She was half beside herself with vexation, which was increased by Zell's convulsed laughter on the porch, but she stormed at the old plowman as vainly as a robin might remonstrate with a windmill.

"Mr. Hard told me to plow it, and I'm a-goin' to plow it," said the human part of the mechanism as it again passed, without stopping, the place where Edith stood.

Utterly baffled, Edith rushed into the house and hastily swallowed a cup of coffee. She was too angry to eat a mouthful.

Zell followed with her hand upon her side, which was aching from laughter, and as soon as she found her voice said:

"It was one of the most touchingly beautiful rural scenes I ever looked upon. I never had so close and inspiring a view of one of the 'sons of the soil' before."

"Yes," snapped Edith, "he is literally a clod."

"I can readily see," continued Zell, in a mock-sentimental tone, "how noble and refining a sphere the 'garding' (as your friend, out there, terms it) must be, even for women. In the first place there are your associates in. labor—"

"Stop!" interrupted Edith sharply. "You all leave everything for me to do, but I won't be teased and tormented in the bargain."

"But really," continued the incorrigible Zell, "I have been so much impressed by the first scene in the creation of your Eden, which I have just witnessed, that I am quite impatient for the second. It may be that our sole acquaintances in this delightful rural retreat, the 'drunken Laceys,' as mother calls them, will soon insist on becoming inspired with the spirit of the corn they raise in our arbor."

Edith sprang up from the table and went to her room.

"Shame on you, Zell," said Mrs. Allen sharply, but Laura was too apathetic to scold.

Impulsive Zell soon relented, and when Edith came down a few moments later in walking trim, and with eyes swollen with unshed tears, Zell threw her arms around her neck and said:

"Forgive your naughty little sister."

But Edith repulsed her angrily, and started toward the village.

"I do hate to see people sullenly hoard up things," said Zell snappishly. Then she dawdled about the house, yawning and saying fretfully, "I do wish I knew what to do with myself."

Laura reclined on the sofa with a novel, but Zell was not fond of reading. Her restless nature craved continual activity and excitement, but it was part of Mrs. Allen's policy that they should do nothing.

"Some one may call," she said, "and we must be ready to receive them," but at that season of the year, when roads were muddy, there was but little social visiting in the country.

So, consumed with ennui, Zell listened to the pounding of the carpenters overhead, and watched the dogged old plowman go round the small garden till it was all scratched over, and then the whole crazy mechanism rattled off to parts unknown. The two servants did not leave her even the recourse of housework, of which she was naturally fond.

Edith went straight to Mr. Hard, and was so provoked that she scarcely avoided the puddles in her determined haste.

Mr. Hard looked out upon his customers with, cold, hard little eyes that changed their expression only in growing more cold and hard. The rest of his person seemed all bows, smirks, and smiles, but it was noticed that these latter diminished and his eyes grew harder as he wished to remind some lagging patron that his little account needed settling. This thrifty citizen of Pushton was soon in polite attendance on Edith, but was rather taken back when she asked sharply what he meant by sending such a good-for-nothing man to plow her garden.

"Well, Miss Allen," he said, his eyes growing harder but his manner more polite, "old Gideon does such little jobs around, and I thought he was just the one."

"Does he plow your garden?" asked Edith abruptly.

"I keep a gardener," said Mr. Hard with some dignity.

"I believe it would pay me to do the same," said Edith, "if I could find one on whom I could depend. The man you sent was very impudent. I told him the work didn't suit me—that he didn't plow half deep enough, and that he must leave. But he just kept right on, saying you sent him, and he would plow it, and he injured my flower borders besides. Therefore he must look to you for payment." (Mr. Hard's eyes grew very hard at this.) "Because I am a woman I am not going to be imposed upon. Now do you know of a man who can really plow my garden? If not, I must look elsewhere. I had hoped when you took our business you would have some interest in seeing that we were well served."

Mr. Hard, with eyes like two flint pebbles, made a low bow and said with impressive dignity:

"It is my purpose to do so. There is Mr. Skinner, he does plowing."

"I don't want Mr. Skinner," said Edith impatiently, "I don't like his name in reference to plowing."

"Oh! ah! excellent reason; very good, Miss Allen. Well, there's Mr. McTrump, a Scotchman, who has a small greenhouse and nursery, he looks after gardens for some people."

"I will go and see him," said Edith, taking his address.

As she plodded off to find his place, she sighed, "Oh, dear! it's dreadful to have no men in the family. That Arden Lacey might have helped me so much, if mother was not so particular. I fear we are all on the wrong track, throwing away substantial and present good for uncertainties."

Mr. McTrump was a little man with a heavy sandy beard and such bushy eyebrows and hair that he reminded Edith of a Scotch terrier. But her first glance around convinced her that he was a gardener. Neatness, order, thrift, impressed her the moment she opened his gate, and she perceived that he was already quite advanced in his spring work. Smooth seed-sown beds were emerging from winter's chaos. Crocuses and hyacinths were in bloom, tulips were budding, and on a sunny slope in the distance she saw long green rows of what seemed some growing crop. She determined if possible to make this man her ally, or by stratagem to gain his secret of success.

The little man stood in the door of his greenhouse with a transplanting trowel in his hand. He was dressed in clay-colored nankeen, and could get down in the dirt without seeming to get dirty. His small eyes twinkled shrewdly, but not unkindly, as she advanced toward him. He was fond of flowers, and she looked like one herself that spring morning.

"I was directed to call upon you," she said, with conciliatory politeness, "understanding that you sometimes assist people with their gardens."

"Weel, noo and then I do, but I canna give mooch time with a' my ain work."

"But you would help a lady who has no one else to help her, wouldn't you?" said Edith sweetly.

Old Malcom was not to be caught with a sugar-plum, so he said with a little Scotch caution:

"I canna vera weel say till I hear mair aboot it."

Edith told him how she was situated, and in view of her perplexity and trouble, her voice had a little appealing pathos in it. Malcom's eyes twinkled more and more kindly, and as he explained afterward to his wife, "Her face was sae like a pink hyacinth beent doon by the storm and a wantin' proppin' oop," that by the time she was done he was ready to accede to her wishes.

"Weel," said he, "I canna refuse a blithe young leddy like yoursel, but ye must let me have my ain way."

Edith was inclined to demur at this, for she had been reading up and had many plans and theories to carry out. But she concluded to accept the condition, thinking that with her feminine tact she would have her own way after all. She did not realize that she was dealing with a Scotchman.

"I'll send ye a mon as will plow the garden, and not scratch it, the morrow, God willin'," for Mr. McTrump was a very pious man, his only fault being that he would take a drop too much occasionally.

"May I stay here a while and watch you work, and look at things?" asked Edith. "I don't want to go back till that hateful old fellow has done his mischief and is gone."

"Why not?" said Malcom, "an ye don't tech anything. The woman folk from the village as come here do pick and pull much awry."

"I promise you I will be good," said Edith eagerly.

"That's mair than ony on us can say of oursel," said Malcom, showing the doctrinal bias of his mind, "but I ken fra' yer bonnie face ye mean weel."

"Oh, Mr. McTrump, that is the first compliment I have received in Pushton," laughed Edith.

"I'm a thinkin' it'll not be the last. But I hope ye mind the Scripter where it says, 'We do all fade as a flower,' and ye will not be puffed oop."

But Edith, far more intent on horticultural than on scriptural knowledge, asked quickly:

"What were you going to set out with that trowel?"

"A new strawberry-bed. I ha' more plants the spring than I can sell, sae I thought to put oot a new bed, though I ha' a good mony."

"I am so glad. I wish to set out a large bed and can get the plants of you."

"How mony do ye want?" said Malcom, with a quick eye to business.

"I shall leave that to you when you see my ground. Now see how I trust you, Mr. McTrump."

"An' ye'll not lose by it, though I would na like a' my coostomers to put me sae strictly on my honesty."

Edith spent the next hour in looking around the garden and greenhouses and watching the old man put out his plants.

"These plants are to be cooltivated after the hill seestem," he said. "They are to stand one foot apart in the row, and the rows two feet apart, and not a rooner or weed to grow on or near them, and it would do your bright eyes good to see the great red berries they'll bear."

"Shall I raise mine that way?" said Edith.

"Weel, ye might soom, but the narrow row coolture will be best for ye, I'm thinkin'."

"What's that?"

"Weel, just let the plants run togither and make a thick close row a foot wide, an' two feet between the rows. That'll be the easiest for ye, but I'll show ye."

"I'm so glad I found you out!" said Edith, heartily; "and if you will let me, I want to come here often and see how you do everything, for to tell you the truth, between ourselves, we are poor, and may have to earn our living out of the garden, or some other way, and I would rather do it out of the garden."

"Weel, noo, ye're a canny lass to coom and filch all old Malcom's secrets to set oop opposition to him. But then sin' ye do it sae openly I'll tell ye all I know. The big wourld ought to be wide enough for a bonnie lassie like yoursel to ha' a chance in it, and though I'm a little mon, I would na be sae mean a one as to hinder ye. Mairover the gardener's craft be a gentle one, and I see na reason why, if a white lily like yoursel must toil and spin, it should na be oot in God's sunshine, where the flowers bloom, instead o' pricking the bluid oot o' yer body, and the hope oot o' yer heart, wi' the needle's point, as I ha' seen sae mony o' my ain coontry lassies do. Gude-by, and may the roses in yer cheeks bloom a' the year round."

Edith felt as if his last words were a blessing, and started with her heart cheered and hopeful; and yet beyond her garden, with its spring promise, its summer and autumn possibilities, there was little inspiring or hopeful in her new home.

In accordance with their mother's policy, they were waiting for something to turn up—waiting, in utter uncertainty, and with dubious prospects, to achieve by marriage the security and competence which they must not work for, or they would utterly lose caste in the old social world in which they had lived.

Be not too hasty in condemning Mrs. Allen, my reader, for you may, at the same time, condemn yourself. Have you no part in sustaining that public sentiment which turns the cold shoulder of society toward the woman who works? Many are growing rich every year, but more are growing poor. What does the "best society," in the world's estimation, say to the daughters in these families?

"Keep your little hands white, my dears, as long as you can, because as soon as the traces of toil are seen on them you become a working- woman, and our daughters can't associate with you, and our sons can't think of you, that is for wives. No other than little and white hands can enter our heaven."

So multitudes struggle to keep their hands white, though thereby the risk that their souls will become stained and black increases daily. A host of fair girls find their way every year to darker stains than ever labor left, because they know how coldly society will ignore them the moment they enlist in the army of honest workers. But you, respectable men and women in your safe pleasant homes, to the extent that you hold and sustain this false sentiment, to the extent that you make the paths of labor hard and thorny, and darken them from the approving smile of the world, you are guilty of these girls' ruin.

Christian matron, with your husband one of the pillars of church and state, do you shrink with disgust from that poor creature who comes flaunting down Broadway? None but the white-handed enter your parlors, and the men (?) who are hunting such poor girls to perdition will sit on the sofa with your daughters this evening. Be not too confident. Your child, or one in whom your blood flows at a little later remove, may stand just where honor to toil would save, but the practical dishonoring of it, which you sustain, eventually blot out the light of earth and heaven.

Mrs. Allen knew that even if her daughters commenced teaching, which, with all the thousands spent on their education, they were incapable of doing, their old sphere on Fifth Avenue would be as unapproachable as the pearly gates, between which and the lost a "great gulf is fixed."

But Mrs. Allen knew also of a very respectable way, having the full approval of society, by which they might regain their place in the heaven from which they had fallen. Besides it was such a simple way, requiring no labor whatever, though a little scheming perhaps, no amount of brains or culture worth mentioning, no heart or love, and least of all a noble nature. A woman may sell herself, or if of a waxy disposition, having little force, may be sold at the altar to a man who will give wealth and luxury in return. This, society, in full dress, smiles upon, and civil law and sacred ceremony sanction.

With the forefinger of her right hand resting impressively on the palm of her left, Mrs. Allen had indicated this back door into the paradise, the gates of which were guarded against poor working-women by the flaming sword of public opinion, turning every way.

And the girls were waiting yawningly, wearily, as the long unoccupied days passed. Laura's cheek grew paler than even her delicate style of beauty demanded. She seemed not only a hot-house plant, but a sickly one. The light was fading from her eye as well as the color from her cheek, and all vigor vanishing from her languid soul and body. The resemblance to her mother grew more striking daily. She was a melancholy result of that artificial luxurious life by which the whole nature is so enervated that there seems no stamina left to resist the first cold blast of adversity. Instead of being like a well-rooted hardy native of the soil she seemed a tender exotic that would wither even in the honest sunlight. As a gardener would say, she needed "hardening off." This would require the bracing of principle and the development of work. But Mrs. Allen could not lead the way to the former, and the latter she forbade, so poor Laura grew more sickly and morbid every day of her weary idle waiting.

Mrs. Allen's policy bore even more heavily on Zell. We have all thought something perhaps of the cruelty of imprisoning a vigorous young person, abounding in animal life and spirits, in a narrow cell, which forbids all action and stifles hope. It gives the unhappy victim the sensation of being buried alive. There comes at last to be one passionate desire to get out and away. Impulsive, restless, excitable Zell, with every vein filled with hot young blood, was shut out from what seemed to her the world, and no other world of activity was shown to her. Her hands were tied by her mother's policy, and she sat moping and chafing like a chained captive, waiting till Mr. Van Dam should come and deliver her from as vile durance as was ever suffered in the moss-grown castles of the old world. The hope of his coming was all that sustained her. Her sad situation was the result of acting on a false view of life from beginning to end. Any true parent would have shuddered at the thought of a daughter marrying such a man as Van Dam, but Zell was forbidden to do one useful thing, lest it should mar her chance of union with this resume of all vice and uncleanness; and though she had heard the many reports of his evil life, her moral sense was so perverted that he seemed a lion rather than a reptile to her. It is true, she looked upon him only in the light of her future husband, but that she did not shrink from any relationship with such a man shows how false and defective her education had been.

Edith had employment for mind and hand, therefore she was happier and safer than either of her sisters. Malcom had her garden thoroughly plowed, and helped her plant it. He gave her many flower roots and sold others at very low prices. In the lower part of the garden, where the ground was rather heavy and moist, he put out a large number of raspberries; and along a stone fence, where weeds and bushes had been usurping the ground, he planted two or three varieties of blackcaps. He also lined another fence with Kittatinny blackberries. There were already many currants and gooseberries on the place. These he trimmed, and put in cuttings for new bushes. He pruned the grapevines also somewhat, but not to any great extent, on account of the lateness of the season, meaning to get them into shape by summer cutting. The orchard also was made to look clean and trim, with the dead wood and interfering branches cut away. Edith watched these operations with the deepest interest, and when she could, without danger of being observed from the road, assisted, though in a very dainty, amateur way. But Malcom did not aim to put in as many hours as possible, but seemed to do everything with a sleight of hand that made his visits appear too brief, even though she had to pay for them. As a refuge from long idle hours, she would often go up to Malcom's little place, and watch him and his assistant as they deftly dealt with nature in accordance with her moods, making the most of the soil, sunlight, and rain. Thus Malcom came to take a great interest in her, and shrewd Edith was not slow in fostering so useful a friendship. But in spite of all this, there were many rainy idle days that hung like lead upon her hands, and upon these especially, it seemed impossible to carry out her purpose to be gentle and forbearing, and it often occurred that the dull apathy of the household was changed into positive pain by sharp words and angry retorts that should never have been spoken.

About the last Sabbath of April, Mrs. Allen sent for a carriage and was driven with her daughters to the most fashionable church of Pushton. Marshalled by the sexton, they rustled in toilets more suitable for one of the gorgeous temples of Fifth Avenue than for even the most ambitious of country churches. Mrs. Allen hoped to make a profound impression on the country people, and by this one dress parade to secure standing and cordial recognition among the foremost families. But she overshot the mark. The failure of Mr. Allen was known. The costly mourning suits and the little house did not accord, the solid, sensible people were unfavorably impressed, and those of fashionable and aristocratic tendencies felt that investigation was needed before the strangers could be admitted within their exclusive circles. So, though it was not a Methodist church that they attended, the Allens were put on longer probation by all classes, when if they had appeared in a simple unassuming manner, rating themselves at their true worth and position, many would have been inclined to take them by the hand.



CHAPTER XIII

THEY TURN UP



One morning, a month after the Allens had gone into poverty's exile, Gus Elliot lounged into Mr. Van Dam's luxurious apartments. There was everything around him to gratify the eye of sense, that is, such sense as Gus Elliot had cultivated, though an angel might have hidden his face. We will not describe these rooms—we had better not. It is sufficient to say that in their decorations, pictures, bacchanalian ornaments, and general suggestion, they were a reflex of Mr. Van Dam's character, in the more refined and aesthetic phase which he presented to society. Indeed, in the name of art, whose mantle, if at times rather flimsy, is broader than that of charity, not a few would have admired the exhibitions of Mr. Van Dam's taste.

But concerning Gus Elliot, no doubt exists in our mind. The atmosphere of Mr. Van Dam's room was entirely adapted to his chosen direction of development. He was a young man of leisure and fashion, and was therefore what even the fashionable would be horrified at their daughters ever becoming. This nice distinction between son and daughter does not result well. It leaves men in the midst of society unbranded as vile, unmarked so that good women may shrink in disgust from them. It gives them a chance to prey upon the weak, as Mr. Van Dam purposed to do, and as he intended to induce Gus Elliot to do, and as multitudes of exquisitely dressed scoundrels are doing daily.

If Mr. and Mrs. Allen had done their duty as parents, they would have kept the wolf (I beg the wolf's pardon) the jackal, Mr. Van Dam, with his thin disguise of society polish, from entering their fold. Gus Elliot was one of those mean curs that never lead, and could always be drawn into any evil that satisfied the one question of his life, "Will it give me what I want?"

Gus was such an exquisite that the smell of garlic made him ill, and the sight of blood made him faint, and the thought of coarse working hands was an abomination, but in worse than idleness he could see his old father wearing himself out, he could get "gentlemanly drunk," and commit any wrong in vogue among the fast young men with whom he associated. And now Mephistopheles Van Dam easily induces him to seek to drag down beautiful Edith Allen, the woman he had meant to marry, to a life compared with which the city gutters are cleanly.

Van Dam in slippers and silken robe was smoking his meerschaum after a late breakfast and reading a French novel.

"What is the matter?" he said, noting Gus's expression of ennui and discontent.

"There is not another girl left in the city to be mentioned the same day with Edith Allen," said Gus, with the pettishness of a child from whom something had been taken.

"Well, spooney, what are you going to do about it?" asked Mr. Van Dam coolly.

"What is there to do about it? You know well enough that I can't afford to marry her. I suppose it's the best thing for me that she has gone off to the backwoods somewhere, for while she was here I could not help seeing her, and after all it was only an aggravation."

"I can't afford to marry Zell," replied Van Dam, "but I am going up to see her to-morrow. After being out there by themselves for a month, I think they will be glad to see some one from the civilized world." The most honest thing about Van Dam was his sincere commiseration for those compelled to live in quiet country places, without experience in the highly spiced pleasures and excitements of the metropolis. In his mind they were associated with oxen—innocent, rural, and heavy, these terms being almost synonymous to him, and suggestive of such a forlorn tame condition that it seemed only vegetating, not living. Mr. Van Dam believed in a life, like his favorite dishes, that abounded in cayenne. Zell's letters had confirmed this opinion, and he saw that she was half desperate with ennui and disgust at their loneliness.

"I imagine we have stayed away long enough," he continued. "They have had sufficient of the miseries of mud, rain, and exile, not to be very nice about the conditions of return to old haunts and life. Of course I can't afford to marry Zell any more than you can Edith, but for all that I expect to have her here with me before many months pass, and perhaps weeks."

"Look here, Van Dam, you are going too far. Remember how high the Allens once stood in society," said Gus, a little startled.

"'Once stood;' where do they stand now? Who in society has lifted, or will lift a finger for them, and they seem to have no near relatives to stand by them. I tell you they are at our mercy. Luxury is a necessity, and yet they are not able to earn their bare bread.

"Let me inform you," he continued, speaking with the confidence of a hunter, who from long experience knows just where the game is most easily captured, "that there is no class more helpless than the very rich when reduced to sudden poverty. They are usually too proud to work, in the first place, and in the second, they don't know how to do anything. What does a fashionable education fit a girl for, I would like to know, if, as often occurs, she has to make her own way in the world?—a smattering of everything, mistress of nothing."

"Well, Van Dam," said Gus, "according to your showing, it fits them for little schemes like the one you are broaching."

"Precisely. Girls who know how to work and who are accustomed to it, will snap their fingers in your face, and tell you they can take care of themselves, but the class to which the Allens belong, unless kept up by some rich relations, are soon almost desperate from want. I have kept up a correspondence with Zell. They seem to have no near relatives or friends who are doing much for them. They are doing nothing for themselves, save spend what little there is left, and their monotonous country life has half-murdered them already. So I conclude I have waited long enough and will go up to-morrow. Instead of pouting like a spoiled child over your lost Edith, you had better go up and get her. It may take a little time and management. Of course they must be made to think we intend to marry them, but if they once elope with us, we can find a priest at our leisure."

"I will go up to-morrow with you any way," said Gus, who, like so many others, never made a square bargain with the devil, but was easily "led captive" from one wrong and villany to another.

It was the last day of April—one on which the rawness and harshness of early spring were melting into the mildness of May. The buds on the trees had perceptibly swollen. The flowering maple was still aflame, the sweet centre of attraction to innumerable bees, the hum of whose industry rose and fell on the languid breeze. The grass had the delicate green and exquisite odor belonging to its first growth, and was rapidly turning the brown, withered sward of winter into emerald. The sun shone through a slight haze, but shone warmly. The birds had opened the day with full orchestra, but at noon there was little more than chirp and twitter, they seeming to feel something of Edith's languor, as she leaned on the railing of the porch, and watched for the coming of Malcom. She sighed as she looked at the bare brown earth of the large space that she purposed for strawberries, and work there and everywhere seemed repulsive. The sudden heat was enervating and gave her the feeling of luxurious languor that she longed to enjoy with a sense of security and freedom from care. But even as her eyelids drooped with momentary drowsiness, there was a consciousness, like a dull, half-recognized pain, of insecurity, of impending trouble and danger, and of a need for exertion that would lead to something more certain than anything her mother's policy promised.

She was startled from her heaviness by the sharp click of the gate latch, and Malcom entered with two large baskets of strawberry-plants. He had said to her:

"Wait a bit. The plants will do weel, put oot the last o' the moonth. An ye wait I'll gie ye the plants I ha' left cover and canna sell the season. But dinna be troobled, I'll keep it enoof for ye ony way."

By this means Edith obtained half her plants without cost, save for Malcom's labor of transplanting them.

The weather had little influence on Malcom's wiry frame, and his spirit of energetic, cheerful industry was contagious. Once aroused and interested, Edith lost all sense of time, and the afternoon passed happily away.

At her request Malcom had brought her a pair of pruning nippers, such as she had seen him use, and she kept up a delicate show of work, trimming the rose-bushes and shrubs, while she watched him. She could not bring her mind to anything that looked like real work as yet, but she had a feeling that it must come. She saw that it would help Malcom very much if she went before and dropped the plants for him, but some one might see her, and speak of her doing useful work. The aristocratically inclined in Pushton would frown on the young lady so employed, but she could snip at roses and twine vines, and that would look pretty and rural from the road.

But it so happened that the one who caught a glimpse of her spring-day beauty, and saw the pretty rural scene she crowned, was not the critical occupant of some family carriage; for when, while near the road, she was reaching up to clip off the topmost spray of a bush, her attention was drawn by the rattle of a wagon, and in this picturesque attitude her eyes met those of Arden Lacey. The sudden remembrance of the unkind return made to him, and the fact that she had therefore dreaded meeting him, caused her to blush deeply. Her feminine quickness caught his expression, a timid questioning look, that seemed to ask if she would act the part of the others. Edith was a society and city girl, and her confusion lasted but a second. Policy whispered, "You can still keep him as a useful friend, though you must keep him at a distance, and you may need him." Some sense of gratitude and of the wrong done him and his also mingled with these thoughts, passing with the marvellous rapidity with which a lady's mind acts in social emergencies. She also remembered that they were alone, and that none of the Pushton notables could see that she was acquainted with the "drunken Laceys." Therefore before the diffident Arden could turn away, she bowed and smiled to him in a genial, conciliatory manner. His face brightened into instant sunshine, and to her surprise he lifted his old weather-stained felt hat like a gentleman. Though he had received no lessons in etiquette, he was inclined to be a little courtly and stately in manner, when he noticed a lady at all, from unconscious imitation of the high-bred characters in the romances he read. He said to himself in glad exultation:

"She is different from the rest. She is as divinely good as she is divinely beautiful," and away he rattled toward Pushton as happy as if his old box wagon were a golden chariot, and he a caliph of Arabian story on whom had just shone the lustrous eyes of the Queen of the East. Then as the tumult in his mind subsided, questioning thoughts as to the cause of her blush came trooping through his mind, and at once there arose a long vista of airy castles tipped with hope as with sunlight Poor Arden! What a wild, uncurbed imagination had mastered his morbid nature, as he lived a hermit's life among the practical people of Pushton! If he had known that Edith, had she seen him in the village, would have crossed the street rather than have met or recognized him, it would have plunged him into still bitterer misanthropy. She and his mother only stood between him and utter contempt and hatred of his kind, as they existed in reality, and not in his books and dreams.

She forgot all about him before his wagon turned the corner of the road, and chatted away to Malcom, questioning and nipping with increasing zest. As the day grew cooler, her spirits rose under the best of all stimulants, agreeable occupation. The birds ceased at last their nest-building, and from orchard and grove came many an inspiring song. Edith listened with keen enjoyment, and country life and work looked no longer as they had done in the sultry noon. She saw with deep satisfaction the long rows of strawberry-vines increasing under Malcom's labors. In the still humid air the plants scarcely wilted and stood up with the bright look of those well started in life.

As evening approached, and no carriage of note had passed, Edith ventured to get her transplanting trowel, doff her gloves, and commence dividing her flower roots, that she might put them elsewhere. She became so interested in her work that she was positively happy, and soft-hearted Malcom, with his eye for the beauties of nature, was getting his rows crooked, because of so many admiring glances toward her as she went to and fro.

The sun was low in the west and shone in crimson through the soft haze. But the color in her cheeks was richer as she rose from the ground, her little right hand lost in the scraggly earth-covered roots of some hardy phlox, and turned to meet exquisite Gus Elliot, dressed with finished care, his hands incased in immaculate gloves. Her broad- rimmed hat was pushed back, her dress looped up, and she made a picture in the evening glow that would have driven a true artist half wild with admiration; but poor Gus was quite shocked. The idea of Edith Allen, the girl he had meant to marry, grubbing in the dirt and soiling her hands in that style! It was his impression that only Dutch women worked in a garden; and for all he knew of its products she might be setting out a potato plant. Quick Edith caught his expression, and while she crimsoned with vexation at her plight, felt a new and sudden sense of contempt for the semblance of a man before her.

But with the readiness of a society girl she smoothed her way out of the dilemma, saying with vivacity:

"Why, Mr. Elliot, where did you drop from? You have surprised me among my flowers, you see."

"Indeed, Miss Edith," said Gus, in rather unhappily phrased gallantry, "to see you thus employed makes me feel as if we both had dropped into some new and strange sphere. You seem the lovely shepherdess of this rural scene, but where is your flock?"

Shrewd Malcom, near by, watched this scene as the terrier he resembled might have done, and took instant and instinctive dislike to the new- comer. With a contemptuous sniff he thought to himself, "There's mateerial enoof in ye for so mooch toward a flock as a calf and a donkey."

"A truce to your lame compliments," she said, concealing her vexation under badinage. "I do not live by hook and crook yet, whatever I may come to, and I remember that you only appreciate artificial flowers made by pretty shop girls, and these are not in the country. But come in. Mother and my sisters will be glad to see you."

Gus was not blind to her beauty, and while the idea of marriage seemed more impossible than ever, now that he had seen her hands soiled, the evil suggestion of Van Dam gained attractiveness with every glance.

Edith found Mr. Van Dam on the porch with Zell, who had welcomed him in a manner that meant much to the wily man. He saw how necessary he was to her, and how she had been living on the hope of seeing him, and the baseness of his nature was such that instead of being stirred to one noble kindly impulse toward her, he simply exulted in his power.

"Oh," said she, as with both hands she greeted him, her eyes half filling with tears, "we have been living like poor exiles in a distant land, and you seem as if just from home, bringing the best part of it with you."

"And I shall carry you back to it ere long," he whispered.

Her face grew bright and rosy with the deepest happiness she had ever know. He had never spoken so plainly before. "Edith can never taunt me again with his silence," she thought. Though sounding well enough to the ear, how false were his words! Zell was giving the best love of which her heart was capable in view of her defective education and character. In a sincere and deep affection there are great possibilities of good. Her passion, so frank and strong, in the hands of a true man, was a lever that might have lifted her to the noblest life. Van Dam sought to use it only to force her down. He purposed to cause one of God's little ones to offend.

Edith soon appeared, dressed with the taste and style of a Fifth Avenue belle of the more sensible sort, and Gus was comforted. Her picturesque natural beauty in the garden was quite lost on him, but now that he saw the familiar touches of the artificial in her general aspect, she seemed to him the peerless Edith of old. And yet his nice eye noted that even a month of absence from the fashionable centre had left her ignorant of some of the shadings off of one mode into another, and the thought passed over the polished surface of his mind (all Gus's thoughts were on the surface, there being no other accommodation for them), "Why, a year in this out-of-the-world life, and she would be only a country girl."

But all detracting thoughts of each other, all mean, vile, and deadly purposes, were hidden under smiling exteriors. Mrs. Allen was the gracious, elegant matron who would not for the world let her daughters soil their hands, but schemed to marry one to a weak apology for a man, and another to a villain out and out, and the fashionable world would cordially approve and sustain Mrs. Allen's tactics if she succeeded.

Laura brightened up more than she had done since her father's death. Anything that gave hope of return to the city, and the possibility of again meeting and withering Mr. Goulden with her scorn, was welcome.

And Edith, while she half despised Gus, found it very pleasant to meet those of her old set again, and repeat a bit of the past. The young crave companionship, and in spite of all his weakness she half liked Elliot. With youth's hopefulness she believed that he might become a man if he only would. At any rate, she half-consciously formed the reckless purpose to shut her eyes to all presentiments of coming trouble and enjoy the evening to the utmost.

Hannibal was enjoined to get up as fine a supper as possible, regardless of cost, with Mrs. Allen's maid to assist.

In the long purple twilight, Edith and Zell, on the arms of their pseudo lovers, strolled up and down the paths of the little garden and dooryard. As Edith and Gus were passing along the walk that skirted the road, she heard the heavy ramble of a wagon that she knew to be Arden Lacey's. She did not look up or recognize him, but appeared so intent on what Gus was saying as to be oblivious of all else, and yet through her long lashes she glanced toward him in a rapid flash, as he sat in his rough working garb on the old board where she, on the rainy night of her advent to Pushton, had clung to his arm in the jolting wagon. Momentary as the glance was, the pained, startled expression of his face as he bent his eyes full upon her caught her attention and remained with her.

His manner and appearance secured the attention of Gus also, and with a contemptuous laugh he said loud enough for Arden to hear partially:

"That native comes from pretty far back, I imagine. He looks as if he never saw a lady and gentleman before. The idea of living like such a cabbage-head as that!"

If Gus had not been with Edith, his good clothes and good looks would have been spoiled within the next five minutes.

Edith glanced the other way and pointed to her strawberry-bed as if not noticing his remark or its object, saying:

"If you will come and see us a year from next June, I can give you a dainty treat from these plants."

"You will not be here next June," said Gus tenderly. "Do you imagine we can spare you from New York? The city has seemed dull since robbed of the light of your bright eyes."

Edith rather liked sugar-plums of such make, even from Gus, and she, as it were, held out her hand again by the rather sentimental remark:

"Absent ones are soon forgotten."

Gus, from much experience, knew how to flirt beautifully, and so with some aptness and show of feeling, replied:

"From my thoughts you are never absent."

Edith gave him a quick questioning look. What did he mean? He had avoided everything tending to commit him to a penniless girl after her father's death. Was this mere flirtation? Or had he, in absence, learned his need of her for happiness? and was he now willing to marry her even though poor?

"If he is man enough to do this, he is capable of doing more," she thought quickly, and circumstances pleaded for him. She felt so troubled about the future, so helpless and lonely, and he seemed so inseparably associated with her old bright life, that she was tempted to lean on such a swaying reed as she knew Gus to be. She did not reply, but he could see the color deepen in her cheeks even in the fading twilight, her bosom rose and fell more quickly, and her hand rested upon his arm with a more confiding pressure. What more could he ask? and he exulted.

But before he could speak again they were summoned to supper. Van Dam touched Gus's elbow as they passed in and whispered:

"Don't be precipitate. Say nothing definite to-night. I gather from Zell that a little more of their country purgatory will render them wholly desperate."

Edith noticed the momentary detention and whispering, and the thought that there was some understanding between the two occurred to her. For some undefined reason she was always inclined to be suspicious and on the alert when Mr. Van Dam was present. And yet it was but a passing thought, soon forgotten in the enjoyment of the evening, after so long and dull an experience. Zell was radiant, and there was a glimmer of color in Laura's pale cheeks.

After supper they sat down to cards. The decanter was placed on the side table, and heavy inroads were made on Mrs. Allen's limited stock of wine, for the gentlemen, feeling that they were off on a lark, were little inclined to self-control. They also insisted on the ladies drinking health with them, which foolish Zell, and more foolish Mrs. Allen were too ready to do, and for the first time since their coming the little cottage resounded with laughter that was too loud and frequent to be inspired by happiness only.

If guardian angels watched there, as we believe they do everywhere, they may well have veiled their faces in sadness and shame.

But the face of poor innocent Hannibal shone with delight, and nodding his head toward Mr. Allen's maid with the complacency of a prophet who saw his predictions fulfilled, he said:

"I told you my young ladies wasn't gwine to stay long in Bushtown" (as Hannibal persisted in calling the place).

To Arden Lacey, the sight of Edith listening with glowing cheeks and intent manner to a stranger with her hand within his arm—a stranger too that seemed the embodiment of that conventionality of the world which he despised and hated, was a vision that pierced like a sword. And then Gus's contemptuous words and Edith's non-recognition, though he tried to believe she had not seen him, were like vitriol to a wound. At first there was a mad impulse of anger toward Elliot, and, as we have intimated, only Edith's presence prevented Arden from demanding instant apology. He knew enough of his fiery nature to feel that he must get away as fast as possible, or he might forever disgrace himself in Edith's eyes.

As he rode home his mind was in a sad chaos. He was conscious that his airy castles were falling about him with a crash, which, though unheard by all the world, shook his soul to the centre.

Too utterly miserable to face his mother, loathing the thought of food, he put up his horses and rushed out into the night.

In his first impulse he vowed never to look toward Edith again, but, before two hours of fruitless wandering had passed, a fascination drew him toward Edith's cottage, only to hear that detested voice again, only to hear even Edith's laugh ring out too loud and reckless to come from the lips of the exquisite ideal of his dreams. Though the others had spoken in thunder tones, he would have had ears for these two voices only. He rushed away from the spot, as one might from some torturing vision, exclaiming:

"The real world is a worse mockery than the one of my dreams. Would to heaven I had never been born!"



CHAPTER XIV

WE CAN'T WORK



The gentlemen agreed to meet the ladies the next day at church. Mrs. Allen insisted upon it, as she wished to show the natives of Pushton that they were visited by people of style from the city. As yet they had not received many calls, and those venturing had come in a reconnoitring kind of way. She knew so little of solid country people as to suppose that two young men, like Gus Elliot and Van Dam, would make a favorable impression. The latter, with a shrug and grimace at Zell, which she, poor child, thought funny, promised to do so, and then they took leave with great cordiality.

So they were ready to hand the Allens out of their carriage the next morning, and were, with the ladies, who were dressed even more elaborately than on the previous Sabbath, shown to a prominent pew, the centre of many admiring eyes, as they supposed. But where one admired, ten criticised. The summer hotel at Pushton had brought New York too near and made it too familiar for Mrs. Allen's tactics. Visits to town were easily made and frequent, and by brief diversions of their attention from the service, the good church people soon satisfied themselves that the young men belonged to the bold fast type, an impression strengthened by the parties themselves, who had devotion only for Zell and Edith, and a bold stare for any pretty girl that caught their eyes.

After church they parted with the understanding that the gentlemen should come out toward night and spend the evening.

Mr. Van Dam and Gus Elliot dined at the village hotel, having ordered the best dinner that the landlord was capable of serving, and a couple of bottles of wine. Over this they became so exhilarated as to attract a good deal of attention. A village tavern is always haunted by idle clerks, and a motley crowd of gossips, on the Sabbath, and to these the irruption of two young bloods from the city was a slight break in the monotony of their slow shuffling jog toward perdition; and when the fine gentlemen began to get drunk and noisy it was really quite interesting. A group gathered round the bar, and through the open door could see into the dining-room. Soon with unsteady step, Van Dam and Elliot joined them, the latter brandishing an empty bottle, and calling in a thick loud voice:

"Here landlord (hic) open a bottle (hic) of wine, for these poor (hic) suckers, (hic) I don't suppose (hic) they ever tasted (hic) anything better than corn-whiskey, (hic) But I'll moisten (hic) their gullets to-day (hic) with a gentleman's drink."

The crowd was mean enough, as the loafers about a tavern usually are, to give a faint cheer at the prospect of a treat, even though accompanied by words equivalent to a kick. But one big raw-boned fellow, who looked equal to any amount of corn-whiskey or anything else, could not swallow Gus's insolence, and stepped up saying:

"Look here, Cap'n, I'm ready enough to drink with a chap when he asks me like a gentleman, but I feel more like puttin' a head on you than drinkin' with yer."

Gus had the false courage of wine and prided himself on his boxing. In the headlong fury of drunkenness he flung the bottle at the man's head, just grazing it, and sprang toward him, but stumbled and fell. The man, with a certain rude sense of chivalry, waited for him to get up, but the mean loafers who had cheered were about to manifest their change of sentiment toward Gus by kicking him in his prostrate condition. Van Dam, who also had drunk too much to be his cool careful self, now drew a pistol, and with a savage volley of oaths swore he would shoot the first man who touched his friend. Then, helping Gus up, he carried him off to a private room, and with the skill of an old experienced hand set about righting himself and Elliot, so that they might be in a presentable condition for their visit at the Allens'.

"Curse it all, Gus, why can you not keep within bounds? If this gets to the girls' ears it may spoil everything."

By five o'clock Gus had so far recovered as to venture to drive to the Allens', and the fresh air restored him rapidly. Before leaving, the landlord said to Van Dam:

"You had better stay out there all night. From what I hear the boys are going to lay for you when you come home to-night. I don't want any rows connected with my house. I'd rather you wouldn't come back."

Van Dam muttered an oath, and told the driver to go on.

As a matter of course they were received very cordially. Gus was quite himself again. He only seemed a little more inclined than usual to be sentimental and in high spirits.

They walked again in the twilight through the garden and under the budding trees of the orchard. Gus assumed a caressing tone and manner, which Edith half received and half resented. She felt that she did not know her own mind and did not understand him altogether, and so she took a diplomatic middle course that would leave her free to go forward or retreat. Zell, under the influence of Mr. Van Dam's flattering manner, walked in a beautiful but lurid dream. At last they all gathered in the parlor and chatted and laughed over old times.

On this Sabbath evening one of the officers of the church, seeing that the Allens had twice worshipped with them, felt that perhaps he ought to call and give them some encouragement. As he came up the path he was surprised at the confused sound of voices. With his hand on the door-bell he paused, and through an opening between the curtains saw the young men of whose bar-room performance he had happened to hear. Not caring to meet any of their sort he went silently away, shaking his head with ill-omened significance. Of course one good man told his wife what sort of company their new neighbors kept, and whom didn't she tell?

The evening grew late, but no carriage came from the village.

"It's very strange," said Van Dam.

"If it doesn't come you must stay all night," said Mrs. Allen graciously. "We can make you quite comfortable even if we have a little house."

Mr. Van Dam, and Gus also, were profuse in their thanks. Edith bit her lip with vexation. She felt that she and Zell were being placed in a false position since the gentlemen who to the world would seem so intimate with the family in reality held no relation to them. But no scruples of prudence occurred to thoughtless Zell. With an arch look toward her lover she said:

"I think it threatens rain, so of course you cannot go."

"Let us go out and see," he said.

In the darkness of the porch he put his arm around the unresisting girl and drew her to him, but he did not say like a true man:

"Zell, be my wife."

But poor Zell thought that was what all his attention and show of affection meant.

Edith and Gus joined them, and the latter thought also to put his regard in the form of caressing action, rather than in honest outspoken words, but she turned and said a little sharply:

"You have no right."

"Give me the right then," he whispered.

"Whether I shall ever do that I cannot say. It depends somewhat on yourself. But I cannot now and here."

The warning hand of Van Dam was reached through the darkness and touched Gus's arm.

The next morning they walked back to the village, were driven two or three miles to the nearest railway station, and took the train to the city, having promised to come again soon.

The week following their departure was an eventful one to the inmates of the little cottage, and all unknown the most unfavorable influences were at work against them. The Sunday hangers-on of a tavern have their points of contact with the better classes, and gossip is a commodity always in demand, whatever brings it to market. Therefore the scenes in the dining and bar rooms, in which Mrs. Allen's "friends" had played so prominent a part, were soon portrayed in hovel and mansion alike, with such exaggerations and distortions as a story inevitably suffers as passed along. The part acted by the young men was certainly bad enough, but rumor made it much worse. Then this stream of gossip was met by another coming from the wife of the good man who had called with the best intentions on Sunday evening, but, pained at the nature of the Allen's associations, had gone lamenting to his wife, and she had gone lamenting to the majority of the elder ladies of the church. These two streams uniting, quite a tidal wave of "I want to knows," and "painful surprises," swept over Pushton, and the Allens suffered wofully through their friends. They had already received some reconnoitering calls, and a few from people who wanted to be neighborly. But the truth was the people of Pushton had been somewhat perplexed. They did not know where to place the Allens. The fact that Mr. Allen had been a rich merchant, and lived on Fifth Avenue, counted for something. But then even the natives of Pushton knew that all kinds of people lived on Fifth Avenue, as elsewhere, and that some of the most disreputable were the richest. A clearer testimonial than that was therefore needed. Then again there was another puzzle. The fact that Mr. Allen had failed, and that they lived in a little house, indicated poverty. But their style of dressing and ordering from the store also suggested not a little property left. The humbler portion of the community doubted whether they were the style of people for them to call on, and the rumor of Rose Lacey's treatment, getting abroad in spite of Arden's injunction to the contrary, confirmed these doubts, and alienated this class. The more wealthy and fashionably inclined doubted the grounds for their calling, having by no means made up their minds whether they could take the Allens into their exclusive circle. So thus far Mrs. Allen and her daughters had given audience to a sort of middle class of skirmishers and scouts representing no one in particular save themselves, who from a penchant in that direction went out and obtained information, so that the more solid ranks behind could know what to do. In addition, as we have intimated, there were a few good kindly people who said:

"These strangers have come to live among us, and we must give them a neighborly welcome."

But there was something in their homely honest heartiness that did not suit Mrs. Allen's artificial taste, and she rather snubbed them.

"Heaven deliver us soon from Pushton," she said, "if the best people have no more air of quality than these outlandish tribes. They all look and act as if they had come out of the ark."

If the Allens had frankly and patiently accepted their poverty and misfortunes, and by close economy and some form of labor had sought to maintain an honest independence, they could soon, through this latter class, have become en rapport with, not the wealthy and fashionable, but the finest people of the community; people having the refinement, intelligence, and heart to make the best friends we can possess. It might take some little time. It ought to. Social recognition and esteem should be earned. Unless strangers bring clear letters of credit, or established reputation, they must expect to be put on probation. But if they adopt a course of simple sincerity and dignity, and especially one of great prudence, they are sure to find the right sort of friends, and win the social position to which they are justly entitled. But let the finger of scandal and doubt be pointed toward them, and all having sons and daughters will stand aloof on the ground of self-protection, if nothing else. The taint of scandal, like the taint of leprosy, causes a general shrinking away.

The finger of doubt and scandal in Pushton was now most decidedly pointed toward the Allens. It was reported around:

"Their father was a Wall Street gambler who lost all in a big speculation and died suddenly or committed suicide. They belonged to the ultra-fast fashionable set in New York, and the events of the past Sabbath show that they are not the persons for self-respecting people to associate with."

Some of the rather dissipated clerks and semi-loafers of the village were inclined to make the acquaintance of such stylish handsome girls, but the Allens received the least advance from them with ineffable scorn.

Thus within the short space of a month Mrs. Allen had, by her policy, contrived to isolate her family as completely as if they had had a pestilence.

Even Mrs. Lacey and Rose were inclined to pass from indignation to contempt; for Mr. Lacey was present at the scene in the bar-room, and reported that the "two young bucks were friends of their new neighbors, the Allens, and had stayed there all Sunday night because they darsn't go back to town."

"Well," said Rose, "with all their airs, I haven't got to keeping company with that style of men yet."

"Cease to call yourself my sister if you ever do knowingly," said Arden sternly. "I don't believe Edith Allen knows the character of these men. They would not report themselves, and who is to do it?"

"Perhaps you had better," said Rose maliciously.

Arden's only answer was a dark frowning look. A severe conflict was progressing in his mind. One impulse was to regard Edith as unworthy of another thought. But his heart pleaded for her, and the thought that she was different from the rest, and capable of developing a character as beautiful as her person, grew stronger as he dwelt upon it.

"Like myself, she is related to others that drag her down," he thought, "and she seems to have no friend or brother to protect or warn her. Even if this over-dressed young fool is her lover, if she could have seen him prostrate on the bar-room floor, she would never look at him again. If she would I would never look at her."

His romantic nature became impressed with the idea that he might become in some sense her unknown knight and protector, and keep her from marrying a man that would sink to what his father was. Therefore he passed the house as often as he could in hope that there might be some opportunity of seeing her.

To poor Edith troubles thickened fast, for, as we have seen, the brunt of everything came on her. Early on the forenoon of Monday the carpenter appeared, asking with a hard, determined tone for his money, adding with satire:

"I suppose it's all right of course. People who want everything done at once must expect to pay promptly."

"Your bill is much too large—much larger than you gave us any reason to suppose it would be," said Edith.

"I've only charged you regular rates, miss, and you put me to no little inconvenience besides."

"That's not the point. It's double the amount you gave us to understand it would be, and if you should deduct the damage caused by your delay it would greatly reduce it. I do not feel willing that this bill should be paid as it stands."

"Very well then," said the man, coolly rising. "You threatened me with a lawyer; I'll let my lawyer settle with you."

"Edith," said Mrs. Allen majestically, "bring my checkbook."

"Don't pay it, mother. He can't make us pay such a bill in view of the fact that he left our roof open in the rain."

"Do as I bid you," said Mrs. Allen impressively.

"There," she said to the chuckling builder, in lofty scorn, throwing toward him a check as if it were dirt. "Now leave the presence of ladies whom you don't seem to know much about."

The man reddened and went out muttering that "he had seen quite as good ladies before."

Two days later a letter from Mrs. Allen's bank brought dismay by stating that she had overdrawn her account.

The next day there came a letter from their lawyer saying that a messenger from the bank had called upon him—that he was sorry they had spent all their money—that he could not sell the stock he held at any price now—and they had better sell their house in the country and board.

This Mrs. Allen was inclined to do, but Edith said almost fiercely:

"I won't sell it. I am bound to have some place of refuge in this hard, pitiless world. I hold the deed of this property, and we certainly can get something to eat off of it, and if we must starve, no one at least can disturb us."

"What can we do?" said Mrs. Allen, crying and wringing her hands.

"We ought to have saved our money and gone to work at something," answered Edith sternly.

"I am not able to work," whined Laura.

"I don't know how to work, and I won't starve either," cried Zell passionately. "I shall write to Mr. Van Dam this very day and tell him all about it."

"I would rather work my fingers off," retorted Edith scornfully, "than have a man come and marry me out of charity, finding me as helpless as if I were picked up off the street, and on the street we should soon be, without shelter or friends, if we sold this place."

And so the blow fell upon them, and such was the spirit with which they bore it.



CHAPTER XV

THE TEMPTATION



The same mail brought them a long bill from Mr. Hard, accompanied with a very polite but decisive note saying that it was his custom to have a monthly settlement with his customers.

The rest of the family looked with new dismay and helplessness at this, and Edith added bitterly:

"There are half a dozen other bills also."

"What can we do?" again Mrs. Allen cried piteously. "If you girls had only accepted some of your splendid offers—"

"Hush, mother," said Edith imperiously. "I have heard that refrain too often already," and the resolute practical girl went to her room and shut herself up to think.

Two hours later she came down to lunch with the determined air of one who had come to a conclusion.

"These bills must be met, in part at least," she said, "and the sooner the better. After that we must buy no more than we can pay for, if it's only a crust of bread. I shall take the first train to-morrow and dispose of some of my jewelry. Who of you will contribute some also? We all have more than we shall ever need."

"Pawn our jewelry!" they all shrieked.

"No, sell it," said Edith firmly.

"You hateful creature!" sobbed Zell. "If Mr. Van Dam heard it he would never come near me again."

"If he's that kind of a man, he had better not," was the sharp retort.

"I'll never forgive you if you do it. You shall not spoil all my chances and your own too. He as good as offered himself to me, and I insist on your giving me a chance to write to him before you take one of your mad steps."

They all clamored against her purpose so strongly that Edith was borne down and reluctantly gave way. Zell wrote immediately a touching, pathetic letter that would have moved a man of one knightly instinct to come to her rescue. Van Dam read it with a look of fiendish exultation, and calling on Gus said:

"We will go up to-morrow. The right time has come. They won't be nice as to terms any longer."

It was an unfortunate thing for Edith that she had yielded at this time to the policy of waiting one hour longer. In the two days that intervened before the young men appeared there was time for that kind of thought that tempts and weakens. She was in that most dangerous attitude of irresolution. The toilsome path of independent labor looked very hard and thorny—more than that, it looked lonely. This latter aspect causes multitudes to shrink, where the work would not. She knew enough of society to feel sure that her mother was right, and that the moment she entered on bread-winning by any form of honest labor, her old fashionable world was lost to her forever. And she knew of no other world, she had no other friends save those of the gilded past. She did not, with her healthful frame and energetic spirit, shrink so much from labor as from association with the laboring classes. She had been educated to think of them only as coarse and common, and to make no distinctions.

"Even if a few are good and intelligent as these Laceys seem, they can't understand my feelings and past life, so there will be no congeniality, and I shall have to work practically alone. Perhaps in time I shall become coarse and common like the rest," she said with a half-shudder at the thought of old-fashioned garb, slipshod dressing, and long monotonous hours at one employment. All these were inseparable in her mind from poverty and labor.

Then after a long silence, during which she had sat with her chin resting on her hands, she continued:

"I believe I could stand it if I could earn a support out of the garden with such a man as Malcom to help me. There are variety and beauty there, and scope for constant improvement. But I fear a woman can't make a livelihood by such out-of-door, man-like work. Good heavens! what would my Fifth Avenue friends say if it should get to their ears that Edith Allen was raising cabbages for market?"

Then in contrast, as the alternative to labor, Gus Elliot continually presented himself.

"If he were only more of a man!" she thought. "But if he loves me so well as to marry me in view of my poverty, he must have some true manhood about him. I suppose I could learn to love him after a fashion, and I certainly like him as well as any one I know. Perhaps if I were with him to cheer, incite, and scold, he might become a fair business man after all."

And so Edith in her helplessness and fear of work was tempted to enter on that forlorn experiment which so many energetic women of decided character have made—that of marrying a man who can't stand alone, or do anything but dawdle, in the hope that they may be able to infuse in him some of their own moral and intellectual backbone.

But Gus Elliot was not man enough, had not sense enough, to give her this poor chance of matrimonial escape from labor that seemed to her like a giant taskmaster, waiting with grimy, horny hand to claim her as another of his innumerable slaves. Though a life of lonely, ill- paid toil would have been better for Edith than marriage to Gus, he was missing the one golden opportunity of his life, when he thought of Edith Allen in other character than his wife. God uses instruments, and she alone could give him a chance of being a man among men. In his meditated baseness toward her, he aimed a fatal blow at his own life.

And this is ever true of sins against the human brotherhood. The recoil of a blow struck at another's interests has often the retributive wrath of heaven in it, and the selfish soul that would destroy a fellow-creature for its own pleasure is itself destroyed.

False pride, false education, helpless, unskilled hands, an untaught, unbraced moral nature, made strong, resolute, beautiful Edith Allen so weak, so untrue to herself, that she was ready to throw herself away on so thin a shadow of a man as Gus Elliot. She might have known, indeed she half feared, that wretchedness would follow such a union. It is torment to a large strong-souled woman to despise utterly the man to whom she is chained. She revolts at his weakness and irresolution, and the probabilities are that she will sink into that worst phase of feminine drudgery, the supporting of a husband, who, though able, will not work, and that she will become that social monster of whom it is said with a significant laugh:

"She is the man of the house."

The only thing that reconciled her to the thought of marrying Gus was the hope that she could inspire him to better things; and he seemed the only refuge from the pressing troubles that environed her, and from a lonely life of labor; for the thought that she could bring herself to marry among the laboring classes had never occurred to her.

So she came to the miserable conclusion on the afternoon of the second day:

"I'll take him if he will me, knowing how I am situated."

If Gus could have been true and manly one evening, he might have secured a prop that would have kept him up, though it would have been at sad cost to Edith.

On the afternoon of Friday, Zell returned from the village with radiant face, and, waving a letter before Edith who sat moping in her room, exclaimed with a thrill of ecstasy in her tone:

"They are coming. Help make me irresistible."

Edith felt the influence of Zell's excitement, and the mysteries of the toilet began. Nature had done much for these girls, and they knew how to enhance every charm by art. Edith good-naturedly helped her sister, weaving pure shimmering pearls in the heavy braids of her hair, whose raven hue made the fair face seem more fair. The toilet- table of a queen had not the secrets of Zell's beauty, for the most skilful art must deal with the surface, while Zell's loveliness glowed from within. Her rich young blood mantled her cheek with a color that came and went with her passing thoughts, and was as unlike the flaming, unchanging red of a painted face as sunlight that flickers through a breezy grove is to a gas-jet. Her eyes shone with the deep excitement of a passionate love, and the feeling that the crisis of her life was near. Even Edith gazed with wondering admiration at her beauty, as she gave the finishing touches to her toilet, before she commenced her own.

Discarded Laura had a sorry part in the poor little play. She was to be ill and unable to appear, and so resigned herself to a novel and solitude. Mrs. Allen was to discreetly have a headache and retire early, and thus all embarrassing third parties should be kept out of the way.

The late afternoon of Friday (unlucky day for once) brought the gentlemen, dressed as exquisitely as ever, but the vision on the rustic little porch almost dazzled even their experienced eyes. They had seen these girls more richly dressed before and more radiant. There was, however, a delicious pensiveness hanging over them now, like those delicate veils that enhance beauty and conceal nothing. And there was a deep undertone of excitement that gave them a magnetic power that they could not have in quieter moods.

Their appearance and manner of greeting caused secret exultation in the black hearts that they expected would be offered to them that night, but Edith looked so noble as well as beautiful that Gus rather trembled in view of his part in the proposed tragedy. As warm and gentle as had been her greeting, she did not appear like a girl that could be safely trifled with. However, Gus knew his one source of courage and kept up on brandy all day, and he proposed a heavier onslaught than ever on poor Mrs. Allen's wine. But Edith did not bring it out. She meant that all that was said that night should be spoken in sober earnest.

They sat down to cards for a while after tea, during which conversation was rather forced, consisting mainly of extravagant compliments from the gentlemen, and tender, meaning glances which the girls did not resent. Mrs. Allen languidly joined them for a while, and excused herself saying:

"My poor head has been too heavily taxed of late," though how, save as a small distillery of helpless tears, we do not remember.

The regret of the young men at being deprived of her society was quite affecting in view of the fact that they had often wished her dead and out of the way.

"Why should we shut ourselves up within walls this lovely spring evening, this delicious earnest of the coming summer?" said Mr. Van Dam to Zell. "Come, put on your shawl and show me your garden by moonlight."

Zell exultingly complied, believing that now she would show him, not their poor little garden, but the paradise of requited love. A moment later her graceful form, bending like a willow toward him, vanished in the dusky light of the rising moon, down the garden path which led to the little arbor.

Gus, having the parlor to himself, went over to the sofa, seated himself by the side of Edith and sought to pass his arm around her waist. "You have no right," again said Edith with dignity, shrinking away.

"But will you not give the right? Behold me a suppliant at your feet," said Gus tenderly, but comfortably keeping his seat.

"Mr. Elliot," said Edith earnestly, "do you realize that you are asking a poor girl to marry you?"

"Your own beautiful self is beyond all gold," said Gus gushingly.

"You did not think so a month ago," retorted Edith bitterly.

"I was a fool. My friends discouraged it, but I find I cannot live without you."

This sounded well to poor Edith, but she said half sadly:

"Perhaps your friends are right. You cannot afford to marry me."

"But I cannot give you up," said Gus with much show of feeling. "What would my life be without you? I admit to you that my friends are opposed to my marriage, but am I to blight my life for them? Am I, who have seen the best of New York for years, to give up the loveliest girl I have ever seen in it? I cannot and I will not," concluded Gus tragically.

"And are you willing to give up all for me?" said Edith feelingly, her glorious eyes becoming gentle and tender.

"Yes, if you will give up all for me," said Gus languishingly, taking her hand and drawing her toward him.

Edith did not resist now, but leaned her head on his shoulder with the blessed sense of rest and at least partial security. Her cruelly harassed heart and burdened, threatened life could welcome even such poor shelter as Gus Elliot offered. The spring evening was mild and breathless, and its hush and peace seemed to accord with her feelings. There was no ecstatic thrilling of her heart in the divine rapture of mutual and open recognition of love, for no such love existed on her part. It was only a languid feeling of contentment—moon-lighted with sentiment, not sun-lighted with joy—that she had found some one who would not leave her to labor and struggle alone.

"Gus," she said pathetically, "we are very poor; we have nothing. We are almost desperate from want. Think twice ere you engage yourself to a girl so situated. Are you able to thus burden yourself?"

Gus thought these words led the way to the carrying out of Van Dam's instructions, for he said eagerly:

"I know how you are situated. I learned all from Zell's letter to Van Dam, but our hearts only cling the closer to you, and you must let me take care of you at once. If you will only consent to a secret marriage I can manage it."

Edith slowly raised her head from his shoulder. Gus could not meet her eyes, but felt them fixed searchingly on his face. There was a distant mutter of thunder like a warning voice. He continued hurriedly:

"I think you will agree with me, when you think of it, that such a marriage would be best. It would be hard for me to break with my family at once. Indeed I could not afford to anger my father now. But I would soon get established in business myself, and I would work so hard if I knew that you were dependent on me!"

"Then you would wish me to remain here in obscurity your wife," said Edith in a low constrained tone that Gus did not quite like.

"Oh, no, not for the world," replied Gus hurriedly. "It is because I so long for your daily and hourly presence that I urge you to come to the city at once."

"What is your plan then?" asked Edith in the same low tone.

"Go with me to the city, on the boat that passes here in the evening. I will see that you are lodged where you will have every comfort, yes luxury. We can there be quietly married, and when the right time comes we can openly acknowledge it."

There was a tremble in Edith's voice when she again spoke, it might be from mere excitement or anger. At any rate Gus grew more and more uncomfortable. He had a vague feeling that Edith suspected his falseness, and that her seeming calmness might presage a storm, and he found it impossible to meet her full searching gaze, fearing that his face would betray him. He was bad enough for his project, but not quite brazen enough.

She detached herself from his encircling arm, went to a book-stand near and took from it a richly bound Bible. With this she came and stood before Gus, who was half trembling with fear and perplexity, and said in a tone so grave and solemn that his weak impressible nature was deeply moved:

"Mr. Elliot, perhaps I do not understand you. I have received several offers before, but never one like yours this evening. Indeed I need not remind you that you have spoken to me in a different vein. I know circumstances have greatly altered with me. That I am no longer the daughter of a millionaire, I am learning to my sorrow, but I am the same Edith Allen that you knew of old. I would not like to misjudge you, one of my oldest, most intimate friends of the happy past. And yet, as I have said, I do not quite understand your offer. Place your hand on this sacred book with me, and, as you hope for God's mercy, answer me this truly. Would you wish your own sister to accept such an offer, if she were situated like myself? Look me, an honest girl with all my faults and poverty, in the face, and tell me as a true brother."

Gus felt himself in an awful dilemma. Something in Edith's solemn tone and look convinced him that both he and Van Dam had misjudged her. His knees trembled so that he could scarcely rise. A fascination that he could not resist drew his face, stamped with guilt, toward her, and slowly he raised his fearful eyes and for a moment met Edith's searching, questioning gaze, then dropped them in confusion.

"Why do you not put your hand on the book and speak?" she asked in the low, concentrated voice of passion.

Again he looked hurriedly at her. A flash of lightning illumined her features, and he quailed before an expression such as he had never seen before on any woman's face.

"I—I—cannot," he faltered.

The Bible dropped from her hands, they clasped, and for a moment she seemed to writhe in agony, and in a low, shuddering tone she said:

"There are none to trust—not one."

Then, as if possessed by a sudden fury, she seized him roughly by the arm and said hoarsely:

"Speak, man! what then did you mean? What have all your tender speeches and caressing actions meant?"

Her face grew livid with rage and shame as the truth dawned upon her, while poor feeble Gus lost his poise utterly and stood like a detected criminal before her.

"You asked me to marry you," she hissed. "Must no one ask your immaculate sisters to do this, that you could not answer my simple question? Or, did you mean something else? How dare you exist longer in the semblance of a man? You have broken the sacred law of hospitality, and here, in my little home that has sheltered you, you purpose my destruction. You take mean advantage of my poverty and trouble, and like a cowardly hunter must seek out a wounded doe as your game. My grief and misfortune should have made a sanctuary about me, but the orphaned and unfortunate, God's trust to all true men, only invite your evil designs, because defenceless. Wretch, would you have made me this offer if my father had lived, or if I had a brother?"

"It's all Van Dam's work, curse him," groaned Gus, white as a ghost.

"Van Dam's work!" shrieked Edith, "and he's with Zell! So this is a conspiracy. You both are the flower of chivalry," and her mocking, half-hysterical laugh curdled Gus's blood, as her dress fluttered down the path that led to the arbor.

She appeared in the doorway like a sudden, supernatural vision, Zell's head rested on Mr. Van Dam's shoulder, and he was portraying in low, ardent tones the pleasures of city life, which would be hers as his wife.

"It is true," he had said, "our marriage must be secret for the present. You must learn to trust me. But the time will soon come when I can acknowledge you as my peerless bride."

Foolish little Zell was too eager to escape present miseries to be nice and critical as to the conditions, and too much in love, too young and unsuspecting, to doubt the man who had petted her from a child. She agreed to do anything he thought best.

Then Edith's entrance and terrible words broke her pretty dream in fragments.

Snatching her sister from Van Dam's embrace, she cried passionately:

"Leave this place. Your villany is discovered."

"Really, Miss Edith"—began Van Dam with a poor show of dignity.

"Leave instantly!" cried Edith imperiously. "Do you wish me to strike you?"

"Edith, are you mad?" cried Zell.

"Your sister must have lost her reason," said Van Dam, approaching Zell.

"Stand back," cried Edith sternly. "I may go mad before this hateful night passes, but while I have strength and reason left, I will drive the wolves from our fold. Answer me this: have you not been proposing secret marriage to my sister?"

Her face looked spirit-like in the pale moonlight, and her eyes blazed like coals of fire. As she stood there with her arm around her bewildered, trembling sister, she seemed a guardian angel holding a baffled fiend at bay.

This was literally true, for even hardened Van Dam quailed before her, and took refuge in the usual resource of his satanic ally—lies.

"I assure you, Miss Edith, you do me great injustice. I have only asked your sister that our marriage be private for a time—"

"The same wretched bait—the same transparent falsehood," Edith cried. "We cannot be married openly at our own home, but must go away with you, two spotless knights, to New York. Do you take us for silly fools? You know well what the world would say of ladies that so compromised themselves, and no true man would ask this of a woman he meant to make his wife. These premises are mine. Leave them."

Van Dam was an old villain who had lived all his life in the atmosphere of brawls and intrigue, therefore he said brazenly:

"There is no use in wasting words on an angry woman. Zell, my darling, do me justice. Don't give me up, as I never shall you," and he vanished on the road toward the village, where Gus was skulking on before him.

"You weak, unmitigated fool," said he savagely, "why did I bring you?"

"Look here, Van Dam," whined Gus, "that isn't the way to speak to a gentleman."

"Gentleman! ha, ha," laughed Van Dam bitterly.

"I be hanged if I feel like one to-night. A pretty scrape you have got me into," snarled Gus.

"Well," said Van Dam cynically. "I thought I was too old to learn much more, but you may shoot me if I ever go on a lark again with one of your weak villains who is bad enough for anything, but has brains enough only to get found out. If it hadn't been for you I would have carried my point. And I will yet," he added with an oath. "I never give up a game I have once started."

And so they plodded on with mutual revilings and profanity, till Gus became afraid of Van Dam, and was silent.

The dark cloud that had risen unnoted in the south, like the slowly gathering and impending wrath of God, now broke upon them in sudden gusts, and then chased them, with pelting torrents of rain and stinging hail, into the village. The sin-wrought chaos—the hellish discord of their evil natures—seemed to have infected the peaceful spring evening, for now the very spirit of the storm appeared abroad. The rush and roar of the wind was so strong, the lightning so vivid, and the crashing thunder peals overhead so terrific, that even hardened Van Dam was awed, and Gus was so frightened and conscience- smitten that he could scarcely keep up with his companion, but shuddered at the thought of being left alone.

At last they reached the tavern, roused the startled landlord, and obtained welcome shelter.

"What!" he said, "are the boys after you?"

"No, no," said Van Dam impatiently; "the devil is after us in this infernal storm. Give us two rooms, a fire, and some brandy as soon as possible, and charge what you please."

When Grus viewed himself in the mirror, as he at once did from long habit, his haggard face, drenched, mud-splashed form, awakened sincere self-commiseration; and his stained, bedraggled clothes troubled him more than his soiled character. He did not remember the time when he had not been well dressed, and to be so was his religion—the sacred instinct of his life. Therefore he was inexpressibly shocked, and almost ready to cry, as he saw his forlorn reflection in the glass. And he had no change with him. What should he do? All other phases of the disastrous night were lost in this.

"There is nothing to be bought in this mean little town, and how can I go to the city in this plight?" he anxiously queried.

"Go to the devil then," and the sympathetic Van Dam wrapped himself up and went to sleep.

Gus worked fussily at his clothes till a late hour, devoutly hoping he should meet no one whom he knew before reaching his dressing-room in New York.



CHAPTER XVI

BLACK HANNIBAL'S WHITE HEART



Edith half led, half carried her sobbing sister to the parlor. Mrs. Allen, no longer languid, and Laura from her exile, were already there, and with dismayed faces drew near the sofa where Zell had been placed.

"What has happened?" asked Mrs. Allen tremblingly.

Edith's self-control, now that her enemies were gone, gave way utterly, and sinking on the floor, she swayed back and forth, sobbing even more hysterically than Zell, and her mother and Laura, oppressed with the sense of some new impending disaster, caught the contagion of their bitter grief, and wept and wrung their hands also.

The frightened maid stood in one door, with white questioning face, and old gray-haired Hannibal in another, with streaming eyes of honest sympathy.

"Speak, speak, what is the matter?" almost shrieked Mrs. Allen.

Edith could not speak, but Zell sobbed, "I—don't—know. Edith—seems to have—gone—mad."

At last, after the application of restoratives, Edith so far recovered herself as to say brokenly:

"We've been betrayed—they're—villains. They never—meant—marriage at all."

"That's false!" screamed Zell. "I won't believe it of my lover, whatever may have been true of your mean little Gus Elliot. He promised to marry me, and you have spoiled everything by your mad folly. I'll never forgive you."—When Zell's wild fury would have ceased, cannot be said, but a new voice startled and awed them into silence. In the storm of sorrow and passion that raged within, the outer storm had risen unnoted, but now an awful peal of thunder broke over their heads and rolled away among the hills in deep reverberations. Another and a louder crash soon followed, and a solemn, expectant silence fell upon them akin to that when the noisy passionate world will suddenly cease its clamor as the trump of God proclaims the end.

"Merciful heaven! we shall be struck," said Mrs. Allen shudderingly.

"What's the use of living?" said Zell in a hard, reckless tone.

"What is there to live for?" sighed Edith, deep in her heart. "There are none to be trusted—not one."

Instead of congratulations received with blushing happiness, and solitaire engagement rings, thus is shown the first result of Mrs. Allen's policy, and of society's injunction:

"Keep your hands white, my dears."

The storm passed away, and they crept off to such poor rest as they could get, too miserable to speak, and too worn to renew the threatened quarrel that a voice seemingly from heaven had interrupted.

The next morning they gathered at a late breakfast-table with haggard faces and swollen eyes. Zell looked hard and sullen, Edith's face was so determined in its expression as to be stern. Mrs. Allen lamented feebly and indefinitely, Laura only appeared more settled in her apathy, and, like Zell and Edith, was utterly silent through the forlorn meal.

When it was over, Zell went up to her room and Edith followed her. Zell had not spoken to her sister since the thunder peal had suddenly checked her bitter words. Edith dreaded the alienation she saw in Zell's face, and felt wronged by it, knowing that she had only acted as truest friend and protector. But in order still to shield her sister she must secure her confidence, or else the danger averted the past evening would threaten as grimly as ever. She also realized how essential Zell's help would be in the struggle for bread on which they must enter, and wished to obtain her hearty co-operation in some plan of work. She saw that labor now was inevitable, and must be commenced immediately. From Laura little was to be hoped. She seemed so lacking in mental and physical force since their troubles began, that it appeared as if nothing could arouse her. She threatened soon to become an invalid like her mother. The thought of help from the latter did not even occur to her.

Edith had not slept, and as the chaos and bitterness of the past evening's experience passed away, her practical mind began to concentrate itself on the problem of support. Her disappointment had not been so severe as that of Zell, by any means, and so she was in a condition to rally much sooner. She had never much more than liked Elliot, and now the very thought of him was sickening, and though labor and want might be hard indeed, and regret for all they had lost keen, still she was spared the bitterer pain of a hopeless love.

But it was just this that Zell feared, and though she repeated to herself over and over again Van Dam's last words, "I will never give you up," she feared that he would, or what would be equally painful, she would be compelled to give him up, for she could not disguise from herself that her confidence had been shaken.

But sincere love is slow to believe evil of its object. If Van Dam had shown preference for another, Zell's jealousy and anger would have known no bounds, but this he had never done, and she could not bring herself to believe that the man whom she had known, since childhood, who had always treated her with uniform kindness and most flattering attention, who had partaken of their hospitality so often and intimately that he almost seemed like one of the family, meditated the basest evil against her.

"Gus Elliot is capable of any meanness, but Edith was mistaken about my friend. And yet Edith has so insulted him that I fear he will never come to the house again," she said with deep resentment. "If I had declined a private marriage, I am sure he would have married me openly."

Therefore when Edith entered their little room Zell's face was averted, and there was every evidence of estrangement. Edith meant to be kind and considerate, and patiently show the reasons for her action.

She sat down and took her sister's cold, impassive hand, saying:

"Zell, did I not help you dress in this very place last evening? Did I not wait against my judgment till Mr. Van Dam came? These things prove to you that I would not put a straw between you and a true lover. Surely we have trouble enough without adding the bitter one of division and estrangement. If we don't stand by each other now what will become of us?"

"What right had you to misjudge Mr. Van Dam by such a mean little scamp as Gus Elliot? Why did you not give him a chance to explain himself?"

"O Zell, Zell, how can you be so blinded? Did he not ask you to go away with him in the night—to elope, and then submit to a secret marriage in New York?"

"Well, he told me there were good reasons that made such a course necessary at present."

"Are you George Allen's daughter, that you could even listen to such a proposal? When you lived on Fifth Avenue would he have dared to even faintly suggest such a thing? Can he be a true lover who insults you to begin with, and, in view of your misfortunes, instead of showing manly delicacy and desire to shield, demands not only hard but indecent conditions? Even if he purposed to marry you, what right has he to require of you such indelicate action as would make your name a byword and hissing among all your old acquaintances, and a lasting stain to your family? They would not receive you with respect again, though some might tolerate you and point you out as the girl so desperate for a husband that she submitted to the grossest indignity to get one."

Zell hung her head in shame and anger under Edith's inexorable logic, but the anger was now turning against Van Dam. Edith continued:

"A lady should be sought and won. It is for her to set the place and time of the wedding, and dictate the conditions. It is for her to say who shall be present and who absent, and woman, to whom a spotless name is everything, has the right, which even savage tribes recognize, to shield herself from the faintest imputation of immodesty by compelling her suitor to comply with the established custom and etiquette which are her safeguards. The daughter of a poor laborer would demand all this as a matter of course, and shall the beautiful Zell Allen, who has had scores of admirers, have all this reversed in her case, and be compelled to skulk away from the home in which she should be openly married, to hunt up a man at night who has made the pitiful promise that he will marry her somewhere at some time or other, on condition that no one shall know it till he is ready? Mark it well, the man who so insults a lady and all her family never means to marry her, or else he is so coarse and brutal in all his instincts that no decent woman ought to marry him."

"Say no more," said Zell, in a low tone, "I fear you are right, though I would rather die than believe it. Oh, Edith, Edith!" she cried in sudden passionate grief. "My heart is broken. I loved him so! I could have been so happy!"

Edith took her in her arms and they cried together. At last Zell said languidly;

"What can we do?"

"We must go to work like other poor people. If we had only done so at first and saved every dollar we had left, we should not now be in our present deeply embarrassed condition. And yet, Zell, if you, with your vigor and strength, will only stand by me, and help your best, we will see bright days yet There must be some way by which two girls can make a livelihood here in Pushton as elsewhere. We have at least a shelter, and I have great hopes of the garden."

"I don't like a garden. I fear I couldn't do much there. And it seems like man's work too. I fear I shall be too wretched and ignorant to do anything."

"Not at all. Youth, health, and time, against all the troubles of the world." (This was the best creed poor Edith then had.) "Now," she continued, encouragingly, "you like housework. Of course we must dismiss our servants, and if you did the work of the house with Laura, so that I had all my time for something else, it would be a great saving and help."

"Oh, dear! oh, dear! that we should ever come to this!" said Zell despairingly.

"We have come to it, and must face the truth."

"Well, of course I'll try," said Zell with something of Laura's apathy. Then with a sudden burst of passion she clenched her little hands and cried:

"I hate him, the cold-hearted wretch, to treat his poor little Zell so shamefully!" and she paced up and down the room with inflamed eyes and cheeks. Then in equally sudden revulsion she threw herself down on the floor with her head in her sister's lap, and murmured, "God forgive me, I love him still—I love him with my whole heart," and sobbed till all her strength was gone.

Edith sighed deeply. "Can she ever be depended on?" she thought. At last she lifted the languid form on the bed, threw over her an afghan, and bathed her head with cologne till the poor child fell asleep.

Then she went down to Laura and her mother, to whom she explained more fully the events of last evening. Laura only muttered, "shameful," but Mrs. Allen whined, "She could not understand it. Girls didn't know how to manage any longer. There must be some misunderstanding, for no young men in the city could have meant to offer such an insult to an old and respectable family like theirs. She never heard of such a thing. If she could only have been present—"

"Hush, mother," said Edith almost sternly. "It's all past now. I should gladly believe that when you were a young lady such poor villains were not in good society. Moreover, such offers are not made to young ladies living on the avenue. This is more properly a case for shooting than management. I have no patience to talk any more about it. We must now try to conform to our altered circumstances, and at least maintain our self-respect, and secure the comforts of life if possible. But we must now practice the closest economy. Laura, you will have to be mother's maid, for of course we can keep no servants. I have a little money left, and will pay your maid to-day and let her go."

"I don't see how I can get along without her," said Mrs. Allen helplessly.

"You must," said Edith firmly. "We have no money to pay her any longer, and your daughters will try to supply her place."

Mrs. Allen did not formally abdicate her natural position as head of the family, but in the hour of almost shipwreck Edith took the helm out of the feeble hands. Yet the young girl had little to guide her, no knowledge and experience worth mentioning, and the sea was rough and beset with dangers.

The maid had no regrets at departure, and went away with something of the satisfaction of a rat leaving a sinking ship. But with old Hannibal it was a different affair.

"You ain't gwine to send me away too, is you, Miss Edie?" said he, with the accent of dismay.

"My good old friend," said Edith feelingly, "the only friend I'm sure of in this great world full of people, I fear I must. We can't afford to pay you even half what you are worth any longer."

"I'se sure I doesn't eat sech a mighty lot," Hannibal sniffled out.

"Oh, I hope we shan't reach starvation point," said Edith, smiling in spite of her sore heart. "But, Hannibal, you are a valuable servant; besides, there are plenty of rich upstarts who would give you anything you would ask, just to have you come and give an old and aristocratic air to their freshly-gilded mansions."

"Miss Edie, you doesn't know nothin' 'tall about my feelin's. What's money to ole Hannibal! I'se lived 'mong de millionaires and knows all 'bout money. It only buys half of 'em a heap of trouble and doesn't keep dar hearts from gettin' sore. When Massa Allen was a livin', he paid me big, and guv me all de money I wanted, and if he, at last, lost my money which he keep, it's no mo'n he did wid his own. And now, Miss Edie, I toted you and you'se sisters roun' on my shouler when you was babies, and I hain't got nothin' left but you, no friends, no nothin'; and if you send me away, it's like gwine out into de wilderness. What 'ud I do in some strange man's big house, when my heart's here in de little house? My heart is all ole Hannibal has left, if 'tis black, and if you send me away you break it. I'd a heap rader stay here in Bushtown and starve to death wid you alls, dan live in de grandest house on de avenue."