. To Horace Endicott she had played the role of a child of light, an elf, a goddess, for which nature had dressed her with golden hair, melting eyes of celestial blue, and exquisite form.

The years had brought out the animal in her. She found it more and more difficult to repress the spite, rage, hatred, against Horace and fate, which consumed her within, and violated the external beauty with unholy touches, wrinkles, grimaces, tricks of sneering, distortions of rage. Her dreams of hatred had only one scene: a tiger in her own form rending the body of the man who had discovered and punished her with a power like omnipotence; rending him but not killing him, leaving his heart to beat and his face unmarked, that he might feel his agony and show it.

"If you had sent me the telegram," she remarked to Curran, "I would not have come. But this dear Colette, she is to be my good angel and lead me to success, aren't you, little devil? Ever since she took up the matter I have had my beautiful dreams once more, oh, such thrilling dreams! Like the novels of Eugene Sue, just splendid. Well, why don't you speak?"

He pointed to Edith with a gesture of submission. She was hugging the little boy before the nurse took him away, teasing him into baby talk, kissing him decorously but lavishly, as if she could not get enough of him.

"He's not to speak until asked," she cried.

"And then only say what she thinks," he added.

"La! are you fighting over it already? That's not a good sign."

With a final embrace which brought a howl from young Horace, Edith gave the boy to the nurse and began her story of finding Horace Endicott in the son of Anne Dillon. She acted the story, admirably keeping back the points which would have grated on Sonia's instincts, or rather expectations. The lady, impressed, evidently felt a lack of something when Curran refused his interest and his concurrence to the description.

"What do you wish me to do?" said she.

"To see this Dillon and to study him, as one would a problem. The man's been playing this part, living it indeed, nearly five years. Can any one expect that the first glance will pierce his disguise? He must be watched and studied for days, and if that fetches nothing, then you must meet him suddenly, and say to him tenderly, 'at last, Horace!' If that fetches nothing, then we must go to California, and work until we get the evidence which will force him to acknowledge himself and give up his money. But by that time, if we can make sure it is he, and if we can get his money, then I would recommend one thing! Kill him!"

Sonia's eyes sparkled at the thought of that sweet murder.

"And wait another five years for all this," was her cynical remark.

"If the question is not settled this Fall, then let it go forever," said Edith with energy.

"The scheme is well enough," Sonia said lazily. "Is this Arthur Dillon handsome, a dashing blade?"

"Better," murmured Edith with a smack of her lips, "a virtuous sport, who despises the sex in a way, and can master woman by a look. He is my master. And I hate him! It will be worth your time to see him and meet him."

"And now you," to Curran.

Sonia did not know, nor care why Edith hated Dillon.

"I protest, Sonia. He will put a spell on you, and spoil our chances. Let him talk later when we have succeeded or failed."

"Nonsense, you fool. I must hear both sides, but I declare now that I submit myself to you wholly. What do you say, Curran?"

"Just this, madam: if this man Arthur Dillon is really your husband, then he's too clever to be caught by any power in this world. Any way you choose to take it, you will end as this search has always ended."

"Why do you think him so clever? My Horace was anything but clever ... at least we thought so ... until now."

"Until he has foiled every attempt to find him," said Curran. "Colette has her own ideas, but she has kept back all the details that make or unmake a case. She is so sure of her instincts! No doubt they are good."

"But not everything, hey?" said the lady tenderly. "Ah, a woman's instincts lead her too far sometimes...." they all laughed. "Well, give me the details Colette left out. No winking at each other. I won't raise a hand in this matter until I have heard both sides."

"This Arthur Dillon is Irish, and lives among the Irish in the old-fashioned Irish way, half in the slums, and half in the swell places...."

"Mon Dieu, what is this I hear! The Irish! My Horace live among the Irish! That's not the man. He could live anywhere, among the Chinese, the Indians, the niggers, but with that low class of people, never!" and she threw up her hands in despair. "Did I come from Boston to pursue a low Irishman!"

"You see," cried Edith. "Already he has cast his spell on you. He doesn't believe I have found your man, and he won't let you believe it. Can't you see that this Horace went to the very place where you were sure he would not go?"

"You cannot tell him now from an Irishman," continued the detective. "He has an Irish mother, he is a member of Tammany Hall, he is a politician who depends on Irish voters, he joined the Irish revolutionists and went over the sea to fight England, and he's in love with an Irish girl."

"Shocking! Horace never had any taste or any sense, but I know he detested the Irish around Boston. I can't believe it of him. But, as Colette says truly, he would hide himself in the very place where we least think of looking for him."

"Theories have come to nothing," screamed Edith, until the lady placed her hands on her ears. "Skill and training and coolness and all that rot have come to nothing. Because I hate Arthur Dillon I have discovered Horace Endicott. Now I want to see your eyes looking at this man, eyes with hate in them, and with murder in them. They will discover more than all the stupid detectives in the country. See what hate did for Horace Endicott. He hated you, and instead of murdering you he learned to torture you. He hated you, and it made him clever. Oh, hate is a great teacher! This fool of mine loves Arthur Dillon, because he is a patriot and hates England. Hate breeds cleverness, it breeds love, it opens the mind, it will dig out Horace Endicott and his fortune, and enrich us all."

"La, but you are strenuous," said the lady placidly, but impressed. She was a shallow creature in the main, and Curran compared his little wife, eloquent, glowing with feeling, dainty as a flame, to the slower-witted beauty, with plain admiration in his gaze. She deserves to succeed, he thought. Sonia came to a conclusion, languidly.

"We must try the eyes of hate," was her decision.

The pursuit of Arthur proved very interesting. The detective knew his habits of labor and amusement, his public haunts and loitering-places. Sonia saw him first at the opera, modestly occupying a front seat in the balcony.

"Horace would never do that when he could get a box," and she leveled her glass at him.

Edith mentally dubbed her a fool. However, her study of the face and figure and behavior of the man showed care and intelligence. Edith's preparation had helped her. She saw a lean, nervous young man, whose flowing black hair and full beard were streaked with gray. His dark face, hollow in the cheeks and not too well-colored with the glow of health, seemed to get light and vivacity from his melancholy eyes. Seriousness was the characteristic expression. Once he laughed, in the whole evening. Once he looked straight into her face, with so fixed, so intense an expression, so near a gaze, so intimate and penetrating, that she gave a low cry.

"You have recognized him?" Edith whispered mad with joy.

"No, indeed," she answered sadly, "That is not Horace Endicott. Not a feature that I recall, certainly no resemblance. I was startled because I saw just now in his look, ... he looked towards me into the glass ... an expression that seemed familiar ... as if I had seen it before, and it had hurt me then as it hurts me now."

"There's a beginning," said Edith with triumph. "Next time for a nearer look."

"Oh, he could never have changed so," Sonia cried with bitterness of heart.

Curran secured tickets for a ball to be held by a political association in the Cherry Hill district, and placed the ladies in a quiet corner of the gallery of the hall. Arthur Dillon, as a leading spirit in the society, delighted to mingle with the homely, sincere, warm-hearted, and simple people for whom this occasion was a high festival; and nowhere did his sorrow rest so lightly on his soul, nowhere did he feel so keenly the delight of life, or give freer expression to it. Edith kept Sonia at the highest pitch of excitement and interest.

"Remember," she said now, "that he probably knows you are in town, that you are here watching him; but not once will he look this way, nor do a thing other than if you were miles away. My God, to be an actor like that!"

The actor played his part to perfection and to the utter disappointment of the women. The serious face shone now with smiles and color, with the flash of wit and the play of humor. Horace Endicott had been a merry fellow, but a Quaker compared with the butterfly swiftness and gaiety of this young man, who led the grand march, flirted with the damsels and chatted with the dames, danced as often as possible, joked with the men, found partners for the unlucky, and touched the heart of every rollicking moment. The old ladies danced jigs with him, proud to their marrow of the honor, and he allowed himself ... Sonia gasped at the sight ... to execute a wild Irish pas seul amid the thunderous applause of the hearty and adoring company.

"That man Horace Endicott!" she exclaimed with contempt. "Bah! But it's interesting, of course."

"What a compliment! what acting! oh, incomparable man!" said Edith, enraged at his success before such an audience. Her husband smiled behind his hand.

"You have a fine imagination, Colette, but I would not give a penny for your instinct," said Sonia.

"My instinct will win just the same, but I fear we shall have to go to California. This man is too clever for commonplace people."

"Arthur Dillon is a fine orator," said Curran mischievously, "and to-morrow night you shall hear him at his best on the sorrows of Ireland."

Sonia laughed heartily and mockingly. Were not these same sorrows, from their constancy and from repetition, become the joke of the world? Curran could have struck her evil face for the laugh.

"Was your husband a speaker?" he asked.

"Horace would not demean himself to talk in public, and he couldn't make a speech to save his life. But to talk on the sorrows of Ireland ... oh, it's too absurd."

"And why not Ireland's sorrows as well as those of America, or any other country?" he replied savagely.

"Oh, I quite forgot that you were Irish ... a thousand pardons," she said with sneering civility. "Of course, I shall be glad to hear his description of the sorrows. An orator! It's very interesting."

The occasion for the display of Arthur's powers was one of the numerous meetings for which the talking Irish are famous all over the world, and in which their clever speakers have received fine training. Even Sonia, impressed by the enthusiasm of the gathering, and its esteem for Dillon, could not withhold her admiration. Alas, it was not her Horace who poured out a volume of musical tone, vigorous English, elegant rhetoric, with the expression, the abandonment, the picturesqueness of a great actor. She shuddered at his descriptions, her heart melted and her eyes moistened at his pathos, she became filled with wonder. It was not Horace! Her husband might have developed powers of eloquence, but would have to be remade to talk in that fashion of any land. This Dillon had terrible passion, and her Horace was only a a handsome fool. She could have loved Dillon.

"So you will have to arrange the little scene where I shall stand before him without warning, and murmur tenderly, 'at last, Horace!' And it must be done without delay," was her command to Edith.

"It can be done perhaps to-morrow night," Edith said in a secret rage, wondering what Arthur Dillon could have seen in Sonia. "But bear in mind why I am doing this scene, with the prospects of a furious time afterwards with Dillon. I want you to see him asleep, just for ten minutes, in the light of a strong lamp. In sleep there is no disguise. When he is dressed for a part and playing it, the sharpest eyes, even the eyes of hate, may not be able to escape the glamour of the disguise. The actor asleep is more like himself. You shall look into his face, and turn it from side to side with your own hands. If you do not catch some feeling from that, strike a resemblance, I shall feel like giving up."

"La, but you are an audacious creature," said Sonia, and the triviality of the remark sent Edith into wild laughter. She would like to have bitten the beauty.

The detective consented to Edith's plans, in his anxiety to bring the farce to an end before the element of danger grew. Up to this point they might appeal to Arthur for mercy. Later the dogs would be upon them. As yet no sign of irritation on Arthur's part had appeared. The day after the oration on the sorrows of Erin he sent a note to Curran announcing his intention to call the same evening. Edith, amazed at her own courage in playing with the fire which in an instant could destroy her, against the warning of her husband, was bent on carrying out the scene.

Dearly she loved the dramatic off the stage, spending thought and time in its arrangement. How delicious the thought of this man and his wife meeting under circumstances so wondrous after five years of separation. Though death reached her the next moment she would see it. The weakness of the plot lay in Sonia's skepticism and Arthur's knowledge that a trap was preparing. He would brush her machinery aside like a cobweb, but that did not affect the chance of his recognition by Sonia.

Dillon had never lost his interest in the dancer and her husband. They attracted him. In their lives ran the same strain of madness, the madness of the furies, as in his own. Their lovable qualities were not few. Occasionally he dropped in to tease Edith over her lack of conscience, or her failures, and to discuss the cause of freedom with the smooth and flinty Curran. Wild humans have the charm of their wilderness. One must not forget their teeth and their claws. This night the two men sat alone. Curran filled the glasses and passed the cigars. Arthur made no comment on the absence of Edith. He might have been aware that the curtains within three feet of his chair, hiding the room beyond, concealed the two women, whose eyes, peering through small glasses fixed in the curtains, studied his face. He might even have guessed that his easy chair had been so placed as to let the light fall upon him while Curran sat in the dim light beyond. The young man gave no sign, spoke freely with Curran on the business of the night, and acted as usual.

"Of course it must be stopped at once," he said. "Very much flattered of course that I should be taken for Horace Endicott ... you gave away Tom Jones' name at last ... but these things, so trifling to you, jar the nerves of women. Then it would never do for me, with my little career in California unexplained, to have stories of a double identity ... is that what you call it?... running around. Of course I know it's that devil Edith, presuming always on good nature ... that's her nature ... but if you don't stop it, why I must."

"You'll have to do it, I think," the detective replied maliciously. "I can do only what she orders. I had to satisfy her by running to the priest, and your mother, and the Senator——"

"What! even my poor uncle! Oh, Curran!"

"The whole town, for that matter, Mr. Dillon. It was done in such a way, of course, that none of them suspected anything wrong, and we talked under promise of secrecy. I saw that the thing had to be done to satisfy her and to bring you down on us. Now you're down and the trouble's over as far as I am concerned."

"And Tom Jones was Horace Endicott," Arthur mused, "I knew it of course all along, but I respected your confidence. I had known Endicott."

"You knew Horace Endicott?" said Curran, horrified by a sudden vision of his own stupidity.

"And his lady, a lovely, a superb creature, but just a shade too sharp for her husband, don't you know. He was a fool in love, wasn't he? judging from your story of him. Has she become reconciled to her small income, I wonder? She was not that kind, but when one has to, that's the end of it. And there are consolations. How the past month has tired me. I could go to sleep right in the chair, only I want to settle this matter to-night, and I must say a kind word to the little devil——"

His voice faded away, and he slept, quite overpowered by the drug placed in his wine. After perfect silence for a minute, Curran beckoned to the women, who came noiseless into the room, and bent over the sleeping face. In his contempt for them, the detective neither spoke nor left his seat. Harpies brooding over the dead! Even he knew that!

Arthur's face lay in profile, its lines all visible, owing to the strong light, through the disguise of the beard. The melancholy which marks the face of any sleeper, a foreshadow of the eternal sleep, had become on this sleeper's countenance a profound sadness. From his seat Curran could see the pitiful droop of the mouth, the hollowness of the eyes, the shadows under the cheek-bones; marks of a sadness too deep for tears. Sonia took his face in her soft hands and turned the right profile to the light. She looked at the full face, smoothed his hair as if trying to recall an ancient memory.

"The eyes of hate," murmured Edith between tears and rage. She pitied while she hated him, understanding the sorrow that could mark a man's face so deeply, admiring the courage which could wear the mask so well. Sonia was deeply moved in spite of disappointment. At one moment she caught a fleeting glimpse of her Horace, but too elusive to hold and analyze. Something pinched her feelings and the great tears fell from her soft eyes. Emotion merely pinched her. Only in hate could she writhe and foam and exhaust nature. She studied his hands, observed the fingers, with the despairing conviction that this was not the man; too lean and too coarse and too hard; and her rage began to burn against destiny. Oh, to have Horace as helpless under her hands! How she could rend him!

"Do you see any likeness?" whispered Edith.

"None," was the despairing answer.

"Be careful," hissed Curran. "In this sleep words are heard and remembered sometimes."

Edith swore the great oaths which relieved her anger. But what use to curse, to look and curse again? At the last moment Curran signalled them away, and began talking about his surprise that Arthur should have known the lost man.

"Because you might have given me a clue," Arthur heard him saying as he came back from what he thought had been a minute's doze, "and saved me a year's search, not to mention the money I could have made."

"I'll tell you about it some other time," said Arthur with a yawn, as he lit a fresh cigar. "Ask madam to step in here, will you. I must warn her in a wholesome way."

"I think she is entertaining a friend," Curran said, hinting plainly at a surprise.

"Let her bring the friend along," was the careless answer.

The two women entered presently, and Edith made the introduction. The husband and wife stood face to face at last. Her voice failed in her throat from nervousness, so sure was she that the Endicotts had met again! They had the center of the stage, and the interest of the audience, but acted not one whit like the people in a play.

"Delighted," said Arthur in his usual drawling way on these occasions. "I have had the pleasure of meeting Mrs. Endicott before."

"Indeed," cried the lady. "I regret that my memory...."

"At Castle Moyna, a little fete, mother fainted because she saw me running across the lawn ... of course you remember...."

"Why, certainly ... we all felt so sorry for the young singer ... her father...."

"He was in jail and died since, poor man. Then I saw you coming across on the steamer with a dear, sweet, old lady...."

"My husband's aunt," Sonia gasped at the thought of Aunt Lois.

"Oh, but he's letter-perfect," murmured Edith in admiration.

"And you might remember me," said the heartless fellow, "but of course on a wedding-tour no one can expect the parties to remember anything, as the guide for a whole week to your party in California."

"Of course there was a guide," she admitted, very pleasant to meet him again, and so on to the empty end. Edith, stunned by her defeat, sat crushed, for this man no more minded the presence of his wife than did Curran. It was true. Arthur had often thought that a meeting like this in the far-off years would rock his nature as an earthquake rocks the solid plain. Though not surprised at her appearance, for Edith's schemes had all been foreseen, he felt surprise at his own indifference. So utterly had she gone out of his thought, that her sudden appearance, lovely and seductive as of old, gave him no twinge of hate, fear, repugnance, disgust, horror, shame, or pain.

He took no credit to himself for a self-control, which he had not been called upon by any stress of feeling to exercise. He was only Arthur Dillon, encountering a lady with a past; a fact in itself more or less amusing. Once she might have been a danger to be kept out like a pest, or barricaded in quarantine. That time had gone by. His indifference for the moment appalled him, since it showed the hopeless depth of Endicott's grave. After chatting honestly ten minutes, he went away light of heart, without venturing to warn Edith. Another day, he told her, and be good meanwhile.

Curran became thoughtful, and the women irritable after he had gone. Edith felt that her instincts had no longer a value in the market. In this wretched Endicott affair striking disappointment met the most brilliant endeavors. Sonia made ready to return to her hotel. Dolorously the Currans paid her the last courtesies, waiting for the word which would end the famous search for her Horace.

"I have been thinking the matter over," she said sweetly, "and I have thought out a plan, not in your line of course, which I shall see to at once. I think it worth while to look through California for points in the life of this interesting young man, Mr. Dillon."

When the door closed on her, Edith began to shriek in hysterical laughter.



CHAPTER XXXI.

THE HEART OF HONORA.

While Edith urged the search for Endicott, the little world to be horrified by her success enjoyed itself north and south as the season suggested, and the laws of fashion permitted. At the beginning of June, Anne settled herself comfortably for the summer in a roomy farmhouse, overlooking Lake Champlain and that particular island of Valcour, which once witnessed the plucky sea-fight and defeat of dare-devil Arnold. Only Honora accompanied her, but at the close of the month Louis, the deacon, and Mrs. Doyle Grahame joined them; and after that the whole world came at odd times, with quiet to-day and riot to-morrow. Honora, the center of interest, the storm-center, as we call it in these days, turned every eye in her direction with speculative interest. Would she retire to the convent, or find her vocation in the world? She had more than fulfilled her father's wish that she remain in secular life for a year. Almost two years had passed. He could not reproach her from his grave.

One divine morning she came upon the natural stage which had been the scene of a heart-drama more bitter to her than any sorrow. Walking alone in the solemn woods along the lake shore, the path suddenly ended on a rocky terrace, unshaded by trees, and directly over the water. Raspberry bushes made an enclosure there, in the center of which the stumps of two trees held a rough plank to make a seat. A stony beach curved inward from this point, the dark woods rose behind, and the soft waters made music in the hollows of the rock beneath her feet. Delightful with the perfume of the forest, the placid shores of Valcour, sun, and flower, and bird filling eye and ear with beauty, the sight of the spot chilled her heart. Here Lord Constantine had offered her his love and his life the year before. To her it had been a frightful scene, this strong, handsome, clever man, born to the highest things of mind, heart, talent and rank, kneeling before her, pleading with pallid face for her love, ... and all the rest of it! She would have sunk down with shame but for his kindness in accepting the situation, and carrying her through it.

Why his proposal shocked her his lordship could not see at first. He understood before his mournful interview and ended. Honora was of that class, to whom marriage does not present itself as a personal concern. She had the true feminine interest in the marriage of her friends, and had vaguely dreamed of her own march to the altar, an adoring lover, a happy home and household cares. Happy in the love of a charming mother and a high-hearted father, she had devoted her youthful days to them and to music. They stood between her and importunate lovers, whose intentions she had never divined.

With the years came trouble, the death of the mother, the earning of her living by her art, the care of her father, and the work for her native land. Lovers could not pursue this busy woman, occupied with father and native land, and daily necessity. The eternal round of travel, conspiracy, scheming, planning, spending, with its invariable ending of disappointment and weariness of heart, brought forth a longing for the peace of rest, routine, satisfied aspirations; and from a dream the convent became a passion, longed for as the oasis by the traveler in the sands.

Simple and sincere as light, the hollow pretence of the world disgusted her. Her temperament was of that unhappy fiber which sees the end almost as speedily as the beginning; change and death and satiety treading on the heels of the noblest enterprise. For her there seemed no happiness but in the possession of the everlasting, the unchangeable, the divinely beautiful. Out of these feelings and her pious habits rose the longing for the convent, for what seemed to be permanent, fixed, proportioned, without dust and dirt and ragged edges, and wholly devoted to God.

After a little Lord Constantine understood her astonishment, her humiliation, her fright. He had a wretched satisfaction in knowing that no other man would snatch this prize; but oh, how bitter to give her up even to God! The one woman in all time for him, more could be said in her praise still; her like was not outside heaven. How much this splendid lake, with sapphire sky and green shores, lacked of true beauty until she stepped like light into view; then, as for the first time, one saw the green woods glisten, the waters sparkle anew, the sky deepen in richness! One had to know her heart, her nature, so nobly dowered, to see this lighting up of nature's finest work at her coming. She was beautiful, white as milk, with eyes like jewels, framed in lashes of silken black, so dark, so dark!

Honora wept at the sight of his face as he went away. She had seen that despair in her father's face. And she wept to-day as she sat on the rough bench. Had she been to blame? Why had she delayed her entrance into the convent a year beyond the time? Arthur had declared his work could not get on without her for at least an extra half year. She was lingering still? Had present comfort shaken her resolution?

A cry roused her from her mournful thoughts, and she looked up to see Mona rounding the point at the other end of the stony beach, laboring at the heavy oars. Honora smiled and waved her handkerchief. Here was one woman for whom life had no problems, only solid contentment, and perennial interest; and who thought her husband the finest thing in the world. She beached her boat and found her way up to the top of the rock. To look at her no one would dream, Honora certainly did not, that she had any other purpose than breathing the air.

Mrs. Doyle Grahame enjoyed the conviction that marriage settles all difficulties, if one goes about it rightly. She had gone about it rightly, with marvellous results. That charming bear her father had put his neck in her yoke, and now traveled about in her interest as mild as a clam. All men gasped at the sight of his meekness. When John Everard Grahame arrived on this planet, his grandfather fell on his knees before him and his parents, and never afterwards departed from that attitude. Doyle Grahame laid it to his art of winning a father-in-law. Mona found the explanation simply in the marriage, which to her, from the making of the trousseau to the christening of the boy, had been wonderful enough to have changed the face of the earth. The delicate face, a trifle fuller, had increased in dignity. Her hair flamed more glorious than ever. As a young matron she patronized Honora now an old maid.

"You've been crying," said she, with a glance around, "and I don't wonder. This is the place where you broke a good man's heart. It will remain bewitched until you accept some other man in the same spot. How did we know, Miss Cleverly? Do you think Conny was as secret as you? And didn't I witness the whole scene from the point yonder? I couldn't hear the words, but there wasn't any need of it. Heavens, the expression of you two!"

"Mona, do you mean to tell me that every one knew it?"

"Every soul, my dear ostrich with your head in the sand. The hope is that you will not repeat the refusal when the next lover comes along. And if you can arrange to have the scene come off here, as you arranged for the last one ... I have always maintained that the lady with a convent vocation is by nature the foxiest of all women. I don't know why, but she shows it."

The usual fashion of teasing Honora attributed to her qualities opposed to a religious vocation.

"Well, I have made up my mind to fly at once to the convent," she said, "with my foxiness and other evil qualities. If it was my fault that one man proposed to me——"

"It was your fault, of course. Why do you throw doubt upon it?"

"It will not be my fault that the second man proposes. So, this place may remain accursed forever. Oh, my poor Lord Constantine! After all his kindness to father and me, to be forced to inflict such suffering on him! Why do men care for us poor creatures so much, Mona?"

"Because we care so much for them ..." Honora laughed ... "and because we are necessary to their happiness. You should go round the stations on your knees once a day for the rest of your life, for having rejected Lord Conny. It wasn't mere ingratitude ... that was bad enough; but to throw over a career so splendid, to desert Ireland so outrageously," this was mere pretence ... "to lose all importance in life for the sake of a dream, for the sake of a convent."

"You have a prejudice against convents, Mona."

"No, dear, I believe in convents for those who are made that way. I have noticed, perhaps you have too, that many people who should go to a convent will not, and many people at present in the cloisters ought to have stayed where nature put them first."

"It's pleasant on a day like this for you to feel that you are just where nature intended you to be, isn't it? How did you leave the baby?"

Mona leaped into a rhapsody on the wonderful child, who was just then filling the time of Anne, and at the same time filling the air with howlings, but returned speedily to her purpose.

"Did you say you had fixed the day, Honora?"

"In September, any day before the end of the month."

"You were never made for the convent," with seriousness. "Too fond of the running about in life, and your training is all against it."

"My training!" said Honora.

"All your days you were devoted to one man, weren't you? And to the cause of a nation, weren't you? And to the applause of the crowd, weren't you? Now, my dear, when you find it necessary to make a change in your habits, the changes should be in line with those habits. Otherwise you may get a jolt that you won't forget. In a convent, there will be no man, no Ireland, and no crowd, will there? What you should have done was to marry Lord Conny, and to keep right on doing what you had done before, only with more success. Now when the next man comes along, do not let the grand opportunity go."

"I'll risk the jolt," Honora replied. "But this next man about whom you have been hinting since you came up here? Is this the man?"

She pointed to the path leading into the woods. Louis came towards them in a hurry, having promised them a trip to the rocks of Valcour. The young deacon was in fighting trim after a month on the farm, the pallor of hard study and confinement had fled, and the merry prospect ahead made his life an enchantment. Only his own could see the slight but ineffaceable mark of his experience with Sister Claire.

"Take care," whispered Mona. "He is not the man, but the man's agent."

Louis bounced into the raspberry enclosure and flung himself at their feet.

"Tell me," said Honora mischievously. "Is there any man in love with me, and planning to steal away my convent from me? Tell me true, Louis."

The deacon sat up and cast an indignant look on his sister.

"Shake not thy gory locks at me," she began cooly....

"There it is," he burst out. "Do you know, Honora, I think marriage turns certain kinds of people, the redheads in particular, quite daft. This one is never done talking about her husband, her baby, her experience, her theory, her friends who are about to marry, or who want to marry, or who can't marry. She can't see two persons together without patching up a union for them...."

"Everybody should get married," said Mona serenely, "except priests and nuns. Mona is not a nun, therefore she should get married."

"The reasoning is all right," replied the deacon, "but it doesn't apply here. Don't you worry, Honora. There's no man about here that will worry you, and even if there was, hold fast to that which is given thee...."

"Don't quote Scripture, Reverend Sir," cried Mona angrily.

"The besotted world is not worth the pother this foolish young married woman makes over it."

The foolish young woman received a warning from her brother when Mona went into the woods to gather an armful of wild blossoms for the boat.

"Don't you know," said he with the positiveness of a young theologian, "that Arthur will probably never marry? Has he looked at a girl in that way since he came back from California? He's giddy enough, I know, but one that studies him can see he has no intention of marrying. Now why do you trouble this poor girl, after her scene with the Englishman, with hints of Arthur? I tell you he will never marry."

"You may know more about him than I do," his sister placidly answered, "but I have seen him looking at Honora for the last five years, and working for her, and thinking about her. His look changed recently. Perhaps you know why. There's something in the air. I can feel it. You can't. None of you celibates can. And you can't see beyond your books in matters of love and marriage. That's quite right. We can manage such things better. And if Arthur makes up his mind to win her, I'm bound she shall have him."

"We can manage! I'm bound!" he mimicked. "Well, remember that I warned you. It isn't so much that your fingers may be burned ... that's what you need, you married minx. You may do harm to those two. They seem to be at peace. Let 'em alone."

"What was the baby doing when you left the house?" said she for answer.

"Tearing the nurse's hair out in handfuls," said the proud uncle, as he plunged into a list of the doings of the wonderful child, who fitted into any conversation as neatly as a preposition.

Mona, grew sad at heart. Her brother evidently knew of some obstacle to this union, something in Arthur's past life which made his marriage with any woman impossible. She recalled his silence about the California episode, his indifference to women, his lack of enthusiasm as to marriage.

They rowed away over the lake, with the boat half buried in wild bushes, sprinkled with dandelion flowers and the tender blossoms of the apple trees. Honora was happy, at peace. She put the scene with Lord Constantine away from her, and forgot the light words of Mona.

Whoever the suitor might be, Arthur did not appear to her as a lover. So careful had he been in his behavior, that Louis would have as much place in her thought as Arthur, who had never discouraged her hope of the convent, except by pleading for Ireland. The delay in keeping her own resolution had been pleasant. Now that the date was fixed, the grateful enclosure of the cloister seemed to shut her in from all this dust and clamor of men, from the noisome sights and sounds of world-living, from the endless coming and going and running about, concerning trifles, from the injustice and meanness and hopeless crimes of men.

In the shade of the altar, in the restful gloom of Calvary, she could look up with untired eyes to the calm glow of the celestial life, unchanging, orderly, beautiful with its satisfied aspiration, and rich in perfect love and holy companionship. Such a longing came over her to walk into this perfect peace that moment! Mona well knew this mood, and Louis in triumph signalled his sister to look. Her eyes, turned to the rocky shore of Valcour, saw far beyond. On her perfect face lay a shadow, the shadow of her longing, and from her lips came now and then the perfume of a sigh.

In silence these two watched her, Louis recognizing the borderland of holy ecstasy, Mona hopeful that the vision was only a mirage. The boat floated close to the perpendicular rocks and reflected itself in the deep waters; far away the farmhouse lay against the green woods; to the north rose the highest point of the bluff, dark with pines; farther on was the sweep of the curved shore, and still farther the red walls of the town. Never boat carried freight so beautiful as this which bore along the island the young mother, the young deacon, and deep-hearted Honora, who was blessing God.



CHAPTER XXXII.

THE PAULINE PRIVILEGE.

For a week at the end of July Arthur had been in the city closing up the Curran episode. On his return every one felt that change of marked and mysterious kind had touched him. His face shone with joy. The brooding shadow, acquired in his exile, had disappeared. Light played about his face, emanated from it, as from moonlit water, a phosphorescence of the daylight. His mother studied him with anxiety, without which she had not been since the surprising visit of Curran. The old shadow seemed to have fled forever.

One night on the lake, as Louis and he floated lazily towards the island, he told the story. After enjoying a moonlight swim at the foot of the bluff, they were preparing to row over to Valcour when Honora's glorious voice rang out from the farmhouse on the hill above, singing to Mona's accompaniment. The two sat in delight. A full moon stood in the sky, and radiance silvered the bosom of the lake, the mystic shores, the far-off horizon. This singer was the voice of the night, whose mystic beauty and voiceless feeling surged into the woman's song like waters escaping through a ravine. Dillon was utterly oppressed by happiness. When the song had ceased, he stretched out his arms towards her.

"Dearest and best of women! By God's grace I shall soon call you mine!"

Louis took up the oars and pulled with energy in the direction of Valcour. "Is that the meaning of the look on your face since your return?" said he.

"That's the meaning. I saw you all watching me in surprise. My mother told me of it in her anxiety. If my face matched my feelings the moon there would look sickly besides its brightness. I have been in jail for five years, and to-day I am free."

"And how about that other woman ...?"

"Dead as far as I am concerned, the poor wretch! Yesterday I could curse her. I pity her to-day. She has gone her way and I go mine. Monsignor has declared me free. Isn't that enough?"

"That's enough," cried Louis, dropping the oars in his excitement. "But is it enough to give you Honora? I'm so glad you think of her that way. Mona told her only yesterday that some lover was pursuing her, not mentioning your name. I assured her on the contrary that the road to the convent would have no obstacles. And I rebuked Mona for her interference."

"You were right, and she was right," said Arthur sadly. "I never dared to show her my love, because I was not free. But now I shall declare it. What did she think of Mona's remarks?"

"She took them lightly. I am afraid that your freedom comes at a poor time, Arthur; that you may be too late. I have had many talks with her. Her heart is set on the convent, she has fixed the date for September, and she does not seem to have love in her mind at all."

"Love begets love. How could she think of love when I never gave any sign, except what sharp-eyed Mona saw. You can conceal nothing from a woman. Wait until I have wooed her ... but apart from all that you must hear how I came to be free ... oh, my God, I can hardly believe it even now after three days ... I have been so happy that the old anguish which tore my soul years ago seemed easier to bear than this exquisite pain. I must get used to it. Listen now to the story of my escape, and row gently while you listen so as to miss not a word."

Arthur did not tell his chum more than half of the tale, chiefly because Louis was never to know the story of Horace Endicott. He had gone to New York at the invitation of Livingstone. This surprising incident began a series of surprises. The Currans had returned from California, and made their report to Sonia; and to Livingstone of all men the wife of Horace Endicott had gone for advice in so delicate an affair as forcing Arthur Dillon to prove and defend his identity. After two or three interviews with Livingstone Arthur carried his report to Monsignor.

"All this looks to me," said the priest, "as if the time for a return to your own proper personality had come. You know how I have feared the consequences of this scheme. The more I look into it, the more terrible it seems."

"And why should I give up now of all times? when I am a success?" cried the young fellow. "Do I fear Livingstone and the lawyers? Curran and his wife have done their best, and failed. Will the lawyers do any better?"

"It is not that," said the priest. "But you will always be annoyed in this way. The sharks and blackmailers will get after you later...."

"No, no, no, Monsignor. This effort of the Currans and Mrs. Endicott will be the last. I won't permit it. There will be no result from Livingstone's interference. He can go as far as interviews with me, but not one step beyond. And I can guarantee that no one will ever take up the case after him."

"You are not reasonable," urged the priest. "The very fact that these people suspect you to be Horace Endicott is enough; it proves that you have been discovered."

"I am only the twentieth whom they pursued for Horace," he laughed. "Curran knows I am not Endicott. He has proved to the satisfaction of Livingstone that I am Arthur Dillon. But the two women are pertinacious, and urge the men on. Since these are well paid for their trouble, why should they not keep on?"

"They are not the only pertinacious ones," the priest replied.

"You may claim a little of the virtue yourself," Arthur slyly remarked. "You have urged me to betray myself into the hands of enemies once a month for the last five years."

"In this case would it not be better to get an advantage by declaring yourself, before Livingstone can bring suit against you?"

"There will be no suit," he answered positively. "I hold the winning cards in this game. There is no advantage in my returning to a life which for me holds nothing but horror. Do you not see, Monsignor, that the same reasons which sent me out of it hold good to keep me out of it?"

"Very true," said Monsignor reluctantly, as he viewed the situation.

"And new reasons, not to be controverted, have sprung up around Arthur Dillon. For Horace Endicott there is nothing in that old life but public disgrace. Do you know that I hate that fat fool, that wretched cuckold who had not sense enough to discover what the uninterested knew about that woman? I would not wear his name, nor go back to his circle, if the man and woman were dead, and the secret buried forever."

"He was young and innocent," said the priest with a pitiful glance at Arthur.

"And selfish and sensual too. I despise him. He would never have been more than an empty-headed pleasure-seeker. With that wife he could have become anything you please. The best thing he did was his flight into everlasting obscurity, and that he owed to the simple, upright, strong-hearted woman who nourished him in his despair. Monsignor," and he laid his firm hand on the knee of the priest and looked at him with terrible eyes, "I would choose death rather than go back to what I was. I shall never go back. I get hot with shame when I think of the part an Endicott played as Sonia Westfield's fool."

"And the reason not to be controverted?"

"In what a position my departure would leave my mother. Have you thought of that? After all her kindness, her real affection, as if I had been her own son. She thinks now that I am her son, and I feel that she is my mother. And what would induce me to expose her to the public gaze as the chief victim, or the chief plotter in a fraud? If it had to be done, I would wait in any event until my mother was dead. But beyond all these minor reasons is one that overshadows everything. I am Arthur Dillon. That other man is not only dead, he is as unreal to me as the hero of any book I read in my boyhood. It was hard to give up the old personality; to give up what I am now would be impossible. I am what I seem. I feel, think, speak, dream Arthur Dillon. The roots would bleed if I were to transplant myself. I found my career among your people, and the meaning of life. There is no other career for me. These are the people I love. I will never raise between them and me so odious a barrier as the story of my disappearance would be. They could never take to Horace Endicott. Oh, I have given the matter a moment's thought, Monsignor. The more I dwell on it, the worse it seems."

He considered the point for a moment, and then whispered with joyous triumph, "I have succeeded beyond my own expectations. I have disappeared even from myself. An enemy cannot find me, not even my own confession would reveal me. The people who love me would swear to a man that I am Arthur Dillon, and that only insanity could explain my own confession. At the very least they would raise such a doubt in the mind of a judge that he would insist on clean proofs from both sides. But there's the clear fact. I have escaped from myself, disappeared from the sight of Arthur Dillon. Before long I can safely testify to a dream I had of having once been a wretch named Horace Endicott. But I have a doubt even now that I was such a man."

"My God, but it's weird," said Monsignor with emotion, as he rose to walk the room. "I have the same notion myself at times."

"It's a matter to be left undisturbed, or some one will go crazy over it," Arthur said seriously.

"And you are happy, really happy? The sight of this woman did not revive in you any regret...."

"I am happy, Monsignor, beyond belief," with a contented sigh. "It would be too much to expect perfect happiness. Yet that is within my reach. If I were only free to marry Honora Ledwith."

"I heard of that too," said the priest meditatively. "Has she any regard for you?"

"As a brother. How could I have asked any other love? And I am rich in that. Since there is no divorce for Catholics, I could not let her see the love which burned in me. I had no hope."

"And she goes into the convent, I believe. You must not stand in God's way."

"I have not, though I delayed her going because I could not bear to part from her. Willingly I have resigned her to God, because I know that in His goodness, had I been free, He would have given her to me."

Monsignor paused as if struck by the thought and looked at him for a moment.

"It is the right spirit," was his brief comment.

He loved this strange, incomprehensible man, who had stood for five years between his adopted people and their enemies in many a fight, who had sought battle in their behalf and heaped them with favors. His eyes saw the depth of that resignation which gave to God the one jewel that would have atoned for the horrid sufferings of the past. If he were free! He thought of old Lear moaning over dead Cordelia.

She lives! If it be so, It is a chance which does redeem all sorrows That ever I have felt.

"It is the right spirit," he repeated as he considered the matter. "One must not stand in the way of a soul, or in the way of God. Yet were you free, where would be the advantage? She is for the convent, and has never thought of you in the way of love."

"Love begets love, father dear. I could light the flame in her heart, for I am dear to her as a brother, as her father's son."

"Then her dream of the convent, which she has cherished so many years, cannot be more than a dream, if she resigned it for you."

"I cannot argue with you," he said hopelessly, "and it's a sad subject. There is only the will of God to be done."

"And if you were free," went on Monsignor smiling, "and tried and failed to light love in her heart, you would suffer still more."

"A little more or less would not matter. I would be happy still to give her to God."

"I see, I see," shaking his sage head. "To God! As long as it is not to another and luckier fellow, the resignation is perfect."

Arthur broke into a laugh, and the priest said casually:

"I think that by the law of the Church you are a free man."

Arthur leaped to his feet with a face like death.

"In the name of God!" he cried.

Monsignor pushed him back into his chair.

"That's my opinion. Just listen, will you. Then take your case to a doctor of the law. There is a kind of divorce in the Church known as the Pauline Privilege. Let me state the items, and do you examine if you can claim the privilege. Horatius, an infidel, that is, unbaptized, deserts his wife legally and properly, because of her crimes; later he becomes a Catholic; meeting a noble Catholic lady, Honoria, he desires to marry her; question, is he free to contract this marriage? The answer of the doctors of the law is in the affirmative, with the following conditions: that the first wife be an infidel, that is, unbaptized; that to live with her is impossible; that she has been notified of his intention to break the marriage. The two latter conditions are fulfilled in your case the moment the first wife secures the divorce which enables her to marry her paramour. Horatius is then free to marry Honoria, or any other Catholic lady, but not a heretic or a pagan. This is called the Pauline Privilege because it is described in the Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians. My opinion is that you are free."

The man, unable to speak, or move, felt his hope grow strong and violent out of the priest's words.

"Mind, it's only my opinion," said Monsignor, to moderate his transports.

"You must go to Dr. Bender, the theologian, to get a purely legal decision. I fear that I am only adding to your misery. What if he should decide against you? What if she should decide against you?"

"Neither will happen," with painful effort. Sudden joy overcame him with that anguish of the past, and this was overwhelming, wonderful.

"The essence of love is sacrifice," said Monsignor, talking to give him time for composure. "Not your good only, but the happiness of her you love must control your heart and will; and above all there must be submission to God. When He calls, the child must leave the parent, the lover his mistress, all ties must be broken."

"I felt from the beginning that this would come to pass," said Arthur weakly. "Oh, I made my sacrifice long ago. The facts were all against me, of course. Easy to make the sacrifice which had to be made. I can make another sacrifice, but isn't it now her turn? Oh, Monsignor, all my joy seems to come through you! From that first moment years ago, when we met, I can date——"

"All your sorrow," the priest interrupted.

"And all my joy. Well, one cannot speak of these great things, only act. I'm going to the theologian. Before I sleep to-night he must settle that case. I know from your eyes it will be in my favor. I can bear disappointment. I can bear anything now. I am free from that creature, she is without a claim on me in any way, law, fact, religion, sympathy. Oh, my God!"

Monsignor could not hinder the tears that poured from his eyes silently. He clasped Arthur's hand and saw him go as he wept. In his varied life he had never seen so intimately any heart, none so strange and woful in its sorrow and its history, none so pathetic. The man lived entirely on the plane of tragedy, in the ecstasy of pain; a mystery, a problem, a wonder, yet only an average, natural, simple man, that had fought destiny with strange weapons.