"Don't say anything to her about Grif," Dolly cautioned Aimee, "it would only trouble her." And so the morning passed; but even at twelve o'clock there was no Grif, and Dolly began to grow restless and walk to and fro from the window to the hearth at very short intervals. Dinner-hour arrived, too, but still no arrival; and Dolly sat at the table, among them, eating nothing and saying little enough. How could she talk when every step upon the pavement set her heart bounding? When dinner was over and Phil had gone back to the studio, she looked so helpless and woe-begone that Aimee felt constrained to comfort her.

"It may have been delayed," she whispered to her, "or he may have left the house earlier than usual, and so won't see it until to-night. He will be here to-night, Dolly, depend upon it."

And so they waited. Ah, how that window was watched that afternoon! How often Dolly started from her chair and ran to look out, half suffocated by her heart-beatings! But it was of no avail. As twilight came on she took her station before it, and knelt upon the carpet for an hour watching; but in the end she turned away all at once, and, running to the fire again, caught Tod up in her arms, and startled Aimee by bursting into a passion of tears.

"Oh, Tod!" she sobbed, "he is not coming! He will never come again,—he has left us forever! Oh, Tod, love poor Aunt Dolly, darling." And she hid her face on the little fellow's shoulder, crying piteously.

She did not go to the window again. When she was calmer, she remained on her chair, colorless and exhausted, but clinging to Tod still in a queer pathetic way, and letting him pull at her collar and her ribbons and her hair. The touch of his relentless baby hands and his pretty, tyrannical, restless ways seemed to help her a little and half distract her thoughts.

She became quieter and quieter as the evening waned; indeed, she was so quiet that Aimee wondered. She was strangely pale; but she did not start when footsteps were heard on the street, and she ceased turning toward the door when it opened.

"He—he may come in the morning," Aimee faltered as they went up-stairs to bed.

"No, he will not," she answered her, quite steadily. "It will be as I said it would,—he will never come again."

But when they reached their room, the unnatural, strained quiet gave way, and she flung herself upon the bed, sobbing and fighting against just the hysterical suffering which had conquered her the night before.

It was the very ghost of the old indomitable Dolly who rose the next morning. Her hands shook as she dressed her hair, and there were shadows under her eyes. But she must go back to Brabazon Lodge, notwithstanding.

"I can say I have a nervous headache," she said to Aimee. "Nervous headaches are useful things."

"If a letter comes," said Aimee, "I will bring it to you myself."

The girl turned toward her suddenly, her eyes hard and bright and her mouth working.

"I have had my last letter," she said. "My last letters came to me when Grif laid that package upon the table. He has done with me."

"Done with you?" cried Aimee, frightened by her manner. "With you, Dolly?"

Then for the first time Dolly flushed scarlet to the very roots of her hair.

"Yes," she said, "he has done with me. If there had been half a chance that he would ever come near me again, the letter I wrote to him that night would have brought him. A word of it would have brought him,—the first word. But he is having his revenge by treating it with contempt. He is showing me that it is too late, and that no humility on my part can touch him. I scarcely could have thought that of him," dropping into a chair by the toilet-table and hiding her face in her hands.

"It is not like Grif to let me humble myself for nothing. And I did humble myself,—ah, how I did humble myself! That letter,—if you could have seen it, Aimee,—it was all on fire with love for him. I laid myself under his feet,—and he has trodden me down! Grif—Grif, it was n't like you,—it was n't worthy of you,—it was n't indeed!"

Her worst enemy would have felt herself avenged if she had heard the anguish in her voice. She was crushed to the earth under this last great blow of feeling that he had altered so far. Grif,—her whilom greatest help and comfort,—the best gift God had given her! Dear, old, tender, patient fellow! as she had been wont to call him in her fits of penitence.

Grif, whose arms had always been open to her at her best and at her worst, who had loved her and borne with her, and waited upon her and done her bidding since they were both little more than children. When had Grif ever turned from her before? Never. When 'had Grif ever been cold or unfaithful in word or deed? Never. When had he ever failed her? Never—never—never—until now! And now that he had failed her at last, she felt that the bitter end had come. The end to everything,—to all the old hopes and dreams, to all the old sweet lovers' quarrels and meetings and partings, to all their clinging together, to all the volumes and volumes of love and trust that lay in the past, to all the world of simple bliss that lay still unrevealed in their lost future, to all the blessed old days when they had pictured to each other what that future was to be. It had all gone for nothing in the end. It must all have gone for nothing, when Grif—a new Grif—not her own true, stanch, patient darling—not her own old lover—could read her burning, tender, suffering words and pass them by without a word of answer. And with this weight of despair and pain upon her heart, she went back to the wearisome routine of Brabazon Lodge,—went back heavy with humiliation and misery which she scarcely realized,—went back suffering as no one who knew her—not even Grif himself—could ever have understood that it was possible for her to suffer. No innocent coquetries now, no spirit, no jests; for the present at least she had done with them, too.

"You are not in your usual spirits, my dear," said Miss MacDowlas.

"No," she answered, quietly, "I am not."

This state of affairs continued for four days, and then one morning, sitting at her sewing in the breakfast-room, she was startled almost beyond self-control by a servant's announcement that a visitor had arrived.

"One of your sisters, ma'am," said the parlor-maid. "Not the youngest, I think."

She was in the room in two seconds, and flew to Aimee, trembling all over with excitement.

"Not a letter!" she cried, hysterically. "It is n't a letter,—it can't be!" And she put her hand to her side and fairly panted.

The poor little wise one confronted her with something like fear. She could not bear to tell her the ill news she had come to break.

"Dolly, dear!" she said, "please sit down; and—please don't look at me so. It isn't good news. I must tell you the truth; it is bad news, cruel news. Oh, don't look so!"

They were standing near the sofa, and Dolly gave one little moan, and sank down beside it.

"Cruel news!" she cried, throwing up her hand. "Yes, I might have known that,—I might have known that it would be cruel, if it was news at all Every one is cruel,—the whole world is cruel; even Grif,—even Grif!"

Aimee burst into tears.

"Oh, Dolly, I did my best for you!" she said. "I did, indeed; but you must try to bear it, dear,—it is your own letter back again."

Then the kneeling figure seemed to stiffen and grow rigid in a second. Dolly turned her deathly face, with her eyes aflame and dilated.

"Did he send it back to me?" she asked, in a slow, fearful whisper.

Her expression was so hard and dreadful a one that Aimee sprang to her side and caught hold of her.

"No,—no!" she said; "not so bad as that! He would never have done that. He has never had it. He has gone away; we don't know where. It came from the dead-letter office."

Dolly took the letter from her and opened it slowly, and there, as she knelt, read it, word for word, as if it had been something she had never seen before. Then she put it back into the envelope and laid it down.

"A dead letter!" she said. "A dead letter! If he had sent it back to me, I think it would have cured me; but now there is no cure for me at all. If he had read it, he would have come,—if he had only read it; but it is a dead letter, and he is gone."

There were no tears, the blow had been too heavy. It was only Aimee who had tears to shed, and it was Dolly who tried to console her in a strained, weary sort of way.

"Don't cry," she said, "it is all over now. Perhaps the worst part of the pain is past. There will be no house at Putney, and the solitary rose-bush will bloom for some one else; they may sell the green sofa, now, as cheap as they will, we shall never buy it. Our seven years of waiting have all ended in a dead letter."



CHAPTER XIV. ~ SEVEN LONG YEARS, BELOVED, SEVEN LONG YEARS.

AND so Grif disappeared from the haunts of Vagabondia, and was seen no more. And to Aimee was left the delicate task of explaining the cause of his absence, which, it must be said, she did in a manner at once creditable to her tact and affection for both Dolly and the unconscious cause of all her misery.

"There has been a misunderstanding," she said, "which was no fault of Dolly's, and scarcely a fault of Grif's; and it has ended very unhappily, and Grif has gone away, and just at present it seems as if everything was over,—but I can't help hoping it is not so bad as that."

"Oh, he will come back again—safe enough," commented Phil, philosophically, holding paint-brush No. 1 in his mouth, while he manipulated with No. 2. "He will come back in sackcloth and ashes; he is just that sort, you know,—thunder and lightning, fire and tow. And they will make it up ecstatically in secret, and pretend that nothing has been the matter, and there will be no going into the parlor for weeks without whistling all the way across the hall."

"I always go in backward after they have had a quarrel," said Mollie, looking up from a half-made pinafore of Tod's, which, in the zeal of her repentance, she had decided on finishing.

"Not a bad plan, either," said Phil "We all know how their differences of opinion terminate. As to matters being at an end between them, that is all nonsense; they could n't live without each other six months. Dolly would take to unbecoming bonnets, and begin to neglect her back hair, and Grif would take to prussic acid or absinthe."

"Well, I hope he will come back," said Aimee; "but, in the meantime, I want to ask you to let the affair rest altogether, and not say a word to Dolly when she comes. It will be the kindest thing you can do. Just let things go on as they have always done, and ignore every thing new you may see."

Phil looked up from his easel in sudden surprise; something in her voice startled him, serenely as he was apt to view all unexpected intelligence.

"I say," he broke out, "you don't mean that Dolly is very much cut up about it?"

The fair little oracle hesitated; remembering Dolly's passionate despair and grief over that "dead letter," she could scarcely trust herself to speak.

"Yes," she answered at last, feeling it would be best only to commit herself in Phil's own words, "she is very much cut up."

"Whew!" whistled Phil; "that is worse than I thought!" And the matter ended in his going back to his picture and painting furiously for a few minutes, with an almost reflective air.

They did not see anything of Dolly for weeks. She wrote to them now and then, but she did not pay another visit to Bloomsbury Place. It was not the old home to her now, and she dreaded seeing it in its new aspect,—the aspect which was desolate of Grif. Most of her letters came to Aimee; but she rarely referred to her trouble, rather seeming to avoid it than otherwise. And the letters themselves were bright enough, seeming, too. She had plenty to say about Miss MacDowlas and their visitors and her own duties; indeed, any one but Aimee would have been puzzled by her courage and apparent good spirits. But Aimee saw below the surface, and understood, and, understanding, was fonder of her than ever.

As both Dolly and herself had expected, Mollie did not keep her secret from the oracle many weeks. It was too much for her to bear alone, and one night, in a fit of candor and remorse, she poured out everything from first to last, all her simple and unsophisticated dreams of grandeur, all her gullibility, all her danger,—everything, indeed, but the story of her pitiful little fancy for Ralph Gowan. She could not give that up, even to Aimee, though at the close of her confidence she was unable to help referring to him.

"And as to Mr. Gowan," she said, "how can I ever speak to him again! but, perhaps, he would not speak to me. He must think I am wicked and bold and hardened—and bad," with a fresh sob at every adjective. "Oh, dear! oh, dear!" burying her face in Aimee's lap, "if I had only stayed at home and been good, like you. He could have respected me, at least, couldn't he? And now—oh, what am I to do!"

Aimee could not help sighing. If she only had stayed at home, how much happier they all might have been! But she had promised Dolly not to add to her unhappiness by hinting at the truth, so she kept her own counsel.

It was fully three months before they saw Ralph Gowan again. He had gone on the Continent, they heard. A feeling of delicacy had prompted the journey. As long as he remained in London, he could scarcely drop out of his old friendly position at Bloomsbury Place, and he felt that for a while at least Mollie would scarcely find it easy to-face him. So he went away and rambled about until he thought she would have time to get over her first embarrassment.

But at the end of the three months he came back, and one afternoon surprised them all by appearing amongst them again. Mollie, sitting perseveringly at work over her penitential sewing, shrank a little, and dropped her eyelids when he came in, but she managed to behave with creditable evenness of manner after all, and the rest welcomed him warmly.

"I have been to Brabazon Lodge," he said at length to Aimee. "I spent Monday evening there, and was startled at the change I found in your sister. I did not know she was ill."

Aimee started herself, and looked up at him with a frightened face.

"Ill!" she said. "Did you say ill?"

It was his turn to be surprised then.

"I thought her looking ill," he answered. "She seemed to me to be both paler and thinner. But you must not let me alarm you,—I thought, of course, that you would know."

"She has never mentioned it in her letters," Aimee said. "And she has not been home for three months, so we have not seen her."

"Don't let me give you a false impression," returned Gowan, eagerly. "She seemed in excellent spirits, and was quite her old self; indeed, I scarcely should imagine that she herself placed sufficient stress upon the state of her health. She insisted that she was well when I spoke to her about it."

"I am very glad you told me," answered Aimee. "She is too indifferent sometimes. I am afraid she would not have let us know. I thank you, very much."

He had other thanks before he left the house. As he was going out, Mollie, in her character of porteress, opened the hall door for him, and, having opened it, stood there with Tod's new garment half concealed, a pair of timid eyes uplifted to his face, a small, trembling, feverish hand held out.

"Mr. Gowan," she said, in a low, fluttering voice. "Oh, if you please—"

He took the little hot hand, feeling some tender remorse for not having tried to draw her out more and help her out of her painful shyness and restraint.

"What is it, Mollie?" he asked.

"I want—I want," fluttering all over,—"I want to thank you better than I did that—that dreadful night. I was so frightened I could scarcely understand. I understand more—now—and I want to tell you how grateful I am—and how grateful I shall be until I die—and I want to ask you to try not to think I was very wicked. I did not mean to be wicked—I was only vain and silly, and I thought it would be such a grand thing to—to have plenty of new dresses," hanging her sweet, humble face, "and to wear diamonds, and be Lady Chandos, if—if Mr. Chandos came into the title. Of course that was wicked, but it was n't—I was n't as bad as I seemed. I was so vain that—that I was quite sure he loved me, and would be very glad if I married him. He always said he would." And the tears rolled fast down her cheeks.

"Poor Mollie!" said Gowan, patting the trembling hand as if it had been a baby's. "Poor child!"

"But," Mollie struggled on, penitently, "I shall never be so foolish again. And I am going to try to be good—like Aimee. I am learning to mend things; and I am beginning to make things for Tod. This," holding up her work as proof, "is a dress for him. It is n't very well done," with innocent dubiousness; "but Aimee says I am improving. And so, if you please, would you be so kind as not to think quite so badly of me?"

It was all so humble and pretty and remorseful that he was quite touched by it. That old temptation to kiss and console her made it quite dangerous for him to linger. She was such a lovable sight with her tear-wet cheeks, and that dubious but faithfully worked-at garment of Tod's in her hand.

"Mollie," he said, "will you believe what I say to you?"

"Oh, yes!" eagerly.

"Then I say to you that I never believed you wicked for an instant,—not for one instant; and now I believe it less than ever; on the contrary, I believe you are a good, honest little creature. Let us forget Gerald Chandos,—he is not worth remembering. And go on with Tod's pinafores and dresses, my dear, and don't be discouraged if they are a failure at first,—though to my eyes that dress is a most sumptuous affair. And as to being like Aimee, you cannot be like any one better and wiser and sweeter than that same little maiden. There! I mean every word I have said."

"Are you sure?" faltered Mollie.

"Yes," he replied, "quite sure."

He shook hands with her, and, bidding her goodnight, left her standing in the narrow hall all aglow 'with joy. And he, outside, was communing with himself as he walked away.

"She is as sweet in her way as—as the other," he was saying. "And as well worth loving. And what a face she has, if one only saw it with a lover's eyes! What a face she has, even seeing it with such impartial eyes as mine!"

"My dear Dolly!" said Aimee.

"My dear Aimee!" said Dolly.

These were the first words the two exchanged when, the evening after Ralph Gowan's visit, the anxious young oracle presented herself at Brabazon Lodge, and was handed into Dolly's bedroom.

Visitors were expected, and Dolly had been dressing, and was just putting the finishing touches to her toilet when Aimee came in, and, seeing her as she turned from the glass to greet her, the wise one could scarcely speak, and, even after she had been kissed most heartily, could only hold the girl's hand and stand looking up into her changed face, feeling almost shocked.

"Oh, dear me, Dolly!" she said again. "Oh, my dear, what have you been doing to yourself?"

"Doing!" echoed Dolly, just as she would have spoken three or four months ago. "I have been doing nothing, and rather enjoying it. What is the matter with me?" glancing into the mirror. "Pale? That is the result of Miss MacDowlas's beneficence, you see. She has presented me with this grand black silk gown, and it makes me look pale. Black always did, you know."

But notwithstanding her readiness of speech, it did not need another glance to understand what Ralph Gowan had meant when he said that she was altered. The lustreless heavy folds of her black silk might contrast sharply with her white skin, but they could not bring about that subtle, almost incomprehensible change in her whole appearance. It was such a subtle change that it was difficult to comprehend. The round, lissome figure she had always been so pardonably vain about, and Grif had so admired, had fallen a little, giving just a hint at a greater change which might show itself sooner or later; her face seemed a trifle more clearly cut than it ought to have been, and the slender throat, set in its surrounding Elizabethan frill of white, seemed more slender than it had used to be. Each change was slight enough in itself, but all together gave a shadowy suggestion of alteration to affectionately quick eyes.

"You are ill," said Aimee. "And you never told me. It was wrong of you. Don't tell me it is your black dress; your eyes are too big and bright for any one who is well, and your hand is thinner than it ever was before. Why, I can feel the difference as I hold it, and it is as feverish as it can be."

"You good, silly little thing!" said Dolly, laughing. "I am not ill at all. I have caught a cold, perhaps, but that is all."

"No you have not," contradicted Aimee, with pitiful sharpness. "You have not caught cold, and you must not tell me so. You are ill, and you have been ill for weeks. The worst of colds could never make you look like this. Mr. Gowan might well be startled and wonder—"

"Mr. Gowan!" Dolly interrupted her. "Did he say that he was startled?"

"Yes, he did," Aimee answered. "And that was what brought me here. He was at Bloomsbury Place last night and told me all about you, and I made up my mind that minute that I would come and judge for myself."

Then the girl gave in. She sat down on a chair by the dressing-table and rested her forehead on her hand, laughing faintly, as if in protest against her own subjugation.

"Then I shall have to submit," she said. "The fact is, I sometimes fancy I do feel weaker than I ought to. It is n't like me to be weak. I was always so strong, you know,—stronger than all the rest of you, I thought. Miss MacDowlas says I do not look well. I suppose," with a half-sigh, "that every one will see it soon. Aimee," hesitating, "don't tell them at home."

Aimee slipped an arm around her, and drew her head—dressed in all the old elaborateness of pretty coils and braids—upon her own shoulder.

"Darling," she whispered, trying to restrain her tears, "I must tell them at home, because I must take you home to be nursed."

"No, no!" said Dolly, starting, "that would never do. It would never do even to think of it. I am not so ill as that,—not ill enough to be nursed. Besides," her voice sinking all at once, "I could n't go home, Aimee,—I could not bear to go home now. That is why I have stayed away so long. I believe it would kill me!"

It was impossible for Aimee to hear this and be silent longer. She had, indeed, only been waiting for some reference to the past.

"I knew it was that," she cried. "I knew it the moment Mr. Gowan told me. And I have feared it from the first. Nothing but that could have broken you down like this. Dolly, if Grif could see you now, he would give his heart's blood to undo what he has done."

The pale little hands lying upon the black dress began to tremble in a strange, piteous weakness.

"One cannot forget so much in so short a time," Dolly pleaded. "And it is so much,—more than even you think. One cannot forget seven years in three months,—give me seven months, Aimee. I shall be better in time, when I have forgotten."

Forgotten! Even those far duller of perception than Aimee could have seen that she would not soon forget. She had not begun in the right way to forget. The pain which had made the pretty figure and the soft, round face look faintly worn, was sharper to-day than it had been even three months before, and it was gaining in sharpness every day, nay, every hour.

"The days are so long," she said, plaiting the silk of her dress on-the restless hands. "We are so quiet, except when we have visitors, and somehow visitors begin to tire me. I scarcely ever knew what it was to be tired before. I don't care even to scatter the Philistines now," trying to smile. "I am not even roused by the prospect of meeting Lady Augusta tonight. I forgot to tell you she was coming, did n't I? How she would triumph if she knew how I have fallen and—and how miserable I am! She used to say I had not a thought above the cut of my dresses. She never knew about—him, poor fellow!"

It was curious to see how she still clung to that tender old pitying way of speaking of Grif.

Aimee began to cry over her again.

"You must come home, Dolly," she said. "You must, indeed. You will get worse and worse if you stay here. I will speak to Miss MacDowlas myself. You say she is kind to you."

"Dear little woman," said Dolly, closing her eyes as she let her head rest upon the girl's shoulder. "Dear, kind little woman! indeed it will be best for me to stay here. It is as I said,—indeed it is. If I were to go home I should die! Oh, don't you know how cruel it would be! To sit there in my chair and see his old place empty,—to sit and hear the people passing in the street and know I should never hear his footstep again,—to see the door open again and again, and know he would never, never pass through. It would break my heart,—it would break my heart!"

"It is broken now!" cried Aimee, in a burst of grief, and she could protest no more.

But she remained as long as she well could, petting and talking to her. She knew better than to offer her threadbare commonplace comfort, so she took refuge in talking of life at Bloomsbury Place,—about Tod and Mollie and Toinette, and the new picture Phil was at work upon. But it was a hard matter for her to control herself sufficiently to conceal that she was almost in an agony of anxiousness and foreboding. What was she to do with this sadly altered Dolly, the mainspring of whose bright, spirited life was gone? How was she to help her if she could not restore Grif,—it was only Grif she wanted,—and where was he? It was just as she had always said it would be,—without Grif, Dolly was Dolly no longer,—for Grif's sake her faithful, passionate girl's heart was breaking slowly.

Lady Augusta, encountering her ex-governess in the drawing-room that evening, raised her eyeglass to that noble feature, her nose, and condescended a questioning inspection, full of disapproval of the heavy, well-falling black silk and the Elizabethan frill.

"You are looking shockingly pale and thin," she said.

Dolly glanced at her reflection in an adjacent mirror. She only smiled faintly, in silence.

"I was not aware that you were ill," proceeded her ladyship.

"I cannot say that I am ill," Dolly answered. "How is Phemie?"

"Euphemia," announced Lady Augusta, "is well, and I trust" as if she rather doubted her having so far overcome old influences of an evil nature,—"I trust improving, though I regret to hear from her preceptress that she is singularly deficient in application to her musical lessons."

Dolly thought of the professor with the lumpy face, and smiled again. Phemie's despairing letters to herself sufficiently explained why her progress was so slow.

"I hope," said her ladyship to Miss MacDowlas, afterward, "that you are satisfied with Dorothea's manner of filling her position in your household."

"I never was so thoroughly satisfied in my life," returned the old lady, stiffly. "She is a very quickwitted, pleasantly natured girl, and I am extremely fond of her."

"Ah," waving a majestic and unbending fan of carved ivory. "She has possibly improved then. I observe that she is going off very much,—in the matter of looks, I mean."

"I heard a gentleman remark, a few minutes ago," replied Miss MacDowlas, "that the girl looked like a white rose, and I quite agreed with him; but I am fond of her, as I said, and you are not."

Her ladyship shuddered faintly, but she did not make any further comment, perhaps feeling that her hostess was too powerful to encounter.

At midnight the visitors went their several ways, and after they had dispersed and the rooms were quiet once again, Miss MacDowlas sent her companion to bed, or, at least, bade her good-night.

"You had better go at once," she said. "I will remain to give orders to the servants. You look tired. The excitement has been too much for you."

So Dolly thanked her and left the room; but Miss MacDowlas did not hear her ascend the stairs, and accordingly, after listening a moment or so, went to the room door and looked out into the hall. And right at the foot of the staircase lay Dolly Crewe, the lustreless, trailing black dress making her skin seem white as marble, her pretty face turned half downward upon her arm.

Half an hour later the girl returned to consciousness to find herself lying comfortably in bed, the chamber empty save for herself and Miss MacDowlas, who was standing at her side watching her.

"Better?" she said. "That is right, my dear. The evening was too much for you, as I was afraid it would be. You are not as strong as you should be."

"No," Dolly answered, quietly.

There was a silence of a few minutes, during which she closed her eyes again; but she heard Miss MacDowlas fidgeting a little, and at last she heard her speak.

"My dear," she said, "I think I ought to tell you something. When you fell, I suppose you must somehow or other have pressed the spring of your locket, for it was open when I went to you, and—I saw the face inside it."

"Grif," said Dolly, in a tired voice, "Grif."

And then she remembered how she had written to him about what this very denouement would be when it came. How strange, how wearily strange, it was to think that it should come about in such a way as this!

"My nephew," said Miss MacDowlas. "Griffith Donne."

"Yes," said Dolly, briefly. "I was engaged to him."

"Was!" echoed Miss MacDowlas. "Did he behave badly to you, my dear?"

"No, I behaved badly to him—and that is why I am ill."

Miss MacDowlas blew her nose.

"How long?" she asked, at length. "May I ask how long you were engaged to each other, my dear? Don't answer me if you do not wish."

"I was engaged to him," faltered the girlish voice,—"we were all the world to each other for seven years—for seven long years."



CHAPTER XV. ~ IN WHICH WE TRY SWITZERLAND.

IN the morning of one of the hot days in June, Mollie, standing at the window of Phil's studio, turned suddenly toward the inmates of the room with an exclamation.

"Phil!" she said, "Toinette! There is a carriage drawing up before the door."

"Lady Augusta?" said Toinette, making a dart at Tod.

"Confound Lady Augusta!" ejaculated Phil, devoutly. "That woman has a genius for presenting herself at inopportune times."

"But it is n't Lady Augusta," Mollie objected. "It is n't the Bilberry carriage at all. Do you think I don't know 'the ark'?"

"You ought to by this time," returned Phil. "I do, to my own deep grief."

"It is the Brabazon Lodge carriage!" cried Mollie, all at once. "Miss MacDowlas is getting out, and—yes, here is Dolly!"

"And Tod just washed and dressed!" said Mrs. Phil, picking up her offspring with an air of self-congratulation. "Miracle of miracles! The Fates begin to smile upon us. Phil, how is my back hair?"

"All right," returned Phil. "I suppose I shall have to present myself, too."

It was necessary that they should all present themselves, they found. Miss MacDowlas wished to form the acquaintance of the whole family, it appeared, and apart from this her visit had rather an important object.

"It is a sort of farewell visit," she explained, "though, of course, the farewell is only to be a temporary one. We find London too hot for us, and we are going to try Switzerland. The medical man thinks a change will be beneficial to your sister."

They all looked at Dolly then,—at Dolly in her delicate, crisp summer bravery and her pretty summer hat; but it was neither hat nor dress that drew their eyes upon her all at once in that new questioning way. But Dolly only laughed,—a soft, nervous laugh, however,—and played with her much-frilled parasol.

"Miss MacDowlas," she said, "is good enough to fancy I am not so well as I ought to be, Tod," bending her face low over the pretty little fellow, who had trotted to her knee. "What do you think of Aunt Dolly's appearing in the character of invalid? It sounds like the best of jokes, does n't it, Tod?"

They tried to smile responsively, all of them, but the effort was not a success. Despite all her pretence of brightness and coquettish attire, there was not one of them who had not been startled when their first greeting was over. Under the triumph of a hat, her face showed almost sharply cut, her skin far too transparently colorless, her eyes much too large and bright. The elaborately coiled braids of hair seemed almost too heavy for the slender throat to bear, and no profusion of trimming could hide that the little figure was worn. The flush and glow and spirit had died away from her. It was not the Dolly who had been wont to pride herself upon ruling supreme in Vagabondia, who sat there before them making them wonder; it was a new creature, who seemed quite a stranger to them.

They were glad to see how fond of her Miss Mac-Dowlas appeared to be. They had naturally not had a very excellent opinion of Miss MacDowlas in the past days; but the fact that Dolly had managed to so win upon her as to bring out her best side, quite softened their hearts. She was not so grim, after all. Her antipathy to Grif had evidently been her most unpleasant peculiarity, and now, seeing her care for this new Dolly, who needed care so much, they were rather touched.

When the farewells had been said, the carriage had driven away, and they had returned to the studio, a silence seemed to fall upon them, one and all. 'Toi-nette sat in her chair, holding Tod, without speaking; Mollie stood near her with a wondering, downcast air; Phil went to the window, and, neglecting his picture wholly for the time being, looked out into the street, whistling softly.

At length he turned round to Aimee.

"Aimee," he said, abruptly, "how long has this been going on?"

"You mean this change?" said Aimee, in a low voice.

"Yes."

"For three months," she answered. "I did not like to tell you because I knew she would not like it; but it dates from the time Grif went away."

Mrs. Phil burst into an impetuous gush of tears, hiding her handsome, girlish face on Tod's neck.

"It is a shame!" she cried out. "It is a cruel, burning shame! Who would ever have thought of Grif's treating her like this?"

"Yes," said Phil; "and who would ever have thought that Dolly would have broken down? Dolly! By George! I can't believe it. If I am able to judge, it seems time that she should try Switzerland or somewhere else. Aimee, has she heard nothing of him?"

"Nothing."

The young man flushed hotly.

"Confound it!" he burst forth. "It looks as if the fellow was a dishonorable scamp. And yet he is the last man I should ever have fancied would prove a scamp."

"But he has not proved himself a scamp yet," said Aimee, in a troubled tone. "And Dolly would not like to hear you say so. And if you knew the whole truth you wouldn't say so. He has been tried too far, and he has been impetuous and rash, but it was his love for Dolly that made him so. And wherever he may be, Phil, I know he is as wretched and hopeless as Dolly herself could be at the worst. It has all been misunderstanding and mischance."

"He has broken Dolly's heart, nevertheless," cried Mrs. Phil. "And if she dies—"

"Dies!" cried out Mollie, opening her great eyes and turning pale all at once. "Dies! Dolly?"

"Hush!" said Aimee, trembling and losing color herself. "Oh, hush!—don't say such things. It sounds so dreadful,—it is too dreadful to think of!"

And so it came about that on another of these hot June days there appeared at the table a'hote of a certain well-conducted and already well-filled inn at Lake Geneva two new arrivals,—a tall, thin, elderly lady of excessively English exterior, and a young person who attracted some attention,—a girl who wore a long black dress, and had a picturesque Elizabethan frill about her too slender throat, and who, in spite of her manner and the clearness of her bright voice, was too whitely transparent of complexion and too finely cut of face to look as strong as a girl of one or two and twenty ought to be.

The people who took stock of them, after the manner of all unoccupied hotel sojourners on the lookout for sensations, noticed this. One or two of them even observed that, on entering the room after the slight exertion of descending the staircase, the girl was slightly out of breath and seemed glad to sit down, and that, her companion evidently making some remark upon the fact, she half laughed, as if wishing to make light of it; and they noticed, too, that her naturally small hands were so very slender that her one simple little ring of amethyst and pearls slipped loosely up and down her finger.

They were not ordinary tourists, these new arrivals, it was clear. Their attire told that at once. They had removed their travelling dresses, and looked as if they had quite made up their minds to enjoy their customary mode of life as if they had been at home. They had no courier, the wiseacres had ascertained, and they had brought a neat English serving-woman, who seemed to know her business marvellously well and be by no means unaccustomed to travelling.

"Aunt and niece!" commented one gentleman, surveying Dolly over his soup. "A nice little creature,—the niece." And he mentally resolved to cultivate her acquaintance. But it was not such an easy matter. The new arrivals were unlike ordinary tourists in other respects than in their settled mode of life. They did not seem to care to form chance acquaintance with their fellow guests. They lived quietly and, unless when driving out together or taking short, unfatiguing strolls, remained much in their own apartments. They appeared at the table d'hote occasionally; but though they were pleasant in manner they were not communicative, and so, after a week or so, people tired of asking questions about them and lapsed into merely exchanging greetings, and looking on with some interest at any changes they observed in the pretty, transparent, though always bright face, and the pliant, soft young figure.

Thus Miss MacDowlas and her companion "tried Switzerland."

"It will do you good, my dear, and brace you up," the elder lady had said; and from the bottom of her heart she had hoped it would.

And did it?

Well, the last time Dolly had "tried Switzerland," she had tried it in the capacity of Lady Augusta's governess, and she had held in charge a host of rampant young Bilberrys, who secretly loathed their daily duties, and were not remarkable in the matter of filial piety, and were only reconciled to existence by the presence of their maternal parent's greatest trial, that highly objectionable Dorothea Crewe. So, taking Lady Augusta in conjunction with her young charges, the girl had often felt her lot by no means the easiest in the world; but youth and spirit, and those oft-arriving letters, had helped her to bear a great deal, and so there was still something sweet about the memory. Oh, those old letters—those foolish, passionate, tender letters—written in the dusty, hot London office, read with such happiness, and answered on such closely penned sheets of foreign paper! How she had used to watch for them, and carry them to her small bedroom and read them again and again, kneeling on the floor by the open window, the fresh, soft summer breezes from the blue lake far below stirring her hair and kissing her forehead! How doubly and trebly fair she had been wont to fancy everything looked on that "letter day" of hers,—that red-letter day,—that golden-letter day!

The very letters she had written then lay in her trunk now, tied together in a bundle, just as Grif had brought them and laid them down upon the table when he gave her up forever. Her "dead letter" lay with them,—that last, last appeal, which had never reached his heart, and never would. She had written her last letter to him, and he his last to her.

And now she had been brought to "try Switzerland" and Lake Geneva as a Lethe.

But she had determined to be practical and courageous, and bear it as best she might. It would not have been like her to give way at once without a struggle. She did not believe in lovelorn damsels, who pined away and died of broken hearts, and made all their friends uncomfortable by so doing. She made a struggle, and refused to give up. She grew shadowy and fair; but it was under protest, and she battled against the change she felt creeping upon her so slowly but so surely. She showed a brave face to people, and tried to be as bright and ready-witted as ever; and if she failed it was not her own fault. She fought hard against her sleepless nights and weary days; and when she lay awake hour after hour hearing the clock strike, it was not because she made no effort to compose herself, it was only because the delicate wheels of thought would work against her helpless will, and it was worse than useless to close her eyes when she could see so plainly her lost lover's desperate, anguished face, and hear so distinctly his strained, strangely altered voice: "No, it is too late for that now,—that is all over!" And he had once loved her better than his life!

So it was that, try as she might, she could not make Switzerland a success. When she went down to the table d'hote, people saw that instead of growing stronger she was growing more frail, and the exertion of coming down the long flight of stairs tried her more than it had seemed to do that first day. Sometimes she had a soft, lovely, dangerous color on her cheeks, and her eyes looked almost translucent; and then again the color was gone, her skin was white and transparent, and her eyes were shadowy and languid. When the hot July days came in, the ring of pearls and amethyst would stay on the small worn hand no longer, and so was taken off and hung with the little bunch of coquettish "charms" upon her chain. But she was not conquered yet, and the guests and servants often heard her laughing, and making Miss MacDowlas laugh as they sat together in their private parlor.

The two were sitting thus together one Saturday early in July,—Dolly in a loose white wrapper, resting in a low basket chair by the open window, and fanning herself languidly,—when a visitor was announced, and the moment after the announcement a tall young lady rushed into the room and clasped Dolly unceremoniously in her arms, either not observing or totally ignoring Miss MacDowlas's presence.

"Dolly!" she cried, kneeling down by the basket chair and speaking so fast that her words tumbled over each other, and her sentences were curiously mingled. "Oh! if you please, dear, I know it was n't polite, and I never meant to do it in such an unexpected, awfully rude way; and what mamma would say, I am sure I cannot tell, unless go into dignified convulsions, and shudder herself stiff; but how could I help it, when I came expecting to see you as bright and lovely as ever, and caught a glimpse of you through the door, as the servant spoke, sitting here so white and thin and tired-looking! Oh, dear! oh, dear! how ever can it be!"

"My dear Phemie!" said Dolly, laughing and crying both at once, through weakness and sympathy,—for of course poor, easily moved Phemie had burst into a flood of affectionate tears. "My dear child, how excited you are, and how pleasant it is to see you! How did you manage to come?"

"The professor with the lumpy face—poor, pale darling—I mean you, not him," explained the eldest Miss Bilberry, clinging to her ex-governess as if she was afraid of seeing her float through the open window. "The professor with the lumpy face, Dolly; which shows he is not so horrid as I always thought him, and I am very sorry for being so inconsiderate, I am sure—you know he cannot help his lumps any more than I can help my dreadful red hands and my dresses not fitting."

Dolly stopped her here to introduce her to Miss MacDowlas; and that lady having welcomed her good-naturedly, and received her incoherent apologies for her impetuous lack of decorum, the explanation proceeded.

"How could the professor send you here?" asked Dolly.

"He did not exactly send me, but he helped me," replied the luckless Euphemia, becoming a trifle more coherent. "I saw you at the little church, though you did not see me, because, of course, we sit in the most disagreeable part, just where we can't see or be seen at all. And though I only saw you at a distance, and through your veil, and half behind a pillar, I knew you, and knew Miss MacDowlas. I think I knew Miss MacDowlas most because she wasn't behind the pillar. And it nearly drove me crazy to think you were so near, and I gave one of the servants some money to find out where you were staying, and she brought me word that you were staying here, and meant to stay. And then I asked the lady principal to let me come and see you, and of course she refused; and I never should have been able to come at all, only it chanced that was my music-lesson day, and I went in to the professor with red eyes,—I had cried so,—and when he asked me what I had been crying for, I remembered that he used to be fond of you, and I told him. And he was sorry for me, and promised to ask leave for me. He is a cousin of the lady principal, and a great favorite with her. And the end of it was that they let me come. And I have almost flown. I had to wait until to-day, you know, because it was Saturday."

It was quite touching to see how, when she stopped speaking, she clung to Dolly's hands, and looked at her with wonder and grief in her face.

"What is it that has changed you so?" she said. "You are not like yourself at all. Oh, my dear, how ill you are!"

A wistful shadow showed itself in the girl's eyes.

"Am I so much changed?" she asked.

"You do not look like our Dolly at all," protested Phemie. "You are thin,—oh, so thin! What is the matter?"

"Thin!" said Dolly. "Am I? Then I must be growing ugly enough. Perhaps it is to punish me for being so vain about my figure. Don't you remember what a dread I always had of growing thin? Just to think that I should grow thin, after all! Do my bones stick out like the Honorable Cecilia Howland's, Phemie?" And she ended with a little laugh.

Phemie kissed her, in affectionate protest against such an idea.

"Oh, dear, no!" she said. "They could n't, you know. They are not the kind of bones to do it. Just think of her dreadful elbows and her fearful shoulder-blades! You couldn't look like her. I don't mean that sort of thinness at all. But you seem so light and so little. And look here," and she held up the painfully small hand, the poor little hand without the ring. "There are no dimples here now, Dolly," she said, sorrowfully.

"No," answered Dolly, simply; and the next minute, as she drew her hand away, there fluttered from her lips a sigh.

She managed to change the turn of conversation after this. Miss MacDowlas had good-naturedly left them alone, and so she began to ask Phemie questions,—questions about school and lessons and companions, about the lady principal and the under-teachers and about the professor with the lumpy face; and, despite appearances being against her, there was still the old ring in her girl's jests.

"Has madame got a new bonnet yet," she asked, "or does she still wear the old one with those aggressive-looking spikes of wheat in it? The lean ears ought to have eaten up the fat ones by this time."

"But they have n't," returned Phemie. "They are there yet, Dolly. Just the same spikes in the same bonnet, only she has had new saffron-colored ribbon put on it, just the shade of her skin."

Dolly shuddered,—Lady Augusta's own semi-tragic shudder, if Phemie had only recognized it.

"Phemie," she said, with a touch of pardonable anxiety, "ill as I look, I am not that color, am I? To lose one's figure and grow thin is bad enough, but to become like Madame Pillet—dear me!" shaking her head. "I scarcely think I could reconcile myself to existence."

Phemie laughed. "You are not changed in one respect, Dolly," she said. "When I hear you talk it makes me feel quite—quite safe."

"Safe!" Dolly echoed. "You mean to say that so long as I preserve my constitutional vanity, your anxiety won't overpower you. But—but," looking at her curiously, "did you think at first that I was not safe, as you call it?"

"You looked so ill," faltered Phemie. "And—I was so startled."

"Were you?" asked Dolly. "Did I shock you?"

"A little—only just a little, dear," deprecatingly.

Then strangely enough fell upon them a silence. Dolly turned toward the window, and her eyes seemed to fix themselves upon some far-away point, as if she was pondering over a new train of thought. And when at last she spoke, her voice was touched with the tremulous unsteadiness of tears.

"Do you think," she said, slowly,—"do you think that any one who had loved me would be shocked to see me now? Am I so much altered as that? One scarcely sees these things one's self,—they come to pass so gradually."

All poor Phemie's smiles died away.

"Don't let us talk about it," she pleaded. "I cannot bear to hear you speak so. Don't, dear—if you please, don't!"

Her pain was so evident that it roused Dolly at once.

"I won't, if it troubles you," she said, almost in her natural manner. "It does not matter,—why should it? There is no one here to be shocked. I was only wondering."

But the shadow did not quite leave her face, and even when, an hour later, Euphemia bade her good-by and left her, promising to return again as soon as possible, it was there still.

She was very, very quiet for a few minutes after she found herself alone. She clasped her hands behind her head, and lay back in the light chair, looking out of the window. She was thinking so deeply that she did not even stir for a while; but in the end she got up, as though moved by some impulse, and crossed the room.

Against the wall hung a long, narrow mirror, and she went to this mirror and stood before it, looking at herself from head to foot,—at her piteously sharpened face, with its large, wondering eyes, eyes that wondered at themselves,—at the small, light figure so painfully etherealized, and about which the white wrapper hung so loosely. She even held up, at last, the slender hand and arm; but when she saw these uplifted, appealing, as it were, for this sad, new face which did not seem her own, she broke into a little cry of pain and grief.

"If you could see me now," she said, "if you should come here by chance and see me now, my dear, I think you would not wait to ask whether I had been true or false. I never laid this white cheek on your shoulder, did I? Oh, what a changed face it is! I know I was never very pretty, though you thought so and were proud of me in your tender way, but I was not like this in those dear old days. Grif, Grif, would you know me,—would you know me?" And, turning to her chair again, she dropped upon her knees before it, and knelt there sobbing.



CHAPTER XVI. ~ IF YOU SHOULD DIE.

THE postman paid frequent visits to Bloomsbury Place during these summer weeks. At first Dolly wrote often herself, but later it seemed to fall to Miss MacDowlas to answer Aimee's weekly letters and Mollie's fortnightly ones. And that lady was a faithful correspondent, and did her duty as readily as was possible, giving all the news, and recording all Dolly's messages, and issuing regular bulletins on the subject of her health. "Your sister," she sometimes wrote, "is not so well, and I have persuaded her to allow me to be her amanuensis." Or, "Your sister is tired after a rather long drive, and I have persuaded her to rest while I write at her dictation." Or sometimes, "Dolly is rather stronger, and is in excellent spirits, but I do not wish her to exert herself at present." But at length a new element crept into these letters. The cheerful tone gave way to a more dubious one; Dolly's whimsical messages were fewer and farther between, and sometimes Miss MacDowlas seemed to be on the verge of hinting that her condition was a weaker and more precarious one than even she herself had at first feared.

Ralph Gowan, on making his friendly calls, and hearing this, was both anxious and puzzled. In a very short time after his return he had awakened to a recognition of some mysterious shadow upon the household. Vagabondia had lost its spirits. Mrs. Phil and her husband were almost thoughtful; Tod disported himself unregarded and unadmired, comparatively speaking; Mollie seemed half frightened by the aspect affairs were wearing; and Aimee's wise, round face had an older look. And then these letters! Dolly "trying Switzerland" for her health, Dolly mysteriously ill and far away from home,—too weak sometimes to write. Dolly, who had never seemed to have a weakness; who had entered the lists against even Lady Augusta, and had come off victorious; who had been mock-worldly, and coquettish, and daring; who had made open onslaught upon eligible Philistines; who had angled prettily and with sinful success for ineligible Bohemians! What did it mean? And where was Donne? Certainly he was never to be seen at Bloomsbury Place or in its vicinity in these days.

But, deeply interested as he was, Gowan was not the man to ask questions; so he could only wait until chance brought the truth to light.

He came to the house upon one occasion and found Aimee crying quietly over one of Miss MacDowlas's letters in the parlor, and in his sympathy he felt compelled to speak openly to her.

Then Aimee, heavy of heart and full of despairing grief, handed him the letter to read.

"I have known it would be so—from the first," she sobbed. "We are going to lose her. Perhaps she will not live to come home again."

"You mean Dolly?" he said.

"Yes," hysterically. "Miss MacDowlas says—" But she could get no further.

This was what Miss MacDowlas said:—

"I cannot think it would be right to hide from you that your sister is very ill, though she does not complain, and persists in treating her increasing weakness lightly. Indeed, I am sure that she herself does not comprehend her danger. I am inclined to believe that it has not yet occurred to her that she is in danger at all. She protests that she cannot be ill so long as she does not suffer; but I, who have watched her day by day, can see only too plainly where the danger lies. And so I think it best to warn you to be prepared to come to us at once if at any time I should send for you hurriedly."

"Prepared to go to them!" commented Aimee. "What does that mean? What can it mean but that our own Dolly is dying, and may slip out of the world away from us at any moment? Oh, Grif! Grif! what have you done?"

Gowan closed the letter.

"Miss Aimee," he said, "where is Donne?"

Aimee fairly wrung her hands.

"I don't know," she quite wailed. "If I only did—if I only knew where I could find him!"

"You don't know!" exclaimed Gowan. "And Dolly dying in Switzerland!"

"That is it," she returned. "That is what it all means. If any of us knew—or if Dolly knew, she would not be dying in Switzerland. It is because she does not know, that she is dying. She has never seen him since the night you brought Mollie home. And—and she cannot live without him."

The whole story was told in very few words after this; and Gowan, listening, began to understand what the cloud upon the house had meant. He suffered some sharp enough pangs through the discovery, too. The last frail cords that had bound him to hope snapped as Aimee poured out her sorrows. He had never been very sanguine of success, but even after hoping against hope, his tender fancy for Dolly Crewe had died a very lingering death; indeed, it was not quite dead yet, but he was beginning to comprehend this old love story more fully, and he had found himself forced to do his rival greater justice. He could not see his virtues as the rest saw them, of course, but he was generous enough to pity him, and see that his lot had been a terribly hard one.

"There is only one thing to be done," he said, when Aimee had finished speaking. "We must find him."

"Find him! We cannot find him."

"That remains to be proved," he answered. "Have you been to his lodgings?"

"Yes," mournfully. "And even to the office! He left his lodgings that very night, paid his bills, and drove away in a cab with his trunk. Poor Grif! It was n't a very big trunk. He went to the office the next morning, and told Mr. Flynn he was going to leave London, and one of the clerks told Phil there was a 'row' between them. Mr. Flynn was angry because he had not given due notice of his intention. That is all we know."

"And you have not the slightest clew beyond this?"

"Not the slightest. He spent all his spare time with Dolly, you know; so there is not even any place of resort, or club, or anything, where we might go to make inquiries about him."

Gowan's countenance fell. He felt the girl's distress keenly, apart from his own pain.

"The whole affair seems very much against us," he said; "but he may—I say he may be in London still. I am inclined to believe he is myself. When the first passion of excitement was over, he would find himself weaker than he fancied he was. It would not be so easy to cut himself off from the old life altogether. He would long so inexpressibly to see Dolly again that he could not tear himself away. I think we may be assured that even if he is not in London, at least he has not left England."

"That was what I have been afraid of," said Aimee, "that he might have left England altogether."

"I cannot think he has," Gowan returned.

They were both silent for a moment. Aimee sat twisting Miss MacDowlas's letter in her fingers, fresh tears gathering in her eyes.

"It is all the harder to bear," she said next, "because Dolly has always seemed so much of a reality to us. If she had been a pale, ethereal sort of girl, it might not seem such a shock; but she never was. She even used to say she could not bear those frail, ethereal people in books, who were always dying and saying touching things just at the proper time, and who knew exactly when to call up their agonized friends to their bedside to see how pathetically and decorously they made their exit. Oh, my poor darling! To think that she should be fading away and dying just in the same way! I cannot make it seem real. I cannot think of her without her color, and her jokes, and her bits of acting, and her little vanities. She will not be our Dolly at all if they have left her. There is a dress of hers up-stairs now,—a dress she couldn't bear. And I remember so well how she lost her temper when she was making it, because it would n't fit. And when I went into the parlor she was crying over it, and Grif was trying so hard to console her that at last she laughed. I can see her now, with the tears in her eyes, looking half-vexed and half-comforted. And Tod, too,—how fond she was of Tod, and how proud of him! Ah, Tod," in a fresh burst, "when you grow up, the daisies may have been growing for many a year over poor little Aunt Dolly, and you will have forgotten her quite."

"You must not look at the matter in that desponding way," said Gowan, quite unsteadily. "We must hope for the best, and do what we can. You may rely upon me to exert myself to the utmost. If we succeed in finding Donne I am sure that he will do the rest. Perhaps, next summer Vagabondia will be as bright as ever,—nay, even brighter than it has been before."

All his sympathies were enlisted, and, hopeless as the task seemed, he had determined to make strenuous efforts to trace this lost lover. Men had concealed themselves from their friends, in the world of London, often before, and this, he felt sure, Griffith Donne was doing; and since this poor little impassioned, much-tried Dolly was dying in spite of herself for Griffith Donne's sake, and seemed only to be saved by his presence, he must even set himself the task of bringing him to light and clearing up this miserable misunderstanding. Having been Dolly Crewe's lover, he was still generous enough to wish to prove himself her friend; yes, and even her luckier lover's friend, though he winced a trifle at the thought. Accordingly, he left the house that night with his mind full of half-formed plans, both feasible and otherwise.

During the remainder of that week he did not call at Bloomsbury Place again, but at the beginning of the next he made his appearance, bringing with him a piece of news which excited Aimee terribly.

"I know I shall startle you," he said, the moment they were alone together, "but you can scarcely be more startled than I was myself. I have been on the lookout constantly, but I did not expect to be rewarded by success so soon. Indeed, as it is, it has been entirely a matter of chance. It is as I felt sure it would be. Donne is in London still. I know that much, though that is all I have learned as yet. Late last night I caught a glimpse—only a glimpse—of him hurrying through a by-street. I almost fancied he had seen me and was determined to get out of the way."

"The pretty English girl," said the guests at the inn, "comes down no longer to the table d'hote!" "The pretty English girl," remarked the wiseacres, "does not even drive out on these days, and the doctor calls every morning to see her."

"And sometimes," added one of the wisest, "again in the evening."

"Consumption," observed another.

"Plainly consumption," nodding significantly. "These English frauleins are so often consumptive," commented a third. "It is astonishing to remark how many come to 'try Switzerland,' as they say."

"And die?"

"And die,—as this one will."

"Poor little thing!" with a sigh and a pitying shrug of the shoulders.

And in the meantime up-stairs the basket chair had been taken away from the window, and a large-cushioned, chintz-covered couch had been pushed into its place, and Dolly lay upon it. But luxurious as her couch was, and balmy as the air was, coming through the widely opened window, she did not find much rest. The fact was, she was past rest by this time, she was too weak to rest. The hot days tried her, and her sleepless nights undermined even her last feeble relic of strength. Sometimes during the day she felt that she could not lie propped up on the pillows a moment longer; but when she tried to stand or sit up she was glad to drop back again into the old place. She lost her breath fearfully soon,—the least exertion left her panting.

"If I had a cough," she said once to Miss MacDowlas, "I could understand that I was ill—or if I suffered any actual pain, but I don't, and even the doctor admits that my lungs are safe enough. What is it that he says about me? Let me see. Ah, this is it: that I am 'below par—fearfully below par,' as if I was gold, or notes, or bonds, or something. My ideas on the subject of the money market are indefinite, you see. Ah, well; I wonder when I shall be 'above par'!"

She never spoke of her ailments in any other strain. Even as she lay on her couch, too prostrate to either read or work, she made audacious satirical speeches, and told Miss MacDowlas stories of Vagabondia, just as she used to tell them to Grif himself, only that in these days she could not get up to flourish illustratively; and often after lying for an hour or so in a dead, heavy, exhausting day-sleep, she opened her eyes at last, to jest about her faithful discharge of her duties as companion. Only she herself knew of the fierce battles she so often fought in secret, when her sore, aching heart cried out so loud for Grif and would not—would not be comforted.

She saw Phemie frequently. The much-abused professor had proved himself a faithful friend to them. He had never been quite able to forget the little English governess, who had so won upon him in the past, even though this same young lady, in her anxiety to set Lady Augusta at defiance, had treated him somewhat cavalierly. Indeed, hearing that she was ill, he was so touched as to be quite overwhelmed with grief. He gained Euphemia frequent leaves of absence, and sent messages of condolence and bouquets,—huge bunches of flowers which made Dolly laugh even while they pleased her. There was always a bouquet, stiff in form and gigantic in proportions, when Phemie came.

At first Phemie caught the contagion of Dolly's own spirit and hopefulness, and was sustained by it in spite of appearances; but its influence died out at the end of a few weeks, and even she was not to be deceived. An awful fear began to force itself upon her,—a fear doubly awful to poor, susceptible Phemie. Dolly was getting no better; she was even getting worse every day; she could not sit up; she was thinner and larger-eyed than ever. Was something going to happen? And at the mere thought of that possible something she would lose her breath and sit looking at Dolly, silent, wondering, and awe-stricken. She began to ponder over this something, as she tried to learn her lessons; she thought of it as she went to bed and she dreamed of it in the night. Sometimes when she came in unexpectedly and found Dolly in one of those prostrate sleeps, she was so frightened that she could have cried out aloud.

She came in so one evening at twilight,—the professor had brought her himself and had promised to escort her home,—and she found Dolly in one of these sleeps. So, treading lightly, she put the bouquet in water, and then drew a low chair to the girl's side and sat down to watch and wait until she should awaken. Miss MacDowlas was in her own room writing to Aimee; so the place seemed very quiet, and it was its quietness, perhaps, which so stirred Phemie to sorrowful thoughts and fear.

Upon her brightly flowered chintz cushions Dolly lay like the shadow of her former self. The once soft, round outlines of her face had grown clear and sharp-cut, the delicate chin had lost its dimple, the transparent skin upon the temples showed a tracery of blue veins, the closed eyelids had a strange whiteness and lay upon her eyes heavily. She did not move,—she seemed scarcely to breathe. Phemie caught her own breath and held it, lest it should break from her in a sob of grief and terror.

This something awful was going to happen! She could not recover herself even when Dolly wakened and began to talk to her. She could not think of anything but her own anguish and pity for her friend. She could not talk and was so silent, indeed, that Dolly became silent too; and so, as the dusk fell upon them, they sat together in a novel quiet, listening to a band of strolling musicians, who were playing somewhere in the distance, and the sound of whose instruments floated to them, softened and made plaintive by the evening air.

At last Dolly broke the silence.

"You are very quiet, Phemie," she said. "Are you going to sleep?"

"No," faltered Phemie, drawing closer to her. "I am thinking."

"Thinking. What about?"

"About you. Dolly, do you—are you very ill—worse than you were?"

"Very ill!" repeated Dolly, slowly, as if in wonder. "Worse than I was! Why do you ask?"

Then Phemie lost self-control altogether. She left her seat and fell down by the couch, bursting into tears.

"You are so altered," she said; "and you alter so much every week. I cried over your poor, thin little hands when first I came to see you, but now your wrist looks as if it would snap in two. Oh, Dolly, darling, if—if you should die!"

Was it quite a new thought, or was it because it had never come home to her in such a form before, this thought of Death? She started as if she had been stung.

"If I should die!" she echoed. "Die!"

"Phemie, my dear," said Miss MacDowlas, opening the door, "the professor is waiting down-stairs."

And so, having let her sorrow get the better of her, Phemie had no time to stay to see if her indiscretion had done harm. If she did not go now, she might not be allowed fresh grace; and so she was fain to tear herself away.

"I ought n't to have said it!" she bewailed, as she kissed Dolly again and again. "Please forget it; oh, do, please, forget it! I did not mean it, indeed! And now I shall be so frightened and unhappy!"

"Phemie," said Dolly, quietly, "you have not frightened me; so you haven't the least need to trouble yourself, my dear."

But she was not exactly sorry to be left alone, and when she was alone her thoughts wandered back to that first evening Phemie had called,—the evening she had gone to the glass to look at her changed face. She had sat in the basket-chair then,—she lay back upon her cushions now, and a crowd of new thoughts came trooping through her mind. The soft air was scented and balmy; the twilight sky was a dome of purple, jewel-hung; people's voices came murmuring from the gardens below; the far-off music floated to her through the window.

"If I should die!" she said, in a wondering whisper,—"I, Dolly Crewe! How strange it sounds! Have I never thought that I could die before, or is it strange because now it is so real and near? When I used to talk about death to Grif, it always seemed so far away from both of us; it seemed to me as if I was not good enough or unreal enough to be near to Death,—great, solemn Death itself. Why, I could look at myself, and wonder at the thought of how much I shall see and know if I should die. Grif, how much I should have to tell you, dear,—only that people are always afraid of spirits, and perhaps you would be afraid, too,—even of me! What would they say at home? Dear, old, broken-hearted fellow, what would you say, if I should die?"

She could not help thinking about those at home; about Aimee and Mollie and Phil and Toinette, sitting together in the dear old littered room at Bloomsbury Place,—the dear old untidy room, where she had sat with Grif so often! How would they all bear it when the letter came to tell them she was gone, and would never be with them and share their pleasures and troubles again! And then, strangely enough, she began to picture herself as she would look; perhaps, laid out in this very room, a dimly outlined figure, under a white sheet,—not her old self, but a solemn, wondrous marble form, before whose motionless, mysterious presence they would feel awed.

"And they would turn down the white covering and look at me," she found herself saying. "And they would wonder at me, and feel that I was far away. Oh, how they would wonder at me! And, at the very last, before they hid my face forever under the coffin-lid, they would all kiss me in that tender, solemn way,—all but Grif, who loved me best; and Grif would not be there!"

And the piteous rain of heavy tears that rolled down her cheeks, and fell upon her pillow, was not for herself,—not for her own pain and weariness and anguish,—not' for the white, worn face, that would be shut beneath the coffin-lid, but for Grif,—for Grif,—for Grif, who, coming back some day to learn the truth, might hear that she had died!



CHAPTER XVII. ~ DO YOU KNOW THAT SHE IS DYING?

IT had come at last,—the letter from Geneva, for which they all had waited with such anxious hearts and so much of dread. The postman, bringing it by the morning's delivery, and handing it through the opened door to Aimee, had wondered a little at her excited manner,—she was always excited when these letters came; and the moment she had entered the parlor, holding the hurriedly read note,—it was scarcely more than a note,—there was not one of them who did not understand all before she spoke.

Mrs. Phil burst into tears; Phil himself laid down his brush and changed color; Mollie silently clung to Tod as a refuge, and looked up with trembling lips.

Mrs. Phil was the first to speak.

"You may as well tell us the worst," she said; "but it is easy enough to guess what it is, without being told."

"It is almost the very worst," answered Aimee.

"Miss MacDowlas wants me to go to them at once. She is so ill that if a change does not take place, she will not live many weeks, and she has asked for me."

They all knew only too well that "she" meant Dolly.

"Then," said Phil, "you must go at once."

"I can go to-day," she answered. "I knew it would come to this, and I am ready to leave London at any moment."

There was no delay. Her small box was even then ready packed and corded for the journey. She had taken Miss MacDowlas's warning in time. It would not have been like this heavy-hearted wise one to disregard it. She would have been ready to go to Dolly at ten minutes' notice, if she had been in India. She was not afraid, either, of making the journey alone. It was not a very terrible journey, she said. Secretly, she had a fancy that perhaps Dolly would like to see her by herself first, to have a few quiet days alone with her, in which she could become used to the idea of the farewell the rest would come to say. And in her mind the poor little oracle had another fancy, too, and this fancy she confided to Mollie before bidding her good-by.

"Mollie," she said, "I am going to leave a charge in your hands."

"Is it anything about Dolly?" asked Mollie, making fruitless efforts to check her affectionate tears.

"I wish you would leave me something to do for Dolly, Aimee."

"It is something connected with Dolly;" returned Aimee. "I want you to keep constantly on the watch for Griffith."

"For Griffith!" Mollie exclaimed. "How can I, when I don't know whether he is in England or not?"

"He is in England," Aimee replied. "He is in London, for Mr. Gowan has seen him."

"In London—and Dolly in Switzerland, perhaps dying!"

"He does not know that, or he would have been with her before now," said Aimee. "Once let him know that she is ill, and he will be with her. I know him well enough to be sure of that. And it is my impression that if he went to her at the eleventh hour, when she might seem to us to be at the very last, he would bring her back to life. It is Grif she is dying for, and only Grif can save her."

"And what do you want me to do?" anxiously.

"To watch for him constantly, as I said. Don't you think, Mollie, that he might come back, if it were only into the street to look at the house, in a restless sort of remembrance of the time when they used to be so happy?"

"It would not be unlike him," answered Mollie, slowly. "He was very fond of Dolly. Oh, he was very fond of her!"

"Fond of her! He loved her better than his life, and does still, wherever he may be. Something tells me he will come, and that is why I want you to watch. Watch at the window as constantly as you can, but more particularly at dusk; and if you should see him, Mollie, don't wait a second. Run out to him, and make him listen to you. Ah, poor fellow, he will listen eagerly and penitently enough, if you only say to him that Dolly is dying."

"Very well," said Mollie, "I will remember." And thus the wise one took her departure.

It was twilight in Bloomsbury Place, and Mollie crouched before the parlor window, resting her chin upon her hands, and looking out, pretty much as Aimee had looked out on that winter evening months ago, when Mr. Gerald Chandos had first presented himself to her mind as an individual to be dreaded.

Three days had passed since the wise one left London,—three miserable, dragging days they had seemed to Mollie, despite their summer warmth and sunshine. Real anxiety and sorrow were new experiences in Vagabondia; little trials they had felt, and often enough small unpleasantnesses, privations, and disappointments; but death and grief were new. And they were just beginning to realize broadly the blow which had fallen upon them; hard as it was to believe at first, they were beginning slowly to comprehend the sad meaning of the lesson they were learning now for the first time. What each had felt a fear of in secret was coming to pass at last, and there was no help against it.

Phil went about his work looking as none of them had ever seen him look before. Mrs. Phil's tears fell thick and fast. Not understanding the mystery, she could blame nobody but Grif, and Grif she could not forgive. To Mollie the house seemed like a grave. She could think of nothing but Dolly,—Dolly, white and worn and altered, lying upon her couch, her eyes closed, her breath fluttering faintly. She wondered if she was afraid to die. She herself had a secret girlish terror of death and its strange solemness, and she so pitied Dolly that sometimes she could not contain her grief, and was obliged to hide herself until her tears spent themselves.

She had been crying during all this twilight hour she had knelt at the window. She was so lonely that it seemed impossible to do anything else. It would have been bad enough to bear the suspense even if Aimee had been with her, but without Aimee it was dreadful. The tears slipped down her cheeks and rolled away, and she did not even attempt to dry them, her affectionate grief had mastered her completely. But she was roused at length. Some one crossed the street from the pavement opposite the house; and when this some one entered the gate and ascended the steps, she rose slowly, half-reluctant, half-comforted, and with a faint thrill at her heart. It was Ralph Gowan, and she was not wise enough or self-controlled enough yet to see Ralph Gowan without feeling her pulses quicken.

When she opened the door he did not greet her as usual, but spoke to her at once in a low, hurried tone.

"Mollie, where is Aimee?" he asked.

Her tears began to flow again; she could not help giving way.

"You had better come in," she said, half turning away from him and speaking brokenly. "Aimee is not here. She left London three days ago. Dolly—"

"Dolly is worse!" he said, because she could not finish.

She nodded, with a heart too full for words.

He stepped inside, and, closing the door, laid his hand upon her shoulder.

"Then, Mollie," he said, "I must come to you."

He did not wait a moment, but led her gently enough into the parlor, and, blinded as she was by her tears, she saw that instant that he had not come without a reason.

"Don't cry," he said. "I want you to be brave and calm now,—for Dolly's sake. I want your help,—for Dolly's sake, remember."

She recollected Aimee's words—"Mr. Gowan has seen him"—and a sudden light flashed upon her. The tears seemed to dry of their own accord all at once, as she looked up.

"Yes," she answered.

He knew, without hearing another word, that he might trust her.

"Can you guess whom I have just this moment seen?" he said.

"Yes," sprang from her lips, without a second's hesitation. "You have seen Grif."

"I have seen Grif," he answered. "He is at the corner of the street now. If I had attempted to speak to him he would have managed to avoid me; and because I knew that, I came here, hoping to find Aimee; but since Aimee is not here—"

"I can go," she interrupted him, all a-tremble with eagerness. "He will listen to me; he was fond of me, too, and I was fond of him. Oh! let me go now!"

That bright little scarlet shawl of Dolly's lay upon the sofa, and she snatched it up with shaking hands and threw it over her head and shoulders.

"If I can speak to him once, he will listen," she said; "and if he listens, Dolly will be saved. She won't die if Grif comes back. She can't die if Grif comes back. Oh, Dolly, my darling, you saved me, and I am going to try to save you."

She was out in the street in two minutes, standing on the pavement, looking up and down, and then she ran across to the other side. She kept close to the houses, so that she might be in their shadow, and a little sob broke from her as she hurried along,—a sob of joy and fear and excitement. At the end of the row of houses somebody was standing under the street lamp,—a man. Was it Grif,—or could Grif have gone even in this short time? Fate could never have been so cruel to him, to her, to them all, as to let him come so near and then go away without hearing that Dolly was lying at death's portals, and no one could save her but himself and the tender power of the sweet, old, much-tried love. Oh, no, no! It was Grif indeed; for as she neared the place where he stood, she saw his face in the lamp-light,—a grief-worn, pallid face, changed and haggard and desperate,—a sight that made her cry out aloud.

He had not seen her or even heard her. He stood there looking toward the house she had left, and seeing, as it seemed, nothing else. Only the darkness had hidden her from him. His eyes were fixed upon the dim light that burned in Dolly's window. She had not meant to speak until she stood close to him; but when she was within a few paces of him her excitement mastered her.

"Grif," she cried out; "Grif, is it you?"

And when he turned, with a great start, to look at her, she was upon him,—her hands outstretched, the light upon her face, the tears streaming down her cheeks,—sobbing aloud.

"Mollie," he answered, "is it you?" And she saw that he almost staggered.

She could not speak at first. She clung to his arm so tightly that he could scarcely have broken away from her if he had tried. But he did not try; it seemed as though her touch made him weak,—weaker than he had ever been before in his life. Beauty as she was, they had always thought her in some way like Dolly, and, just now, with Dolly's gay little scarlet shawl slipping away from her face, with the great grief in her imploring eyes, with that innocent appealing trick of the clinging hands, she might almost have been Dolly's self.

Try as he might, he could not regain his self-control. He was sheerly powerless before her.

"Mollie," he said, "what has brought you here? Why have you come?"

"I have come," she answered, "for Dolly's sake!"

The vague fear he had felt at first caught hold upon him with all the fulness of its strength.

"For Dolly's sake!" he echoed. "Nay, Dolly has done with me, and I with her." And though he tried to speak bitterly, he failed.

She was too fond of Dolly, and too full of grief to spare him after that. Unstrung as she was, her reproach burst forth from her without a softened touch. "Dolly has done with earth. Dolly's life is over," she sobbed. "Do you know that she is dying? Yes, dying,—our own bright Dolly,—and you—you have killed her!"

She had not thought how cruel it would sound, and the next instant she was full of terror at the effect of her own words. He broke loose from her,—fell loose from her, one might better describe it, for it was his own weight rather than any effort which dragged him from her grasp. He staggered and caught hold of the iron railings to save himself, and there hung, staring at her with a face like a dead man.

"My God!" he said,—not another word.

"You must not give way like that," she cried out, in a new fright. "Oh, how could I speak so! Aimee would have told you better. I did not mean to be so hard. You can save her if you will. She will not die, Grif, if you go to her. She only wants you. Grif,—Grif,—you look as if you could not understand what I am saying." And she wrung her hands.

And, indeed, it scarcely seemed as if he did understand, though at last he spoke.

"Where is she?" he said. "Not here? You say I must 'go' to her."

"No, she is not here. She is at Lake Geneva. Miss MacDowlas took her there because she grew so weak, and she has grown weaker ever since, and three days ago they sent for Aimee to come to her, because—because they think she is going to die."

"And you say that I have done this?"

"I ought n't to have put it that way, it sounds so cruel, but—but she has never been like herself since the night you went away, and we have all known that it was her unhappiness that made her ill. She could not get over it, and though she tried to hide it, she was worn out. She loved you so."

He interrupted her.

"If she is dying for me," he said, hoarsely, "she must have loved me, and if she has loved me through all this,—God help us both!"

"How could you go away and leave her all alone after all those years?" demanded Mollie. "We cannot understand it. No one knows but Aimee, and Dolly has told her that you were not to blame. Why did you go?"

"You do not know?" he said. "You should know, Mollie, of all others. You were with her when she played that miserable coquette's trick,—that pitiful trick, so unlike herself,—you were with her that night when she let Gowan keep her away from me, when I waited for her coming hour after hour. I saw you with them when he was bidding her goodnight."

They had hidden their secret well all these months, but it was to be hidden no longer now. It flashed upon her like an electric shock. She remembered a hundred things,—a hundred little mysteries she had met and been puzzled by, in Aimee's manner; she remembered all she had heard, and all she had wondered at, and her heart seemed turned to stone. The flush of weeping died out of her face, her hands fell and hung down at her side, her tears were gone; nothing seemed left to her but blank horror.

"Was it because she did not come that night, that you left her to die?" she asked, in a labored voice. "Was it because you saw her with Ralph Gowan—was it because you found out that she had been with him, that you went away and let her break her heart? Tell me!"

He answered her, "Yes."

"Then," she said, turning to face him, still cold, and almost rigid, "it is I who have killed her, and not you."

"You!" he exclaimed.

She did not wait to choose her words, or try to soften the story of her own humiliation.

"If she dies," she said, "she has died for me."

And without further preface she told him all. How she had let Gerald Chandos flatter and gain power over her, until the climax of her folly had been the wild, wilful escapade of that miserable long-past day. How Ralph Gowan had discovered her romantic secret, and revealed it to Dolly. How they had followed and rescued her; even how Dolly had awakened her from her dangerous dream with that light touch, and had drawn her away from the brink of an abyss, with her loving, girlish hands; and she ended with an outburst of anguish.

"Why did n't she tell you?" she said. "For my sake she did not want the rest to know; but why did not she tell you? I cannot understand."

"She tried to tell me," he said, in an agony of self-reproach, as he began to see what he had done,—"she tried to tell me, and I would not hear her."

All his bygone sufferings—and, Heaven knows, he had suffered bitterly and heavily enough—sank into insignificance before the misery of this hour. To know how true and pure of heart she had been; to know how faithful, unselfish, sweet; to remember how she had met him with a tender little cry of joy, with outstretched, innocent hands, that he had thrust aside; to remember the old golden days in which she had so clung to him, and brightened his life; to think how he had left her lying upon the sofa that night, her white face drooping piteously against the cushions; to have all come back to him and know that he only was to blame; to know it all too late. Nay, a whole life of future bliss could never quite efface the memory of such a passion of remorse and pain.

"Oh, my God!" he prayed, "have mercy upon me!" And then he turned upon Mollie. "Tell me where to go to; tell me, and let me go. I must go to her now without a moment's waiting. My poor, faithful little girl,—my pretty Dolly! Dying,—dying! No, I don't believe it,—I won't. She cannot die yet. Fate has been cruel enough to us, but it cannot be so cruel as that. Love will make her live."

He dashed down Mollie's directions in desperate, feverish haste upon a leaf of his memorandum-book, and then he bade her good-by.