University of Virginia Library

2. A Novel.—Part Second.

1. CHAPTER I.
A SUMMER NIGHT.

Eight more years had etched their almost imperceptible wrinkle upon
earth's furrowed brow, and the moon of a summer's night dreamed
softly upon sea and shore, upon the grey and grim old walls of Cragness, within
whose shade John Gillies and the Secret still watchfully confronted each other
upon the still fair waters of Bonniemeer, the lakelet that gave its name to the
estate, and upon a pretty pleasure-boat drifting across its placid waters.

The occupants of this boat were Neria and Francia Vaughn, Claudia Livingstone,
a bride in her honeymoon, and her brother Fergus Murray, a young
man whose five-and-twenty years had done for him the work that fifty fail to accomplish
for many men.

Let him who would read faces aright watch them when exorcised to truth
by the magic of such a night; and when we remember that madness is but undisguised
sincerity, and that a lunatic is but too fervent a lover of that fair moon
who first entices men to sleep beneath her kisses and then stabs them to the
brain while they dream of her, we see at once that to submit to her influence, to
meet her smile, is to voluntarily enter upon the first stage of madness by allowing
the deepest emotions of the heart to become patent upon that bulletin-board,
the face.

Watch we then by moonlight, these, the principal characters of our story,
as each slips idly through his fingers the white and grey thread that Arachne
twists as pitilessly in the moonlight as in the dark, while we smile as we weep,
while we trust in her, as after we have learned to sneer.

Claudia, tall, elegant, and Circean in her beauty, reclined in the stern of the
boat, gazing now at her own reflection in the water, now at the diamonds upon
her white fingers.

At her feet sat Neria, her hands clasped upon her lap, her eyes upraised in

absorbing reverie, her pure profile clear cut against the background of dark
woodland, her attitude as graceful as it was unconscious.

In the bows, Francia, smiling to herself, wove with nimble fingers a wreath
of dripping water-lilies, glancing as she wrought at the handsome head of her
Cousin Fergus, who, with his back to her, found amusement now in lightly dipping
the oar that he held, so as to shatter the image Claudia watched with so
much satisfaction, and now, in gazing at Neria's wonderful loveliness.

The wreath was done, and Francia lightly placed it upon the head of the unconscious
oarsman, who started slightly, and then catching the hands still busy
about his temples, drew them to his lips, and lightly kissing them, said,

“That is too much honor, little cousin, and besides the decoration is not appropriate.
Give it to Neria, who in the moonlight looks like the spirit of the
lake, or,” and releasing the hands, the young man turned toward his cousin and
lowered his voice. “If we want a veritable Undine, I know where to find
her.”

“Undine before she found her soul?” asked Francia, archly.

“Before she was married, yes,” replied Fergus.

“The idea that a woman must necessarily be improved by being married. I
don't believe it—there's Claudia now.”

“I believe we won't discuss Claudia's affairs. I don't approve of meddling
with what don't concern me,” said Fergus, with a shade of severity in his voice.
Francia drew a little back, and silently averted her face, while a rich, lazy voice
asked, from the stern of the boat:

“What's that about Claudia?”

“Claudia has admired herself sufficiently for once,” replied Fergus, resuming
his seat and his oars, and must now go to relieve the anxieties of her friends
on shore.”

“Whether she will or no?” asked Claudia, half rebelliously. Her brother
made no reply, and in a few moments the keel of the little boat grated upon the
white sand of the beach. At the sound, three gentlemen rose from a bench,
where they had been sitting, and came down to meet the voyagers.

In the first, a fine-looking man, bearing his forty years as Time's seal of perfected
manhood, we recognize Frederic Vaughn, the master of Bonniemeer.

The shorter, stouter, more florid man beside him, is John Livingstone, the
bridegroom of Claudia Murray, and the tall, thin, grey-haired, and grey-faced
gentleman behind them is her father, the widowed brother-in-law of Vaughn.

Without waiting for the hand her father stepped forward to offer, Francia
sprang lightly to the shore, and passed hastily up the path leading through the
wood to the house. Fergus, stepping more deliberately from the boat, drew it
up on the beach, and after carefully handing Neria out, impatiently called:

“Come, Claudia, we are waiting for you!”

But Claudia lingered, adjusting her draperies; and when, at last, she stepped
upon the gunwale, placing her hand in that of Fergus, he seized it so hastily that
Claudia stumbled, tangled her feet in her long dress, and was only saved from
falling by the destruction of the gauzy fabric.

“Take care! Did you tear your dress? It is not a fit one for a boating
party,” said Fergus, hurriedly passing the boat-chain over the post set for it, and
hastening after Neria, already disappearing in the sombre woodland path.

“There, Mrs. L, that's fifty dollars gone, I suppose,” remarked Mr. Livingstone,
as Claudia ruefully gathered up her ruined dress.

“I wish you wouldn't call me Mrs. L.,” retorted the lady, pettishly. “You
know that I detest it.”

“Don't get mad, young woman. It wasn't me tore your dress, and I guess
it won't break Livingstone Brothers to furnish the funds for a new one,” said
the husband, good-humoredly, as he tucked his wife's arm under his own, and led
her up the path.

Mr. Vaughn and his brother-in-law slowly followed.

“Livingstone makes Claudia a very good husband,” said the latter, complacently.

“He seems very good-natured,” assented Vaughn, with reserve.

“Yes, and that is a great deal. Then he is perfectly willing to leave her to
her own pursuits and companions, and has both means and inclination to indulge
all the costly whims which nearly ruined me while I had the honor of supplying
her purse.”

Mr. Vaughn slightly smiled, but said nothing; and, after a little pause, his
companion added, positively:

“A very good husband, and a very good match.”

“I am glad you are so well pleased,” said Vaughn, finding an answer imperative.

“Humph! Your aristocratic prejudices won't allow you to be reasonable,
Vaughn. You don't like my son-in-law because he's in trade, and because his
father had no idea of a grandfather or a coat-of-arms. But, as for the last, I
assure you, Livingstone has imported the very finest one in the Heralds' College,
and Claudia has got it engraved on everything in the house.”

“Your satire is more honest than your praise, Murray. You are more of a
conservative at heart than I,” said Mr. Vaughn.

Murray slightly smiled.

“My practice is for myself—my theories for others,” said he. “I have a
theory that Mr. John Livingstone is an admirable husband; but in practice I
see him as little as possible.”

“But Claudia is your daughter, and may be supposed to have the same tastes
and prejudices as her father,” pursued Vaughn.

Mr. Murray's sarcastic smile deepened.

“Claudia,” said he, slowly, “is a young woman of uncommon good sense.
She considered this matter well, and decided for herself, and, as I think, wisely.
There was a young man, good-looking, well-mannered, romantic, and all that,
whom she preferred, no doubt; but he was just out of the medical school, and
was beginning on the thankless course of gratuitous practice incumbent at
this day upon a young physician. In ten years he may be able to marry and
live in a small way; but he never will be able to provide the sum Claudia expends
each year for pin-money. Mr. Livingstone and he offered themselves on
the same day. The girl dutifully came to me and asked advice.”

“And you counselled her to accept the richer?” asked Vaughn.

“I said to her, `My dear, look past the next five years into the forty or fifty
which I hope await you beyond, and consider whether you will roll over them in
a barouche, or plod through on foot, dragging a baby-cart after you.' She looked
me in the eye a minute, turned as pale as a ghost, and quietly laid Dr. Lutrell's
letter on the fire. That was all.”

Vaughn's lip curled, but he made no reply; and the two men walked on

through the rustling wood, where the moonlight quivered down, to make a
diamond of every swinging dewdrop, and to light the rendezvous of amorous fays.

Vaughn stopped and looked about him. Twenty years before, he would have
said:

“Can worldliness assert itself in such a scene as this?” But at forty one
has learned, if ever, that “speech is silvern and silence is golden.”

Mr. Murray cast a vacant eye upon the moony sky, the dreaming earth, the
swinging blossoms, and whispering trees, and then said:

“You like this sort of thing, Vaughn?”

“Yes.”

“Why don't you take a wife and settle down, then? You havn't spent a
month here since Gabrielle died; have you?”

“Only the summer we all spent here five years ago,” said Mr. Vaughn,
quietly.

“O, yes; the last summer of Mrs. Murray's life—poor Catherine.”

Again, silently, Mr. Vaughn considered whether the ruthful epithet was best
applied to Mrs. Murray dead or Mrs. Murray living; and the unconscious widower
resumed:

“But why don't you marry again, Vaughn.”

“I have no inclination at present,” returned his companion, coldly.

“Perhaps not; but you will do it yet, and, unless you look out for yourself,
you will be drawn into a very foolish thing. It is not my affair, and I know so
well the reward of friendly interference that I would not have risked speaking
except from the very highest regard for your welfare.”

“I am extremely grateful, my dear fellow,” replied Vaughn, in good-humored
astonishment, “but I haven't an idea what you're driving at.”

“Of course, you'll laugh, and, possibly, will be offended; but, once for all, I
tell you that little ward of yours, Neria, is falling in love with you,” said Mr.
Murray, in a matter-of-fact voice. Vaughn stopped and stared at him.

“Neria in love with me!” exclaimed he.

“Falling in love, I said,” returned Murray. “It is only a few weeks that
you have been at home, you know; and since she saw you last she has grown
from a girl to a woman, and is, womanlike, all ready to fall prostrate at the feet
of the first idol that chance sets before her. She is fascinated by your appearance
and manners, and the savoir faire resulting from your wide travels appears
to her the wisdom of a God. She is devoting herself now to the building of an
altar for this god; and, presently, when the incense begins to rise, you may find
it more intoxicating than you imagine.”

Vaughn walked thoughtfully on for some moments, and then said,

“The caution is kindly meant, Murray, and, I assure you, kindly taken; but
I don't think you quite know me, and neither of us knows more of Neria than
her exquisite beauty. Perhaps, then, we had better not try to look into the
sacred mysteries of a virgin heart, or discuss, as probabilities, ideas which seem
to me the wildest of chimeras.”

Mr. Murray stoically accepted the delicate rebuke, and said,

“O, very well. I only wished to open your eyes; and now have no more to
say, except to rather demur at your phrase, `exquisite beauty.' To my mind
either Francia or Claudia is far handsomer than Neria. She is too cold and
lifeless, has too little color and curve for my taste. She always reminds me of
the winter sea that washed her up.”

“You have not seen her as I have,” said Vaughn, quietly; “and perhaps
never could. And to compare her with Claudia and Francia, or them with each
other, is unjust to all three, for while each is an almost perfect type of a special
form of beauty, the three forms are as wide apart as the sea and the sun. I saw
women like Claudia in Spain, in Italy, in the Ionian Isles; I have found
Francias in England, in Germany, and here at home, but there are no more
Nerias.”

He smiled dreamily as he spoke, and Mr. Murray shrugged his shoulders.

“I should think in Norway, Sweden, Russia, anywhere near the North Pole,
you might find plenty of them,” said he, slightingly.

“Plenty of complexions as pure, and once in a year, perhaps, features as
delicately moulded, a form as exquisitely proportioned—but the peculiarity of
this girl's beauty is one that I have never before encountered. She is transparent.
The body is beautiful enough, although men like you might call it cold
and inanimate, but the real beauty is within, and only once in a while takes possession
of the body and transfigures it, absolutely changes it to another.”

Mr. Murray shook his head.

“Just as romantic as ever,” said he, compassionately. “More of a boy than
my Fergus ever was. Now, I suppose in common every-day parlance, you mean
by this transfiguration and `possession' that Neria has a very expressive face.
Well—”

“No, that is not what I mean,” interposed Vaughn. “I mean that under
strong emotion or deep interest, she becomes another person. Her eyes, which
ordinarily are a clear, light grey, deepen to the color of the sea beneath a thunder
sky; her lips glow with a vivid scarlet, and ripen to an exquisite fulness; her
cheeks bloom with the rare tint that Titian strove all his life to embody in color;
her very hair deepens from its pale gold to an aureola of glory; her slender
figure dilates and rounds itself to the perfection of womanhood. It is marvellous—absolutely
marvellous, and no one who has never witnessed this change
should speak of Neria's beauty, for it is a thing he cannot understand.”

Mr. Murray plunged his hands into his pockets, and looked askance at his
brother-in-law.

“I had better have held my tongue,” said he. “I had no idea you were in
this condition, or that you had turned your forty years to so little account.”

Vaughn slightly frowned, then smiled.

“It is I who should have held my tongue,” said he. “You and I never
looked out of the same eyes, Murray, and you do not see that I am admiring
this lovely ward of mine just as I admired the Madonnas of the Sistine, the
Psyche of Florence. She is to me another embodiment of beauty, that is all—
another reason to praise God, who gave me eyes and brain to admire His works.”

“And that is all?” asked Murray, incredulously.

“That is all,” assented Vaughn, with a grave and steadfast look into the furtive
eyes of his companion.

“Wait awhile,” said Mr. Murray, dryly, and they ascended the broad steps
to the terrace, where Claudia sang passionate love-songs to her guitar, while her
husband, with a handkerchief over his head, sat upon the sill of the drawing-room
window, and Francia wandered restlessly up and down, looking every
moment toward the garden where Neria's white dress floated through the long
alleys with a dark shadow at its side.

Light and shadow presently came toward the house, and Francia, who had

been for some moments immovable at the end of the terrace nearest to the garden,
hurried to the other end, and seated herself upon the shaded steps, with a
cruel little pang at the thought that she should not be missed. Without turning
her head, she heard the merry talk that sprang up at the farther end of the terrace,
heard some one ask for herself, and Claudia's careless answer that she had
gone into the house, perhaps to rest. Then she heard a firm quick tread along
the marble walk, and drew still further into the shadow as Fergus approached,
paused, and sat down beside her.

“What is the matter, Francia?” asked he, with a little impatience and a
good deal of tenderness mingling in his voice.

“Nothing's the matter,” said Francia, pettishly.

“Yes, but a good deal's the matter when you speak in that way, little girl,'
retorted her cousin, taking in his own one of the listless hands that only half-tried
to evade the capture.

“Now tell me, Franc, what is it?”

Half yielding to the tender and imperious tone of this demand, Francia
spoke, but, womanly, left the most unsaid.

“You were so cross in the boat!”

Fergus laughed aloud.

Now, Franc, aren't you ashamed of yourself? Very likely I spoke too
sharply, but was that a thing worth pouting over for hours? What I meant was
that you and I have no right to judge, or even discuss other people's affairs.
You were beginning a remark about Claudia's marriage, you know, and I
thought it was something of which you should not talk. I could not explain
then, but you ought to have understood.”

Francia looked up with a smile in her blue eyes.

“You are so fastidiously honorable,” said she.

“And you are such a little goose,” retorted her cousin, meeting the smile
half way.

“Come, Franc, we are going in,” called Claudia from the window, and with
a little reluctant sigh, the girl obeyed the summons, slowly followed by Fergus,
who, instead of entering the house, sought again the garden paths and wandered
there until “Orion, low down in his grave,” showed that the night had changed
to morning.

2. CHAPTER II.
SIEUR.

Hold to Genesis if we may, to Hugh Miller if we must, for the story of the
creation; but who that has seen a summer morning upon the sea-shore can
doubt that there was once an Eden whose echoes yet haunt the earth? The
hush, the dreamy melancholy, the mystery of night, is gone, the soul no longer
sighs to escape from earth and float unfettered into space; but rather it incorporates
itself more closely in the body, giving to a man almost the afflatus of a
God, saying to him, Up and be doing, for what limit is there to our capacity?
And one no longer treads the common earth with weary feet, but feels himself
upborne upon invisible wings above the garden where angels walked with men
and infused new strength into their souls with every word.

Such a morning dawned upon Bonniemeer, and Neria, alone upon the terrace,

stood looking over sea and earth, and dreaming the pure, bright dreams that
such scenes should stir in a young and virgin heart.

Not dreaming, but humming a blithe hunting song that suited well his active
and virile mien, came Fergus, striding rapidly up the avenue, until catching sight
of Neria, he stopped, half in admiration of her attitude and the glorified beauty
of her eager face, half shame-faced in remembering his disordered appearance
and the dripping towel in his hand.

At the same moment Vaughn, appearing in the doorway, paused to look at
the two, and especially at Fergus, trying to see him with a young girl's eyes. “A
handsome fellow,” thought he, with a strange reluctance in making the admission,
“and with a certain air of pride and resolution that should have its weight. Not
highly intellectual, perhaps, certainly not fanciful or romantic, although not free
from the sentimentality of youth. Bearing the impress upon his face of a clear
and well-trained mind, of high principle and fastidious honor, of elegant tastes
and habits—a man whom a girl must admire, might easily love, should he love
her,” concluded Vaughn, just as his nephew sprang up the steps, giving him a gay
good-morning, and he replied, a little coldly,

“Good-morning, Fergus. You have the advantage of us in your early walk.”

“Yes, sir, and also in my dip into the surf. A splendid morning for a
bath.”

And the young man passed on, with one sidelong, wistful glance at Neria,
who smiled a greeting, but did not speak. At the same moment Vaughn approached
and greeted her.

“Good-morning, sir,” said she, half shyly extending her hand.

Vaughn took it and held it for an instant, examining the slender, rose-tipped
fingers.

“And what a morning!” continued Neria, turning to meet a little wave of
fresher air, one of Ocean's ponderous love-sighs that just then grazed her cheek.

“Yes,” replied Vaughn, absently, and then asked,

“Of what were you thinking, Neria, just before Fergus came up?”

“I was thinking of you, sir,” replied Neria, quietly.

“Of me!” echoed Vaughn, too startled even to be flattered.

“Yes, sir. I was thinking that a man born and brought up in face of such
grandeur and beauty as this, must of necessity be noble and pure, and wise as—”

“No, do not say it, child!” cried Vaughn, in terror. “Do not put me to
shame by reminding me of opportunities, incentives, aids to a nobler life, that
have been showered so freely upon me, and which have been so miserably, miserably
neglected.”

The clear eyes looked into his with such wonder, almost such fright, that the
pain melted from his brow in a tender smile as he said,

“Do not look so much shocked, either. I did not mean to represent myself
as an ogre, or even as a man stained with some dark crime; but who is, then,
worthy to live, as you say, in the presence of such beauty and such grandeur as
this? What man, I mean? If one looks among women—”

He paused, and with a smile half playful, half in earnest, looked deep into
the transparent eyes still raised to his.

“But, Neria, tell me something,” added he, drawing her hand through his
arm and walking up and down the shady terrace. “Why have you given me no
name since I came home? It is three weeks now, and you have not once called
me anything but sir. Five years ago, you said papa, as Franc does now.”

Neria looked a little troubled, and then suddenly relieved.

“I am glad you spoke of it, sir,” said she, “for now I can ask you what I
had better say. I do not like to say papa or father, because you know you are
not my father, and it is claiming a right and a place which do not belong to me.”

“Do not belong to you, dear?” asked Vaughn, in pained surprise. “Have
you felt any want of affection or consideration in me, or in any one? Has
Francia ever shown a feeling of jealousy or assumed—”

“O no! no!” interrupted Neria, anxiously. “Pray do not think of such a
thing. Franc does not know I have thought of these things. She has forgotten,
I believe, that I am not her very sister.”

“And how came you to know it?” asked Vaughn, half smiling at the childish
expression, and yet with an ominous frown gathering in his dark eyes.

“It was long ago,” said Neria, dreamily, “when we were quite little girls,
that we had some dispute, Franc and I; and although I gave up to her, I said
she had no right to try to force me to, for she was in the wrong, and was really
the one to yield. Then Mrs. Rhee, who was by, said something about everything
being more Franc's than mine; and when we asked what she meant, she
said I was an orphan whom you had taken in out of pity, and though it was no
fault of mine, it should make me humble and less forward to speak of rights
and to contend with Francia about trifles. I thought about it a good deal, and
although Mrs. Rhee never would say any more, and seemed to wish it were forgotten,
I made old Chloe tell me, little by little, all about it.”

“All about what?” asked Vaughn, quietly.

“About your finding me on the sea-beach, in the arms of my poor dead
mother—”

Neria paused, and stood for a moment looking out toward the sea with a
wistful yearning in her eyes, as if the memory of that dead mother were to her
forever associated with that other mystery beside which she had lain. A look
so full of inexpressible longing of lonely grief, that Vaughn, gazing down upon
it, would fain have clasped her to his heart and kissed the darkening eyes and
quivering lips to peace and trust; but he could not do it, as he should, he would
not, as he wished.

“I always thought about it while I was little,” continued Neria, drearily;
“and sometimes it made me sad—made me feel as if I did not quite belong here,
and really had not the right to resist if Francia did not agree with me. But
since I have grown up it seems different. I feel as if you really wished I should
be your daughter, and did all you could for me, and it was ungrateful not to
keep the place you had put me in. Besides, I cannot—I do not think it right
for any one to give up what they know to be true and just, even if some one else
has rights which they have not. I could not tell Francia that I thought as she
did, if I did not, or even be silent when she or any one said what I did not
think the truth. But I hope I am not ungrateful or quarrelsome, and indeed I
love Franc as if she were my mother's child, and you, sir, as if you were my
father.”

No cloud, no doubt, dimmed the candid eyes which Vaughn questioned with
the keen interrogatory of a man's selfishness, no maiden timidity made them
droop before his own. He slowly withdrew his gaze, half pleased, half pained.

“But still,” pursued Neria, “I do not like to call you father, because you
are not in very truth my father, and so I should do nothing to make it appear
so.”

“Perhaps you are right, Neria, although, as I have always considered you a
child of my own, your scruples seem to me excessive. But, after all, it is as
well to change this paternal title for one that will express no more than the exact
truth. Will you call me guardian?”

“Yes, sir, if you like it.”

“But not `sir!' little ward! That is too formal.”

“Francia says `sir,' and so does Fergus,” suggested Neria, hesitatingly
“And I was thinking if you liked it, that Sieur is the very name I would like
to call you best, as if you knew you were the king and I the orphan ward for
whom you cared.”

“Ah, you do not leave out the romance when you read history,” said Vaughn,
smiling. “Well, then, call me Sieur if you will, and the name so resembles
your usual address that no one will notice the change, and so our little secret
shall be our own.”

“I don't like secrets very much,” said Neria, apprehensively.

“Child, you are morbidly sensitive on this matter of candor. It is right and
just that every heart should keep some things locked safely away from the world.
So only do we preserve our individuality,” said Vaughn, gravely; and his ward
answered with docility,

“Then this shall be a secret.”

“Come, good people, come to breakfast, we are all waiting for you,” called
Claudia from the window, and Neria turned to her so winsome a face, that the
young matron smiled as she had not done for many a day.

3. CHAPTER III.
A CONFESSION.

“And now what?” asked Mr. Livingstone, as the party rose from breakfast.

“A ride,” said Fergus, decisively. “Neria and Franc, get on your habits,
and I will order the horses; Claudia, I suppose you don't care to ride?”

“No, it tires me too much. I am going to drive, by-and-by, with Mr. Livingstone,”
said the bride, languidly.

“But I should be very happy to ride,” exclaimed Francia, with a brilliant
smile.

Fergus silently looked at Neria, who had not spoken.

“I cannot go this morning,” said she, “I have something to do.”

“Pshaw! Put by your something, and come. There is not such a day once
a month,” expostulated Fergus, in a low voice.

Neria smiled, but shook her head.

“You and Franc must enjoy it enough for me too.”

“What is your something? What are you going to do?” asked Fergus,
pettishly.

“O, something.”

“Something you won't tell me?”

“Not just now,” said Neria, beginning to look a little troubled.

“You will spoil my ride—in fact, I won't go.”

“That would be unkind to Francia, who wishes to go,” said Neria, quietly.

“It will be your fault if she is disappointed.”

“As it was my fault that the squirrel bit me?” asked Neria, smiling meaningly.

Fergus colored indignantly.

“I did not think it was in you to be so ungenerous, Neria,” said he, rising
and walking to the other end of the room, where the others were gathered in the
breezy bay window.

“Shall we go, Fergus?” asked Francia, timidly; for she had learned to read
her cousin's face, and now saw displeasure and disappointment in it.

“Yes, if you please,” said he, coldly; and, as Franc moved slowly toward
the door, he stepped out of the window, without glancing toward Neria, and
went to order the horses.

Half an hour later, Claudia, lounging in a great Indian chair, saw Neria
coming down the stairs in her walking dress, and, with a sudden impulse, advanced
to join her.

“Stop a minute,” called she, “I will go a little way with you, if you are for
a walk.”

Neria hesitated, and then said:

“Come, then, a little way.”

“How far are you going?”

“I will tell you as we walk along.”

“Charming little mystery! Where is my veil? O, here; tie it behind for
me, please. This sea air is so trying to one's complexion, and it's quite a mistake
to suppose brunettes don't tan. Goodness, child, you are never going to
wear that little hat and no veil? You will be a squaw by the time you come
home.”

“I never tan or burn, and I never wear a veil,” said Neria, quietly, as she
put the little bat, with its drooping white plume, upon the top of her airily-folded,
shining hair.

“Yes, it is very becoming, I admit,” said Claudia, half envious; adding, as
she glanced at Neria's stainless skin, “and such a complexion as yours is heaven's
last, best gift to man.”

“Not to man, exactly,” retorted Neria, putting aside, as ill-judged, an impulse
to suggest to her companion some better cause for thankfulness to heaven.

“And now, where are we going?” asked Claudia, as they walked under the
rustling lindens in the avenue, amid whose golden blossoms innumerable bees
hummed with a murmur like surf breaking on the distant shore.

“I will tell you now. You remember Mr. Gillies?”

“Yes, indeed! The charming old hermit who infected me with his own music-madness
that summer, five years ago. Do he and his old tower with the
glorious organ still exist?”

“Yes; but, Claudia, I think he never has been just the same since that he
was that summer,” said Neria, dubiously. “When I used to go with you to
take your lessons, you know how animated and enthusiastic he was about music—how
dry and reserved on everything else?”

“Yes, I know,” said Claudia, with a cunning smile.

“Well, after you went away, Francia and I used to go sometimes and listen
from the beach to his playing, just as we did the first night; and after a while
he found us out, and one night he asked us in. So we went, and, though Franc
thought it rather fearful to sit in that old library in the dark and listen to such
solemn music, I enjoyed it; and, when he asked us to come again, we got leave
from Miss Boardman, and used to go often. Sometimes he would ask a few

questions about you, but generally he said very little, unless we spoke to him.
At last, one evening, I don't know how it was, but I found myself standing close
beside him, and crying as hard as I could. He was playing something of his
own, then, and I never heard such sorrow and loneliness as he conveyed in that
music; he never could have said it in words—”

“No,” interrupted Claudia, softly; “like dumb people, he expresses himself
through his fingers.”

“Well, he turned suddenly and saw me, and caught my two hands in his,
and looked at me! Claudia! there is a picture of Landseer's—of a stag hunted
to death, and turning to look at the hunters, who come crowding up the hill toward
him—he looked just like that; so piteous, and so dumb.”

“You romantic child,” said Claudia, adding, a little uneasily,

“Well, what did he say?”

“Not a word; and, after a minute, he closed the organ and left the room.
But the next time we went he asked me if I would learn of him to play. I said
that nothing could make me happier. So he began at once.”

“But it did not succeed, I imagine,” said Claudia, with another smile.

“What, the teaching? O, yes, I learned quite easily.”

“No; I don't mean the teaching. The poor old hermit did not find his
homœopathic idea of curing the disease by reproducing its cause, successful?”

“I don't understand,” said Neria, with a puzzled look.

“Well, never mind. So you took lessons? For how long?”

“Three or four years—till Miss Boardman, who used to go with me, left us,
and Mrs. Rhee said it was improper for me to go alone; so, as Franc wouldn't
go, and there was no one else, I left off.”

“But you are going now?”

“Yes; within a few months Mr. Gillies has been quite ill and very dull. We
heard of it through his housekeeper, and one day Francia and I called to see if
he needed anything that we could send him. He asked to have us come in, and
said if I would sit down and play for him, it would do more good than anything
else. I did it, of course, and, when I was going, he thanked me with so much
feeling that I asked if I should not come again. He said so much in reply that
I was quite ashamed to hear him; and ever since I have been over, at intervals,
and am going now. Now you are all here, I am more occupied at home, and
have only been once in three weeks; but this morning (on the terrace) I resolved
to go before dinner, let what would stand in the way. I have done
wrong not to do so sooner.”

The two girls walked on in silence. Presently Claudia stopped, and, looking
far away to the point where, beneath a silvery shimmer, the sea seemed to melt
into the sky, she said in a low voice,

“It was like me.”

“What?” asked Neria.

“Why, child, you were too young and too innocent to see what went on beneath
your eyes that summer. I was curious to know if that hard, cold man,
with his one passion, had any heart. I searched till I found it, and—I broke it.”

Neria looked at her, with a slow horror gathering in her eyes.

“O Claudia!” was all she said; but as she turned and walked on alone, the
remorseful woman who had met those eyes and heard that tone, sank down upon
the beach and wept as she had not wept since the fatal day that first saw her
glide beneath John Gillies's roof.

4. CHAPTER IV.
MR. GILLIES DISCHARGES HIMSELF OF HIS TRUST.

Arrived at Cragness, Neria was at once admitted to the library, and found
its master seated at the open window, looking listlessly out over the water. He
rose as his guest entered, mutely greeted her, and then feebly sank again into
the great arm-chair. The years had wrought upon John Gillies in a fashion
characteristic of himself. His tall figure was not bowed, but seemed to have
dried away to a skeleton, thinly covered with indurated flesh and ashen skin;
his grey hair was no thinner than it had been twenty years before; his dry lips
closed as firmly, his shaggy brows drew together as keenly, but in the eyes
themselves there was a change. Those grey eyes no longer looked on men and
things with the shrewd suspicion, the crafty watchfulness, of their youth, but
had taken a dreary, introspective softness into their depths—a pain, a doubt, a
longing, inexpressibly mournful to Neria, who looked now at her old friend with
a new appreciation of the silent story of his life.

Almost without a word, Mr. Gillies unlocked the organ and motioned the
young girl to seat herself at it. As silently, she complied; and presently stole
out upon the hushed air, not the pain and sorrow of the human heart aching in
the musician's breast, but a tender melody, rising and deepening to a noble anthem—tones
of lofty hope, of aspiration and prophecy—a strain that bore the
listener from the grief of earth to the content of heaven; that, in language high
above speech, told of the grand unities of creation, of the eternal harmony in
which all discords shall yet be resolved, and the incompleteness and vagueness
of life shall be satisfied, by the Master's hand striking the grand chord, embodying
in its fulness the key-note of every man's soul.

The solemn joy died away, and Neria sat, with bowed head and dreamy
eyes, her fingers idly wandering over the keys, and drawing from them faint
whispers, dim echoes —hints of the murmuring sea that swept up beneath the
open window, of the summer that glowed in sky and shore.

A thin, hard hand, laid lightly upon her arm, roused her, with a start.

“I have something to say to you, Miss Neria,” said John Gillies, and walked
stiffly back to his seat in the window, where Neria followed him, and silently
sat.

But the recluse seemed to relapse into his usual reticence. Leaning an elbow
on the table and his chin upon his palm, he sat looking far away to the horizon
line, where, like the wings of a great bird, the sails of a distant ship glanced
and wavered in the sunlight.

“You are not quite well yet, Mr. Gillies,” said Neria, at length, fancying
herself forgotten.

The dreamy eyes came back from the white-winged ship now sinking below
the horizon, and fixed upon her face.

“Not well? I can hardly say that; but I am going away, Miss Neria.”

“Away from Cragness?”

“Away from everything. I don't say, going to die, because I don't know
what that means; but I am soon to make the great change, and I have an unfulfilled
trust holding me back. This trust I wish to make over to you, if you
will have it; but first I must tell you what it has done for me. Then you shall
choose.”

Again he paused, and in his fixed eyes dim shadows of the past slowly gathered
and darkened. When he spoke again, it was in a weary and hollow voice.

“I made the grand mistake of my life in coming here. I did not know myself
as I now do, or I never should have accepted Reginald Vaughn's bequest.
My nature, unlike that of other men, had but one passion—one point open to
romance or idealism—and through this one narrow channel poured all the impulses
of my life, leaving the rest to be guided by reason, method, habit.

“The combination, if unusual, was effective. The vehemence of my passion
for music was toned and restrained by the habits of my daily life, and when,
after the dry routine of labor, I could feel myself free to indulge this passion,
it was to me as love and fame, as home and wife and children are to other men.
It was my solace, my rest and recreation.

“I came here. All the fashion of my life was changed. I no longer mingled
with men, I no longer filled a place in the affairs of the world; the bonds that
had for years held me to a positive duty, a defined position, were snapped at a
blow. I had no longer hours, requirements, or responsibilities, save such as
were self-imposed. My whole life was unhinged.

“Add to this a secret, a solemn mystery placed in my hands by a dying man,
who bade me live here in this very room, where every handsbreadth of surface,
every book, every mote floating in the air, the sea booming against its walls—
yes, even my own organ—all know this secret, all taunt me with it, all whisper
it forever in an unknown tongue, which I have wasted my life to learn, and yet
do not know.”

He looked slowly about the room, with a wild, hungry light in his sunken
eyes, and Neria's heart thrilled with a strange fear. Gillies glanced sharply at
her, and said, quietly,

“It would not be strange if my brain were unsettled, but it is not—as yet.
Whether death or madness come first, Fate only knows.”

“Fate!” said Neria, softly.

“Yes; or God, if you prefer. It is the same power by a different name.
Do not talk of that.

“My nature is one slow to take impressions. For years the change wrought
by this new life was almost imperceptible; as imperceptible and as unpausing
as the hand of time. I gave myself up to music; I collected the works of the
great masters in the art; I dreamed over them, and tried to find in myself the
power to rival them; I brought from Germany this organ, the chef-d'œuvre of
its artist; for he was a man who expressed Art in form, as the musician does
in sound. I revelled in dreams and visions like those that break the hearts of
poets, who can find in words no language to embody them. I lived a life of passion
and excess with my beautiful Art, and she turned upon me, as these idols
will, and slew me.”

He rose and paced the dusky room in strong emotion, and presently sank
back into his chair, pale and exhausted.

“I blaspheme,” said he, in a choked voice. “It was not Art that slew me—
it was I, who knew not that man is not as a God, and cannot live above the
earth without sooner or later feeling earth's vengeance.

“Years of this life wrought their work upon me at last. My great passion
had taken possession of my entire existence, forcing to unnatural development
the impulses severely restrained by the rigor of my former life—awakening capacities
and wants unknown to my earlier years. I was roused, restless, and
unsatisfied. Then came the vengeance of earth—came in the old familiar form
of—woman.”

The bitter contortion of his mouth was not a smile, but matched well with
the cruel self-contempt of his sudden glance.

“I know what you mean,” said Neria, softly. “Do not speak of it, if it
pains you.”

“You know? Well, it spares me some pain, and so let it pass. Since then,
my life has been the broken reed that has at last pierced to the heart. Aimless
and discontented, it has no longer the pure purpose, the earnest faith, which
Art demands of her favored lovers. The inspiration of those first years never
comes now; I no longer create—I can only copy; and the masters whom I
hoped to emulate no longer whisper their secrets to my heart. I profaned the
pure worship of the divinity by conjoining a false idol with it, and now I am
cast out, broken, forsaken, unworthy even to lie at the steps of the altar.”

The wild gleam had returned to his eyes, and again he paced up and down
the dim chamber, pausing in its midst, at last, to say:

“And this secret of the old man's: I have never found it out, and it haunts
me day and night. You see now what it has done for me. Will you have it?”

Neria turned pale, and looked vaguely about the room, as she answered, reluctantly,

“I am afraid of secrets.”

“But I cannot carry this one to haunt me in another world, as it has in this,”
said Gillies, nervously. “Besides, who knows whether that old man who gave
it me may not demand a reckoning when we meet there beyond, and then it will
be too late. And who is there but you?”

“Mr. Vaughn is far wiser than I—” began Neria, but Gillies impatiently
moved his hand.

“It is to be told to none of the name or race of Vaughn,” said he. “And
if you will not have it, I must take it with me. But I hoped to leave it this side
the grave.”

Moved by his voice and manner, Neria took counsel with herself for a few
moments, and then said,

“Can you trust me so far as to tell the secret, and then allow me choice in
the matter of accepting the charge it contains? You cannot doubt that, at all
events, I shall keep it inviolable!”

Gillies considered.

“Yes,” said he, slowly, “I will trust you. Wait.”

From a locked drawer of his desk he drew a sealed package, and, after attentively
examining it, placed it in Neria's hands.

“There,” said he, “is the letter the old man left for me, and it contains all
the information I am able to give you. I have not advanced one step beyond.
Keep the package carefully, and, when I am dead, read and act upon it as you
think fit. You will then be mistress of Cragness, and may you escape the curse
it has brought with it to me. Now go, for my gloomy mood is at hand, and you
cannot help me.”

Neria took the letter, and, as she touched it, a light shudder ran through her
frame.

“After reading, I am free to accept or refuse the trust?” asked she, again.

“Yes; but, if you refuse, choose another agent, and give this house and the
secret to him. It is your responsibility now—I have done with it.”

“At all events, the trust is inviolable,” said Neria, solemnly; but Gillies,
who had thrown himself into his chair, with his face to the window, made no reply;
and Neria, unwilling to disturb his reverie, silently left the room.

In the passage she met old Lazarus Graves, and, with a smile and kind word,
passing on, presently found herself breathing more freely in the open air.

“How unfortunate,” said she to herself, “am I, who dislike secrets so much,
and have two of them given to me in one day.”

5. CHAPTER V.
AND LAZARUS GRAVES OF HIS.

Without appearing to see Neria, to whose patient ear he was usually garrulous
of the old days in which he lived, Lazarus Graves passed on into the
library, and stood, with folded hands and smiling face, looking up and down the
room with the humble fondness of a dog who watches his master's movements.
But, of a sudden, a shade of bewilderment crossed the wrinkled face, and, turning
his head rapidly from side to side, the old man, with his dim eyes, searched
the room again, as does the dog who suddenly misses the beloved figure. With
increasing perplexity he turned to look at the door behind him. It was close
shut. Then he tottered across the room, and laid a hand upon the shoulder of
the motionless figure in the arm-chair.

“Well?” demanded John Gillies, impatiently.

“Where is he gone?” asked Lazarus, in a voice as dim and hollow as a
sound lost ages ago in the catacombs, and ever since trying to escape to the
open air.

“Who?”

“Mr. Reginald. He passed me as I sat upon the doorstep in the sun, and
smiled. He has a rare smile, has Mr. Reginald; and then he came in, and up
the passage, and into this room. I hobbled after as fast as I could, for I wanted
to hear him say I had kept all as he told me when he went away. And now,
where is he?”

Gillies made no reply, but turned and looked attentively at the old man, who
maundered on:

“He said he'd come back, and I knew he would; and I've been waiting this
many a day just to hear him say I'd kept all as he wanted; and now he's come,
and if he goes again I'll go, too; but—but where is he?”

Still, without answer to the pitiful appeal, Gillies watched the old man as he
stood there in the sunshine, his bowed figure leaning on his staff, his thin, white
hair floating over his shoulders, his mouth trembling with emotion, his dim, blue
eyes always wandering about the room, while once more he piteously murmured,

“Where is he?”

“Where you and I will soon be with him, old man—and where is that?”
said Gillies, at length; but Lazarus Graves did not hear him. Dropping his
staff, he had clasped his hands and raised both them and his ashen face in a joyous
ecstasy, while his eyes fixed themselves upon a point at the opposite side of
the room.

“Why, there he is now,” cried he, “with his hand upon that book he used
to be so fond of. He's looking at you, sir. Why don't you speak to him.
See!”

“And the old man pointed impatiently, turning, as he spoke, to Gillies, whose
fixed eyes never swerved from the seer-like face of the speaker.

“Ah, now he sees me; now he's going to speak,” murmured Lazarus, taking

[ILLUSTRATION]

Again he seemed to listen. And a bright joy irradiated his face.--

[Description: 451EAF. Illustration page. Two older men reside in a room by the sea. One man is standing, having dropped his cane, and is pointing joyfully towards something out of the picture, while the other man watches from his seat.]

a step forward and smiling joyously, while he seemed to listen to a voice unheard
save by himself.

“Yes, Mr. Reginald, you said you'd come, and I knew it,” said he, at length.
“And I've kept all as you'd wish it, so far as I was able; but I'm getting into
years now, sir, and am pretty tired by spells. It's coming time for me to rest,
as old folks must.”

Again he seemed to listen, and a bright joy irradiated his face.

“Aye, that I will, sir,” said he, “I carried you in my arms when you was a
baby, and I've held to you ever since; and I'd have followed you long ago if I'd
known where to find you. But now you've come for me, I'll ask no better than
to go along with you. Let's be going, sir. Good-by, Mr. Gillies; you've been
kind and good to me; but my old master's come back at last, and I'm going
away with him. He's come for me.”

“Say you so, old man?” muttered Gillies. “Then, by Heaven's grace, has
he come for me, too.”

Without heeding him, Lazarus turned, and moved a few steps toward the
door, paused, tottered, threw up his arms with a stifled gasp, and fell forward
upon his face. He had followed his master.

6. CHAPTER VI.
THE HOUSEKEEPER.

His family and guests dispersed to their several amusements or occupations,
Mr. Vaughn sought his study, and, after an interval of anxious thought, summoned
Mrs. Rhee to his presence.

She came, and, at a sign from her master, seated herself in the very chair
where she had sat eighteen years before, while he told her of his intention to
leave his home for an indefinite period. These years had borne heavily upon
the housekeeper, and her youth had departed with them, leaving but a pallid
wreck of the beauty which had so impressed John Gillies on the evening of his
first visit to Bonniemeer. In her dark eyes, larger from the attenuation of her
face, still lay the old, unquiet mystery—still the hungry pain of an unsatisfied
heart; and still they followed every movement of the master's stately figure,
while he silently paced the room, as if they hoped and dreaded to read in his
face an answer to their appeal.

At last, Vaughn stopped in front of her. His face was both stern and sad.

“You have not held to my directions with regard to Neria,” said he, quietly.

The woman's face flushed, and her eyes drooped.

“How?” asked she.

“I desired that the knowledge of her birth might be kept from her. I desired
that no difference should be made between her and Francia,” said Vaughn.

“I have tried to obey, but you should have thought how hard a task you imposed
upon me,” faltered the housekeeper.

Vaughn impatiently waved his hand.

“There is the trouble,” said he. “You will not forget, you will not put out
of sight, what I have desired should be forgotten and put out of sight.”

“You have found it very easy to do so; I am of a more faithful nature,” said
Ms. Rhee, bitterly.

Vaughn frowned and resumed his restless promenade.

“At least,” said he, harshly, “I might have expected you to comply with my
directions that the child should not be informed of her origin.”

“The secret escaped me in a moment of irritation at seeing her assume airs
of superiority over Francia. You yourself could not give her the right to do
that,” said Mrs. Rhee, boldly.

“Yes, but I could,” retorted Vaughn, again pausing and looking down at her.
“I could give her the right to control every inmate of this house, simply by
making her my wife.”

The housekeeper turned frightfully pale, and uttered a stifled cry of rage and
apprehension—a passion of sobs and tears, which shook her slender figure
through and through.

Vaughn looked at her, while pity, pain and self-reproach swept by turns
across his face.

“Forgive me, if I have been harsh, Anita,” said he, at length. “I see how
hard your life must have been; I cannot wonder at your present feelings. It
was too much that I asked of you. Indeed, from the first, it was ill-judged of
me to put you in your present position.”

“It was my own wish, and I was content to abide the consequences,” said
the housekeeper, without looking up.

“I know, and I yielded to your solicitations, against my better judgment.
It was a weak compliance, and, while it has made you no happier, has kept alive
in my heart a painful secret that might long since have been put aside but for
your presence.”

Mrs. Rhee raised her head with dignity.

“It is better, then, that I should go, at any rate,” said she.

“Perhaps it is, Anita,” replied Vaughn, kindly, but with an unconcealed expression
of relief upon his face.

“Do not think,” added he, hastily, “that I am displeased with you, or that
we part on other than the best of terms. I do not forget the tie that binds us
together, and, though it can never be recognized, it shall always give you a claim
to every care, every consideration, at my hands.”

“Every consideration?” asked the housekeeper, with deliberate emphasis.

“Every consideration consistent with my own safety and my daughter's welfare,”
said Vaughn, impatiently.

Mrs. Rhee replied by a slow and bitter smile.

“You cannot expect me to sacrifice these, especially now, when I have
guarded them, and forced you to guard them, for twenty years?” demanded
Vaughn, sharply.

“I expect nothing but death, which must come, sooner or later, and to be
forgotten,” said the woman, bitterly, and glided from the room, leaving the master
of Bonniemeer to ponder, through a weary hour, as many a man has done
before, how best he might pluck out from his harvest-field the tares whose seeds
had been sown with the wheat.

7. CHAPTER VII.
A MARRIAGE.

All through the day, John Gillies sat almost motionless in the embayed window,
his dreamy eyes gazing far across the shining waters, his thoughts roaming
beyond the limits of sea, or earth, or life itself.

Nancy Brume in vain invited him to eat of her choicest viands, in vain importuned
him with questions as to the sudden death of Lazarus Graves, and the
disposition to be made of his body. He answered everything with a briefly-expressed
desire to be left alone, and the housekeeper, who had gradually acquired
a profound respect for the wishes of her taciturn master, at last complied,
and from the middle of that day to the morning of the next, did not venture in
his presence.

The long summer day ended, and with the sunset came rolling up out of the
the south great clouds which presently wrapped heaven and earth in a black
and stifling mantle, through whose folds peered no light of moon or stars, although
each sullen wave, as it rolled shoreward, was crested with the lurid light
of its own phosphorescence, and, breaking upon the beach, tossed its fiery sparkles
far up the level sands.

Dark and heavy as fell the night upon the beach, it fell darker and heavier
yet in that close-mouthed and ghastly chamber, darkest and heaviest of all in
the heart of the man sitting so rigidly in the old arm-chair, gazing, forever gazing
over the phosphorescent sea, into the black void beyond, holding for him, not
alone the secret he had so wearied to discover, but all secrets, the last great
secret, the secret in whose utterance the lips of the Sphynx petrified forever,
leaving the unspoken word to be guessed from her melancholy eyes.

Hour by hour the night stole on, until the rising tide lapped with its fiery
tongues the foundations of the old house, and all the monsters that be beneath
the sea rose, each in his place, to look in at the man who still sat waiting, always
waiting until the hour should come. It came at last. A spirit moved upon the

vast waters, entered at the open window and laid its shadowy pall upon that
weary head and breathed upon those pallid lips; and before those wistful eyes
opened a vision, a foreseeing, a promise such as no man who has seen has ever
found tongue to tell.

Over the white and weary face came a smile such as had never rested there
before, and the musician, softly rising, went through the gloomy room to place
himself at the organ. His fingers fell upon the keys, and that sweet, strange smile
passed through them, and embodied itself in sound. Such sounds! Such “long
disquiet merged in rest!” Such full content and peace; such grand and solemn
joy! And, ah! the glorious rending of the bonds and cerements that had
cramped in earth's heavy atmosphere the spirit whose home was in the clouds!
It was the song of the lark who sees the door of his cage thrown wide, and
after weary months of pining, in one instant finds the prison far below, nothing
but the subtle ether around, nothing but the sunbright heavens above, and who,
thrilling upward to the sky, sends a joyful heralding of song before him, whose
tones dropping back to earth, steal into men's hearts like the memories of their
youth, like the faith of their childhood.

Such music it was that floated out upon the mirky air of the summer's night,
until the listening monsters, catching its joyful meaning, lashed the waters into
pools of fire with their ponderous glee, and sported together till the sliding
waves broke in great shouts of laughter on the beach. Only the mermaids, the
Undines, would not sport or laugh, but hiding their faces in their long hair, clung
to each other trembling and sobbing, for they, whose merry lives are forever
shadowed by the thought of the immortality denied them, knew that the joy of
the musician's heart was a joy in which they had no share; they knew that from
their golden harps no such notes should ever ring—through their soulless lives
never thrill such ecstasy.

And as the dark night waned, and aged, and came to the dawning of another
day, the musician gathered his life in his hands and inspired with it the tones
that grew beneath his touch. It was no longer music, it was the soul of a man
who had lived and died for music, and to whom the divine art had at the last
granted its love and grace, and had entered into his form, and made itself one
with his spirit, until soul and art together sang such a nuptial hymn, chanted
their epithalamium in such a glory of triumphant harmony as never before has
earth heard, never the heavens let fall to man.

And in that grand triumph of his life, in that glorious consummation of an
eternal union, the soul of John Gillies emancipated itself from the broken body
that had confined it, and soared upward until its broad vans were gilded by the
rays of the rising sun.

8. CHAPTER VIII.
THE OLD MAN OF THE SEA UPON NEW SHOULDERS.

Among Mr. Gillies's few papers was found a will, bequeathing his entire
property to Neria. This instrument was dated only the day before his death,
and made no allusions to the peculiar conditions involved in the heirship. But
to Neria's delicate conscience this silence only made her duties more onerous;
and, on the day after the funeral, she went to Cragness, and locking herself into

the library, opened and read the letter of instruction left by Reginald Vaughn
for the guidance of his first heir.

Youth is brave, and Neria was too devout a worshipper of truth to be easily
daunted by mystery. It seemed to her that, if one inquired earnestly after anything,
he must be answered by flesh, or spirit, earth, air, or water. As an
infant may, perchance, see in his first worldly surroundings and attendants the
heaven and the angels he has just left behind, Neria fancied every man and woman
an Ithuriel, armed with the diamond-pointed spear whose touch must extort
truth from its most ingenious involvements.

So she doubted nothing of discovering at her pleasure this secret, whose responsibility
had lain with such nightmare weight upon the musician's mind, and
she only wished that he had sooner taken her into council, that, by seeing the
mystery unravelled in his lifetime, he should have been relieved in death of the
haunting anxiety and remorse so apparent in their last interview.

The names of Reuben and Nancy Brume were signed as witnesses to the
will, but neither was aware of its contents; and the natural curiosity upon the
subject burning in the mind of each was very pleasantly allayed by Neria's
quiet information that she was now possessor of the estate, and should wish
them to continue to fill their present position in the house.

“And will you come and stop here, miss?” asked the housekeeper, in some
bewilderment.

“Not at present,” replied her new mistress, with a smile. “My guardian,
Mr. Vaughn, would hardly think me old enough or wise enough to manage a
house of my own. But after a while, I dare say, I shall come and live here, and
have you to take care of me, Mrs. Brume. Then it will be I who shall sit all
day in the gloomy library, and play at night upon the great organ. It will be
Mr. Gillies all over again. I always thought I should like it.”

“That sort of a life ain't meant for young ladies,” said the housekeeper,
scornfully. “They'd ought to be going to balls and parties, and dressing up,
and keeping company, and getting married. After that's time enough to settle
down.”

Neria smiled again, gently, but with such reserve that Mrs. Brume closed
her lips upon the piece of advice just ready to issue from them, and asked, instead,

“Have you any d'rections to give, Miss Neria, about the way things are to
go here, or shall we just keep on in the old way?”

“In the old way,” said Neria, dreamily. “Let everything be just as it has
always been, more as if the master were gone for a visit than for ever—as if he
might return at any moment. I can hardly believe it otherwise, even yet.”

With a gracious movement of leave-taking, the young mistress of Cragness
descended the path to the beach and flitted away through the twilight, until, in
the distance, she showed like some graceful vision fashioned of the rising mist,
which, at the last, closed over it and reclaimed it.

Nancy Brume stood watching her from the cliff, with arms akimbo and brows
drawn into the scowl universal among dwellers by the sea, whose eyes thus habitually
seek to shelter themselves from the glare of sand and water, and so acquire
a ferocious expression oddly at variance with the real kindliness of nature
almost as universal.

Reuben, lying stretched upon the short, brown grass at her feet, amused himself
with a solitary game of stick-knife.

“Reub,” said his wife, “I ain't more notional than most folks, but something
she said kind o' ha'nts me.”

“'S that so?” asked Reuben, lacily, adding a slight “Phew!” as the knife,
in its descent, caught him rather sharply upon the knuckles.

“Yes. Didn't you mind she said she wanted everything kept just as if
Gillies had gone off for a little while, and might be back any time.”

“Well, it's less work than to go to changing round, ain't it? What's the
matter with that?”

“Yes, but, Reub, don't you mind how Lahsrus was always saying just the
same thing?”

“Don't know as I do,” returned Reuben, absently, his mind engrossed in
the effort to catch the knife upon the back of his wrist.

“Well, he was. He was always telling that Mr. Reginald, as he called him,
was coming back sure some day, and that everything had got to be kept ready
for him. It used to make my flesh creep, odd times, to watch him going round
and fixing things back when they'd got stirred a little. Don't you know the old
boat he would keep chained to the rock down there till finally the boat rotted
away, piece by piece, and left the chain hanging, just as they say men have done
when they was chained up in dungeons and left to starve?”

“He was cracked, Lahsrus was,” said Mr. Brume, with benevolent contempt.

“Mebbe he was, and then again mebbe he wa'n't,” retorted his wife. “Any
how, he see him, finally.”

“Who—see who?” asked Reuben, leaning on one elbow and looking up in
his wife's solemn face.

“Lahsrus see old Vaughn. It was the very day he died, and I was setting
to my window sewing, and he was setting on the door-rock in the sun, kind of
purring to himself, as he used to, when all to once I see him put his hand up,
shading his eyes, and looking down the path. Then he kind o' lighted up all
over, and looked more man-fashion than I'd seen him for many a day, and, says
he, speaking up as clear and bright as you please, `It's my dear Mr. Reginald —
he always said he'd come.' Then he got up and stood o' one side, turning his
head, just as if some one passed him and went up the entry-way, and then he
followed right along to the libr'y. Mr. Gillies never told what he see or said
when he got there, for he was struck with death himself at that very time; but
I shall always believe that Lahsrus waited for his old master till he come, and
that they both went off together.

“And now, don't you see, Neria kind o' sets it to us to stop here and wait
just the same fashion for Mr. Gillies to come back; and, like enough, here we'll
stick, year after year, and year after year, till we kind o' dry up and lose all our
faculties, just as Lahsrus did, and finally they'll come back and carry us off. It's
just like shipping aboard the Flying Dutchman—seems to me.”

Reuben Brume sat upright and stared at his wife.

“Tell you what, Nance,” said he, “you're getting cracked, too, I reckon;
but, mind you, if it's so, I ain't going to stop here along with a loonytic. How
would I know but you'd take the carving-knife to me some night? I guess,
anyway, I'd best be looking out for a v'y'ge. It's dull work stopping here.”

Mrs. Brume looked contemptuously down at her lord, again recumbent on
the turf.

“'Fore you sign your name to any ship's books,” said she, “you'd oughter
tell the skipper that you're a sick man, and that your ailment 's dreadful catching.”

“What you driving at now, Nance?” inquired the husband, with an uneasy
foreboding of an impending blow.

“Why there wa'n't never a clearer case of

since time begun,” said Mrs. Brume, dryly; “and I reckon your best course is
to be off to sea as fast as you can. You'll get nussed with ropes' ends and
b'laying pins there, and that's just the physic for your disorder.”

Reuben turned upon his stomach and silently resumed his game of stick-knife,
while Nancy, with a grim smile upon her lips, returned to the lonely
house, where now, in the dim twilight, the shadows that all day lay hidden in
the corners and corridors, in the height of the vaulted ceilings, or in the angles
of the unlighted stair-case, came boldly out and flitted through the empty rooms,
danced gleefully over the dead men's memories that lay beneath their feet, drew
their clammy fingers over the keys of the great organ, crept into the chair where
Reginald Vaughn and John Gillies had sat watching and waiting, until death
came sailing across the sea and hailed them to take passage with him—hovered
about the hearth and cowered above the blaze until it started up in wrath and
flashed out such a sudden light and heat that the shadows fled gibbering to their
corners, and the Knight in Golden Armor upon the wall stood boldly out, as if
he were charging upon them with his black horse and his proud slogan: “Dieu,
le roy, et le foy du Vaughn!”

9. CHAPTER IX.
A DROP-CURTAIN.

And now, Mr. and Mrs. Livingstone, having completed their visit to Bonniemeer,
were on the point of returning to the city, and Claudia insisted that Neria and
Francia should accompany them, and make their début in society under her
chaperonage. Francia was wild with delight at prospect of the gay life promised
her by her cousin, while Neria looked and listened much after the fashion
of a fawn, who, wandering to the edge of his native forest, sees suddenly before
him a great plain with a city in its midst, its domes glittering, its many-windowed
palaces flashing back the morning sun, shaded gardens nestling about it,
and an army with plumes and pennons, fanfare of trumpets and flash of accoutrements,
winding out of its gates, and stretching like a glittering serpent across
the plain. So strange, so unlearned, so ominous, and so fascinating lay life before
Neria, child of the sea and the sky, her feet set in the path worn deep by
the steps of those who have trod it since first it led Eve away from paradise,
her head still crowned with the glory lingering around every fresh work of the
Divine Artist, her slender fingers folding close above her breast the shining
robes of innocence and truth.

“Neria in a fashionable assembly!” said Mr. Vaughn, in reply to his brother-in-law's
urgent advocacy of Claudia's plan. “Why it would be the Holy
Grail upon the supper table of a danseuse; it would be both a desecration and
an incongruity.”

“As for the desecration, my dear fellow, we won't argue the point,” said Mr.
Murray, taking snuff. “And as for the incongruity, I must say that to be incongruous
with the elements of a fashionable assembly, is, in my eyes, a very
questionable virtue in a young lady.”

“Neria's manners are above conventionality,” said Mr. Vaughn, decisively.

“That is impossible. Conventionality is the religion, the morale of society
—there is nothing above it; to be outside of it, is to be beneath it,” retorted
Murray, sublime in his faith.

But Vaughn, smiling, put the question by, and said,

“I suppose both Neria and Francia must mix in society at some time, but I
confess I dread to see their country freshness wither in its atmosphere, and my
violet and wild rose come back to me as hot-house flowers, all properly labelled
and trained, but with neither perfume nor strength left in them.”

“Come back to you? No, but I shall insist upon your taking up your quarters
with me,” said Mr. Murray, hospitably. “There are Fergus and I left by
Claudia's marriage to keep bachelor's hall together, and we need just such an old
traveller as yourself to come and show us how to manage. You should see
me attempt to pour out tea, and Fergus boggle at cutting a pudding. Then
you can keep watch over your daughter and your—ward, do you call her?
and snatch them away from the naughty world at the precise moment when the
polish is obtained, without the waste of a single particle of the gem. Will you
come?”

“Thank you, yes,” said Vaughn, heartily. “And I will confess that with
Claudia as chaperon, and two utterly inexperienced girls as débutantes, I think
it will be quite as well for me to be at hand.”

“Claudia is a sensible young woman,” said Mr. Murray, complacently, “and

will, I dare say, before the season is over, marry Francia as handsomely as she
has married herself.”

“Heaven forbid!” ejaculated Vaughn, adding with a smile,

“But why only Francia, why is she not also to marry Neria?”

“Because, retorted Murray, quietly, “the very pith of your wish to come up
to town is to see that she does not. You are resolved to marry Neria yourself.”

Vaughn started from his seat, and stood for several moments looking out of
the window, then, resuming his chair, fixed his eyes upon those of his brother-in-law,
saying, quietly,

“It is only now that I have resolved it.”

“Consciously, yes. Unconsciously you resolved it long ago,” insisted Murray;
and Vaughn, searching his own heart for the truth of the assertion, forgot
to answer it.

In another week, Bonniemeer was deserted, and left in charge of Mrs. Rhee,
who, not having as yet determined upon her future course in life, was very willing
to remain in her old home until she should do so.

10. CHAPTER X.
“BRONZE-COLOR: A GREYISH-YELLOW.”—Nicholson.

“Cards for a ball, a fancy ball, a masked ball, mes filles!” proclaimed
Mrs. Livingstone, taking three envelopes from the table and tearing them open,
as she and her guests entered the drawing-room, after their morning drive.

“How perfectly splendid! What a magnificent idea! O, Claudia, what
shall I wear?” exclaimed Francia, bounding up from the sofa, where she had
sunk, and quite forgetting her fatigue.

“The idea of disposing of such a question in a breath!” retorted Claudia.
“Why, we shall discuss it all the rest of to-day and all to-morrow, and shall
quarrel like the Three Furies before we are done with it. A proper costume
for a fancy ball is a serious question, petite.”

“The more reason why we should begin to discuss it at once,” exclaimed
Francia. “Neria, what are your most obvious sentiments upon the subject?”

“Of costume?” asked Neria, with her not unusual look of wistful perplexity;
“I have none at all.”

“As badly off as the old dominie, who pathetically remarked: `Locke says
the human mind is never entirely void of ideas; but I have been conscious of
long intervals of time in which my mind contained absolutely no ideas whatever,”'
suggested Claudia.

“I think I will be a gypsy,” said Francia, dubiously.

“I think you will nothing of the sort,” continued her cousin. “Wait till to-morrow,
and I will think about you. At present, I have an idea with which to
furnish poor Neria's empty mind. Neria, attention! You are Undine. You
will be dressed in a robe of sea-green gossamer over green satin, which will sparkle
through it just like the light in a wave. You will have your golden hair all
down your back, and be crowned with water-lilies, and wear pearls upon your
neck and arms. In your hand you will carry the chaplet of red and white
coral that Undine drew from the depths of the river to give to Bertha.”

“Beautiful! There couldn't be anything better suited to Neria. Your idea
is an inspiration, Claudia,” exclaimed Francia; but Neria shivered.

“Undine is an ominous character,” said she.

“Don't be afraid. There is no Bertha in the case, dear,” returned Claudia,
with a significant smile.

“Nor any knight Huldbrand, either,” added Francia.

“But to call myself Undine is to invite both,” said Neria, smiling.

“And if they come, my dear, I hope you will prove the superiority of a woman
over a mermaid by the manner in which you secure Huldbrand and circumvent
Bertha. Undine behaved like a fool,” remarked Claudia.

“And yet like a woman. It would be so much easier to quietly let one's
heart break, than to plot and labor to retain a love that wished to escape,” said
Neria, softly.

“Love! That is as it may be,” retorted Claudia; “But do you imagine any
woman with the spirit of a canary-bird would stand by and see another woman
steal away the man who had once vowed constancy to her, and never make an
effort to reclaim him? Why, I would kill such a woman, though the man were
one I never cared to see again.”

“Dr. Lutrell,” said the servant, opening the door of the drawing-room.

A gentleman upon the threshold bowed profoundly, and advanced into the
room.

Claudia, on hearing the name, had half uttered an exclamation, and started
from her chair. Instantly recovering herself, however, she restrained every
symptom of emotion except the deep color that flushed her face, and, advancing
a few steps toward her guest, extended her hand, saying, with a smile, courteous
even if artificial:

“I am glad to see you again, Dr. Lutrell, and also to hear such pleasant
things of you.”

“Thank you. I did not know that my modest nuptials would make sufficient
impression to be remembered after the brilliant wedding that made Mr. Livingstone
the happiest of men and an object of envy to all the rest of us. Accept,
in turn, my congratulations and good wishes.”

A fine tone of sarcasm rang through the careful modulations of his voice,
and was caught by Neria's sensitive ear. She turned to examine more particularly
this new guest, of whom she had never heard.

A slight and elegant figure, small hands and feet, a perfect toilet—all this
was well; but at the face Neria paused, and finally suspended judgment. Either
it was very handsome or utterly repulsive, and for the moment she was unable to
determine which. The clear-cut and regular features were almost faultless, the
dark hair suited well with the mat complexion; the frequent smile displayed exquisite
teeth, but the eyes—what was there in those furtive eyes that made Neria
shrink from their passing glance and shiver as she felt them again resting upon
her? The color was peculiar and indescribable, unless, perhaps, one named it
yellowish-bronze; but the expression was something more than peculiar, and
suggested to Neria vague ideas of hungry creatures lying ambushed for their
prey, of serpents sleeping in deep jungle grass, of a Thug waiting patiently for
hours behind his palm tree, while far down the valley the doomed victim comes
riding on, his eyes filled with memories of home and love, a smile upon his lips,
and hope whispering at his heart.

“Girls, let me present Dr. Lutrell. Miss Vaughn, Dr. Lutrell, and Miss
Francia Vaughn.”

Francia bowed with her usual smiling grace, and Neria, with an effort, raised
her eyes once more to those so steadily bent upon her. She was glad when she
had done so, for in this direct gaze she determined that, after all, there was
nothing so peculiar about these eyes, except, perhaps, the color; and with a little
feeling of self-reproach for her first impression, she exerted herself to answer,
with sufficient courtesy, the enquiries and remarks addressed to her.

“We were talking of Mrs. Minturn's fancy ball,” said Claudia, presently.
“You will be there?”

“We have cards, but I had not thought of going,” said Doctor Lutrell. “To
select a character for a fancy ball you must commit either a stupidity or an indiscretion.
Either you assume a disguise utterly incongruous with your personality,
and so, utterly wearisome, or you select one which betrays to the whole
world your own estimate of yourself, and so give Mrs. Grundy a rich opportunity
for the good-natured little remarks in which she delights.”

“I don't think people in general go so far as to measure the masker's own
character against that which he assumes,” said Claudia. “Most people don't
think at all, and of those who do, the majority are persons who will, at any rate,
be malicious. We are all fools or knaves.”

The two young girls turned startled eyes upon their cousin, then Francia
laughed, and even Neria's face swept a tide of color, showing that the deep
fountain of her emotions was touched.

Dr. Lutrell's eyes flashed across the face of either, read them more than
either knew, and came back to rest upon Claudia's with a meaning glance, which
she read and recklessly answered.

“O, these girls have come to me to learn society; you would not have me
turn out the pretty lambs to the wolves without warning them, as far as I may,
of the style of creature they are going among.”

Dr. Lutrell turned gaily toward the couch where Neria and Francia sat together.

“Don't believe a word she says, young ladies. Society, especially in this
city, is an assemblage of all that is great, wise, good and beautiful in the world.
Every one is amiable, every one is intelligent, every one speaks and lives the
exact truth. Come among us and see! Mrs. Livingstone knows all this as
well as I; but to-day she has the headache, or a dyspepsia, or was out too late
last night.”

He rose and bowed as he spoke, and passed down the long drawing-room.
His hostess accompanied him a few steps, and said in a low voice,

“Why do you wish to deceive them in what they will so soon learn for themselves?”

“Why do you put your vase of wild flowers in the shade, instead of in the
sun?” asked the guest, and went on his way with a smile in his tigerish eyes.

11. CHAPTER XI.
TRANSPARENT MASKS.

Aknot of young men in various costume lounged in the hall of Mrs.
Minturn's handsome house, and discussed the masquers who passed
before them into the drawing-room, with a freedom characteristic of their condition.
Three female figures descended the stairs, and were joined at the foot by
a domino, who waited to escort them.

“A Cleopatra!” said a Charles II. among the flancurs, in an audible voice,
“and very well got up, too. See the golden asp upon her right arm, and the
string of pearls upon her left. The crown, the starry veil, the royal robes—all
correct, fair sister, but tell me, is it Marc Antony to-day, or another?”

The Cleopatra thus attacked threw an angry glance upon the questioner,
and passed quickly on. Nothing daunted, the merry monarch continued his remarks.

“And a mermaid? No—Undine, by the string of coral, but,” in a lower
voice, “I had not supposed any woman in this city would have the effrontery
to crown herself with water-lilies and wear pearls for her only ornament. She
must be very new—or, very experienced. Probably the latter, for the innocence
of a woman of the world is a great deal more natural than nature. Mais voilà!
la jolie petite marquise! See the ravishing little waist displayed by the long
points to her bodice, andn the coquetry of that tiny patch just in the dimple of
the chin, and the round white arms, and the turn of the neck! You may wait,
my friends, for whom you will—I go to see if la marquise will not play Louise
de Querouailles to my Charles II., for an hour, at least.”

As the gay speaker separated himself from his comrades, and followed the
object of his admiration into the drawing-room, he was joined by Mephistopheles,
who had stood silently listening to his remarks, and who now said, as he
passed his arm through that of the king,

“Your majesty and I are old friends, and should hunt in couples.”

“The deuce we are!” retorted Charles, eyeing his companion askance.

“Just what I remarked, and a very pretty deuce we make; deuce-ace, if you
will, for unlike most couples, we are two in one, or one in two, as you please.”

“Go look for your Faust, I will none of you—my familiar never showed
himself in company,” said Charles, shaking off the grasp of his companion.

“That was because you were still running through your days of grace,” retorted
Mephistopheles. “But now you have come under authority, and are
only out on leave to-night. It is I who am king, and—vivat Rex.”

“Tout bien! Come, then, and advise me how to penetrate the incognito of
the little marquise,” said Charles, recklessly.

“I will advise you to let her alone, or at any rate to say nothing for which
you will be sorry when you meet her unmasked,” said his companion, significantly.
“Try your gallantries on the Cleopatra if you will”—

“And leave la marquise to you! Thank you. mon diable! I am a worthier
pupil than that. Compare notes with Cleopatra yourself, or see if a Becky
Sharp does not lurk beneath those water-lilies; but `leave my love to me.”'

The party had by this time reached the upper end of the long rooms, where
stood the hostess in the dress of Dame Quickly, but without mask. As each
guest bowed before her he presented a card bearing both his real and assumed
title. After glancing at these, Mrs. Minturn dropped them into a vase zealously
guarded by a roguish Cupid, who, with drawn bow and warning cry, menaced
all who ventured to approach too near.

After a few words of compliment, the party moved on to make room for
other guests, and the royal Stuart approached the Marquise with a low bow and
a request that she would favor him with her hand for a valse-quadrille in the adjoining
ball-room.

The Marquise hesitated, but after glancing at Cleopatra, who nodded assent,
she silently accepted the proffered arm.

Mephistopheles, at the same moment, addressed to Undine a request to
promenade through the rooms with him, offering to give her a lesson in reading
disguises which she should find of use through all her future life.

Cleopatra motioned her to accept, and herself taking the arm of the domino
who remained in attendance, slowly followed for a few steps, and then said, in a
low voice:

“Go, now, and find some one else. I will take care of myself.”

“All, right, my lady,” replied Mr. Livingstone's thick voice; “only don't let
the men be too free. They'll say things from behind their masks that they
wouldn't dare to say without them.”

“Not to me,” said Cleopatra, haughtily, and each went a separate way.

12. CHAPTER XII.
A DEUX TEMPS.

In the ball-room the frenzy of the galop had subsided into the passionate
tenderness of the waltz, and the band, led by a musician, rendered, with such
fidelity and abandon, the wild heart-break of the Sophia waltzes, that one instinctively
feared to see the whole place a necropolis of swooning and dying
princesses.

Francia, in her charming costume, à la Pompadour, her supple waist encircled
by the arm of the King Charles, his breath upon her cheek, her right hand
pressed close to his heart, floated round and round the room in a strange ecstacy,
wondering how she had lived so long and never before felt the joy of life;
wondering, too, at the passionate impulse of tears that almost suffocated her.

The music ceased with a long, piercing strain, that might have been the wail
of the lover as his royal mistress fell dead at his feet, and Francia, blind and
breathless, allowed her partner to support her for a moment longer in the embrace
which we all consider so eminently proper while the motion of the dance
continues—so very shocking a few minutes later.

“I never shall forget this waltz,” murmured King Charles.

“Nor I, for I never enjoyed one half so much,” said Francia, guilelessly;
and behind his mask the merry monarch smiled a meaning smile.

“Let us promenade a little,” said he, and led the way to the cool shadow of
the conservatory.

“Do you believe in magnetism, Marquise?” asked he, seating his companion
upon an ottoman and throwing himself upon a footstool at her side.

“I don't know anything about it,” said Francia, wonderingly.

“Then take your first lesson of me, ma belle. It was a powerful magnetism
that drew me to you the first moment my eyes rested upon you; it is that same
magnetism that made our waltz to me the very culmination of my life; and, tell
me, Marquise, may I be very frank, very bold?”

“Yes,” murmured Francia.

“It was that same magnetism that wrought upon you when you said you
never had enjoyed a dance so much.”

He took in his the soft, white hand that Francia had nervously ungloved
when she first sat down.

“I must see your face, I must hear your name, here and now,” murmured
he, half beseechingly, half imperiously.

The little hand grew cold, and trembled in his grasp, but it was not withdrawn,
nor did the bewildered girl resist, as with a quick movement her companion
untied the ribbon confining her mask, and suffered it to drop into her
lap.

The face thus disclosed was indeed one worthy of a monarch's admiration;
and just now, with cheeks and lips at their brightest, eyes at their bluest,
and the perfect shape of the low white forehead displayed by the coquettish
backward roll of the hair glittering with golden powder, Francia's fresh beauty
was so bewildering that it hardly seemed an extravagance for her masked admirer
to murmur,

“O, that I were indeed a king, that I might, with some faint hope of success,
offer my throne to the Queen of Love and Beauty!”

Francia's head drooped lower and lower, while the carnation deepened on
her cheeks, and even “the nape of her white neck flushed rosy red,” but, alas!
not “with indignation.”

His bold eyes devouring her beauty, Charles grasped again the hand she
had withdrawn, and murmured,

“Tell me what to call you, my queen.”

A sharp step rang through the ante-room dividing the conservatory from
the other apartments, and Francia, snatching away her hand, hurriedly replaced

[ILLUSTRATION]

King Charles and the Marquise

[Description: 451EAF. Illustration page. King Charles, who is wearing a mask, is kneeling next to the Marquise.]

her mask. It was not yet tied when a knight in golden armor stood before
her.

“Excuse me, sir,” said he, haughtily, to King Charles, who had risen to his
feet; “but this young lady is a relative of mine, and I am desired by her friends
to conduct her to them.”

“If the young lady desires to exchange my company for yours, I shall of
course submit to her wishes, otherwise I shall claim my privilege of leaving her
under charge of the lady from whose side I took her,” retorted the quasi monarch,
with right kingly imperiousness.

The knight hesitated an instant, then turned his back upon his rival, and
said in a low voice,

“Francia, come with me.”

The girl arose, but before she could accept the arm offered her by the knight,
her late partner interposed,

“May I not have the usual privilege of a gentleman who has been honored
with a lady's hand in the dance, and escort you to your chaperone?” asked he,
in a voice so exceedingly guarded as to betray the irritation of his feelings.

Francia hesitated, half-turned toward the last speaker, then again to the
knight, and whispered,

“I will go directly to Claudia, Fergus, and you can come, too.”

“You will do as you choose,” was the stern reply; and Francia, her eyes
filled with tears, took the arm persistently offered by her other cavalier, and
walked away in a very different mood from that of a few moments before.

“May I ask the name of that young man?” inquired King Charles, still in
the tone of elaborate courtesy, so significant to a practised ear.

“He is my cousin,” faltered Francia, instinctively answering the question her
companion had not chosen to ask.

“Cousins have strange privileges, it appears to me,” said the King. “Sweet
ones, too, sometimes, if I am rightly informed.”

“Fergus has always been like a brother to me,” murmured Francia.

“Very like a brother, as I have found them behind the scenes,” said her
companion. “But may I not resume the inquiry you were about to answer
when this peremptory cousin-brother of yours interrupted us?”

“My name? Mrs. Minturn can tell you. Ah, here is Neria.”

“The Undine? But there is Cleopatra in the next room, with a crowd of
courtiers about her. Will you go to her?”

“Yes, if you please.”

And as she answered, the poor little marquise cast a timid look over her
shoulder at the stately form of the golden knight who now stood in the doorway
of the ball-room watching her movements.

“Monsieur le cousin appears to doubt either your word or my honor,” said
King Charles, bitterly, as he followed her eyes.

Francia made no reply, but hurried on, and in another moment stood beside
Claudia, who received her with a little nod, and went on talking to the three
gentlemen, who all claimed her attention at the same moment.

King Charles, with a low bow and a murmured word of thanks left her here,
and went to look for Mrs. Minturn, with whom he was an especial favorite.

While Cleopatra and her courtiers flashed their javelins of wit and badinage
over her head, Francia remained for some moments in a bewildered reverie,
through which the waltz, the conservatory, the strange bold words of her late

partner, and the displeasure of her cousin mingled confusedly. Recovering a
little, she raised her eyes, and timidly explored the room for Fergus.

He was promenading with an elegant Diana upon his arm, and although he
passed and repassed the spot where Francia stood, never by any chance turned
his head toward her.

“How vexed he is, and how much I shall have to say before he will be kind
again,” thought Francia, and over the glitter of the ball-room and the flush of
her innocent gayety came a dark mist, a chill, like that when upon a summer's
afternoon, great white clouds of fog come rolling over the sea and wrap earth
and sky in their mantle of bleak despondency.

She sighed heavily, and the domino who, although dismissed by Cleopatra in
the first of the evening, had soon returned to hover near her, offered his arm.

“Tiresome, ain't it,” said he, in a low voice to the drooping little marquise
“Never mind, they'll have supper in a few minutes, and that will pay for all.
If it was'n't for the suppers I couldn't stand this sort of life.”

“I was not tired until just now,” said Francia, accepting the proffered support.

Neria approached with Mephistopheles.

“And here we come,” said he, “to a group whose disguises I will not
venture to penetrate, and even could I do so, I shrewdly suspect you are better
able to describe to me than I to you the graces and virtues adorning it.”

“I hope you have been as correct in all your intimations as in this,” said
Neria, playfully.

“Do not doubt it, and I am glad to have been able to illustrate to you my
remark of a previous occasion, that there are, after all, very few wolves in this
so much maligned society of ours.”

The latter part of the remark reached the ear of Cleopatra, who turned
sharply round—

“Ah, it is you,” said she, quickly.

“Great queen, who can withstand your penetration. It is the humblest of
your slaves,” said Mephistopheles.

“Malice avers that Lucifer was an ally of yours in the old times, and, according
to his wont, deserted you at the last,” suggested one of the courtiers.

“Malice was, then, as stupid as she generally is,” said Mephistopheles,
coolly; “for it was Cleopatra who deserted me.”

A swift glance passed between the Queen and the speaker, and each turned
to another companion. At this moment Mrs. Minturn approached on the arm
of King Charles.

“Pardon the mauvais goût of an introduction en masque,” said she, aside to
Claudia; “and allow me to present my cousin, Rafe Chilton. He begs your
permission to take Miss Vaughn down to supper.”

“Certainly; I will let her understand that I sanction the movement, although
your drawing-room is sufficient guarantee for any of your guests,” replied Claudia,
in the same tone, and Mrs. Minturn rejoined aloud.

“Will your majesty permit me to introduce a brother monarch, hight Charles
of England.”

Cleopatra, with a regal inclination of the head, extended her hand, which
Charles made a feint of raising to his lips As he lifted his head their eyes met,
and while Claudia remembered the saucy query, “Is it Marc Antony or another,

to-day?” which had intercepted her entrance to the drawing-room, Charles saw
that she remembered it.

“Generosity is a royal prerogative,” said he, in a low voice.

“So your majesty found it when Louis Quatorze filled your exchequer with
French gold,” retorted Cleopatra, in the same voice.

Charles laughed.

“Let us forget all that we should blush for in our former lives,” said he, “and
begin our acquaintance from the present moment.”

“Agreed; and unless we are better than most of the people about us, we
shall, in the next hour, have accumulated a new stock of blushing matter, and
shall have to begin over again,” said the Queen.

“That can hardly be, for Cleopatra of to-day has preserved all the grace
and none of the foibles of her prototype,” said Charles, courteously.

“And the merry monarch of England has certainly freed himself from the
reproach of having

replied Cleopatra.

“Do not force him to believe, also, that he has `never done a wise one' in
seeking the honor of an introduction to your majesty,” suggested Charles, with
a royal audacity which did not injure him in the estimation of the lady he addressed.

“Nous verrons,” said she, laughing.

“May I ask your majesty to present me to the young lady at your side, and
allow me to escort her to the supper-room?” pursued the King, with easy
grace.

“Mademoiselle, allow me to present King Charles the Second, of England,
a monarch whose reputation is his best introduction,” said Claudia, turning to
Francia, who bowed without speaking.

“A breach of faith, royal sister. We had agreed to leave our former reputations
out of the question,” said Charles, meaningly; and Cleopatra, slightly
abashed, made no retort.

13. CHAPTER XIII.
CHEZ MADAME LIVINGSTONE.

The world had been informed that it would find Mrs. Livingstone “at home
on Thursdays,” and on the first recurrence of that day, after the fancy party, we
shall see collected in her drawing-room nearly all the persons to whom this history
has introduced us.

Mr. Vaughn had looked in, and without in the least meaning to do so,
dwarfed the younger men by the polished ease of his manner, his dignity, and
the knowledge of the world for which he was remarkable.

Fergus, seated near the elegant Miss Winchendon, was evoking that young
lady's most gracious smiles, and rewarding them with a satirical dissection of
their absent friends, mingled with covert compliments to herself.

Francia, who had not seen her cousin since the ball, watched this by-play
from the corner of her eye, and grew more and more incoherent in her answers
to the fashionable gossip with which Mrs. Minturn kindly tried to entertain her.
But as that lady rose to go, the drawing-room door was thrown open to admit

Dr. Luttrell and Mr. Chilton; and as Francia noted the sudden frown clouding
her cousin's face, a wicked impulse to brave the anger she despaired of softening,
seized upon her, and she returned Mr. Chilton's bow with a smile that at
once brought that young gentleman to her side.

Dr. Luttrell paused beside his hostess, who was, for the moment, disengaged.

“Where is Mrs. Luttrell?” asked Claudia.

“Where I am not,” returned the husband, concisely.

“And always?”

“When it can be so arranged.”

“Your honeymoon closed yesterday,” said Claudia, with a bitter-sweet
smile.

“A thing without beginning is also without end,” retorted her guest, coldly.

“As, for example, the love a man professes to the woman he wishes to
marry,” suggested Mrs. Livingstone.

“I have, in my life, professed love to only one woman, and she—made a
worthier choice,” said Luttrell, suffering his eyes to rest, with quiet scorn, upon
the stout figure of Mr. Livingstone, who stood, with his hands beneath his coattails,
upon the hearth-rug, discussing politics with Mr. Murray.

Claudia winced a little, but recovered herself cleverly. “Ah!” said she,
nonchalantly. “Who would suspect you of a petite histoire? You shall tell it
to me some day. Just now I must go and talk to Mrs. Burton; and you, let me
see?—you may bring Neria and the musician together, and get them into a
conversation about art. They are counterparts and ought to find it out.”

She glided away as she spoke, and seated herself to listen, with smiling interest,
to Mrs. Burton's narrative of her struggles with her last cook, until she
could adroitly contrive to entrap another matron into the conversation and
herself withdraw imperceptibly to more congenial companionship.

Dr. Luttrell watched her, with a singular expression in his tawny eyes, not
unlike a tiger, who, from the jungle, watches a stately doe surrounded by her
courtiers, and says in his heart,

Then he turned to look for Neria and the musician, who sat a little way
from each other; she listening with grave attention to the chat between Fergus
and the brilliant belle, he apparently absorbed in reverie.

Dr. Luttrell placed himself between them and began to talk opera.

14. CHAPTER XIV.
“RIXÆ, PAX, ET—”

The last guest departed, and as the door closed behind her, Fergus turned
to Neria, saying:

“Now, Neria, give me a little real music after the miserable tinkling of that
—Percy do they call him? I am perfectly sick with it.”

“Then I am quite sure I could not please you, monsieur,” said Neria, gaily;
“and I must go directly to my room and dress for our drive. Are you coming,
Francia?”

“In a minute,” replied that young lady, affecting to be busy in arranging

some flowers upon the table. Neria left the room, and Fergus, with an abstracted
look, was following her, when a timid voice recalled him.

“Did you see this rose-camelia, Fergus?”

“No, is it remarkable?” asked the young man, coming slowly toward the
table.

“I don't know. It is very pretty.”

“I see. Is that all you have to say?”

“Aren't you going to drive with us?”

“Not to-day.”

“You have not been here lately.”

“I am flattered that you should notice my movements so closely.'

Francia blushed scarlet, and bent lower over the flowers.

“You have not been without company, however,” pursued her cousin, “I
see that Mr. Chilton has established himself here upon a very familiar footing.
You will be much improved by such association.”

“O, Fergus, don't speak in that tone. How have I offended you?”

“Offended me? Not at all. I was speaking of Mr. Chilton in terms of the
highest commendation, was I not?”

“Please, Fergus! Tell me what I have done, and let me say I am sorry,
and then forgive me.”

The clasped hands, tender blue eyes full of tears, quivering rosebud lips were
very pathetic, and a half smile softened the stern lines of Fergus's mouth; but
he said, coldly:

“I have no right to be offended; but I will own I was rather surprised at your
conduct the other night.”

“What conduct?” faltered Francia.

“In the first place, dancing round-dances half an hour with the same partner,
and he one of the most notorious profligates about town; then wandering
off into the conservatory with him, allowing him to unmask you, to take your
hand, to say I don't know what to you. I did not try to listen, although I
could not help seeing. Then, when I came to extricate you from your ridiculous
and indecorous position, you absolutely refused to accept my guardianship,
and clung to your new acquaintance as if he were a lover. Afterward you
allowed him to take you down to supper, and danced with him again.”

“Only a cotillion,” interposed Francia.

“You danced with him—no matter what,” pursued Fergus, severely. “And
now, the next time I see you, this fellow is at your side, offering his insulting
attentions in so conspicuous a manner that every person who goes away from
here to-day will have a sneer for you the next time your name is mentioned
in their company. You can do as you choose, or as my uncle chooses, I suppose,
but you will excuse me if I say that I can give neither respect nor confidence
to a young lady, who deliberately encourages the attentions of a libertine
like Rafe Chilton.”

“If Claudia and Mr. Livingston encourage his coming to the house, they
cannot believe him so very bad,” said Francia, with some spirit.

“I do not undertake to regulate my sister's affairs,” said Fergus, coldly;
“nor do I wish to discuss her movements—they do not concern either you or
me. I was only explaining to you the reason of the change in my manner,
which seemed to annoy you.”

“I was not annoyed, Fergus, I was grieved.”

The young man trifled a moment with the toys upon the table, and then
said, reproachfully:

“You do not find Neria running into such follies, although she has the same
opportunities.”

“Neria isn't so gay—so—”

“So thoughtless as you. That is true enough; but to be thoughtless in
these matters is something more then a foible, Francia. It is to estrange your
friends, to injure your own prospects, to give foul tongues an opening to meddle
with your name. Mr. Chilton's acquaintanceship is enough to ruin any woman's
reputation; but if you choose to cultivate it, of course it is no affair of mine.
Good morning.”

“Good morning,” said Francia, in a tone as cold as his own, and with sparkling
eyes and heightened color, she walked toward the window. Fergus went
to the door, but his gloves still lay upon the table where he had placed them
while speaking. He returned for them, waited to put them on, and was again
moving toward the door, when a soft voice whispered:

“Fergus!”

He silently turned and looked toward Francia. Fluttering, blushing, tearful,
she glided to his side, and sweetly looked into his face. He took her hand,
whispering:

“What is it, Franc?”

“I am so sorry. I won't if you don't want me to. Please, dear Fergus!”

He put his arm about her slender waist, he laid his hand beneath her
rounded chin, and raising the rosy face that fain would droop, he looked deep,
deep into the blue depths of her innocent eyes, and then—how does it go?

“Rixœ, pax, et”—what comes next?

Fergus stayed to dinner, and spent the evening. When Francia went to
her room that night, she stood a long time looking from the window; and, as
she turned away, murmured half aloud: “But he is my cousin, almost—just like
a brother.”

15. CHAPTER XV.
CHECK TO THE QUEEN.

The winter went on, and went by. March had come, with its chilling winds
and cheering sun, its raw certainty and its sweet promise—like a hoydenish girl
of thirteen, whom we endure and even admire, in faith of the future.

It was evening, and Mrs. Livingstone's drawing-rooms were moonily lighted
by hanging lamps with alabaster shades. In the boudoir at the end of the suite
of apartments sat the lady herself, deep in a game of chess with Dr. Luttrell.
In the next room, Francia, nervous, half-unwilling, and yet not quite unpleased,
listened to the low-voiced conversation of Mr. Chilton, while the master of the
house, dozing in an arm-chair near at hand, played propriety to the tête-à-tête.

In the drawing-room beyond, Neria, at the piano, softly played “O Bel
Alma;” and Percy, standing beside her, improvised a dreamy accompaniment.

But the story that the musician told, the question that he asked, and the tender,
mournful denial that Neria returned to his petition, are not now our concern.

These are of the secrets that the angels keep and men do but guess.
Let us rather watch the far from angelic game so skilfully played in the boudoir.

“Check!” said Dr. Luttrell; and Claudia, who had been dreaming over her
game, suddenly found both king and queen menaced by an audacious knight,
who had quietly approached, under cover of a manœuvre for the capture of a
pawn.

“O, but I can't lose my queen!” exclaimed Mrs. Livingstone, examining
the situation with dismay.

Dr. Luttrell silently leaned back in his chair and watched her. From between
his half-closed eyelids gleamed strange green and yellow lights, flashing,
sparkling, changing, like the great diamond on his breast. His thin lips smiled;
but it was not a smile pleasant to look upon.

“Can you save her?” asked he, quietly, when Claudia had gone over every
possible combination of her few pieces for the twentieth time, and at last placed
a reluctant finger upon the king.

“No; but the game is lost. How could I have been so stupid?”

“`Whom the gods doom,' etc.—it was fated that I should conquer, and it
would have been useless for you to resist, had you been ever so diligent in your
efforts.”

“You are a fatalist, then?”

“Are not you?”

“No, I will not give up my free will. In this case, if I had chosen to attend
to my game, I should not have lost it.”

“It was fated you should not choose to attend to it. It is very easy to reason
after the event.”

“But, warned by experience, the next game we play I will play with such
care as to thwart fate, if she has decreed another stupidity on my part.”

“Then you will again be the servant of fate, who will have decreed just the
pains you take to thwart her.”

“This is fearful,” exclaimed Claudia, passionately; “this idea that, will as
we may, struggle as we may, we are blindly hurried on by an unknown power,
perhaps to good, perhaps to evil—at any rate toward a hidden end. What becomes
of moral responsibility, of conscience, of any effort toward self-conquest?”

“They go down before the iron keel of destiny, who bears us on, resisting
or unresisting, blind or open-eyed, to what you truly call the hidden end.”

“Then why should men be punished for crime?”

“They should not. There is no crime. A man does that to which his temperament
impels him—that which his destiny has pre-ordained from the beginning.
He is no more accountable for the results than is this bit of ivory for
your lost game.”

He fillipped the captured queen as he spoke, and her head rolled across the
board and dropped at his feet.

Claudia put aside his apology with a smile, and said:

“Like her mistress, she feels that in losing the game she loses all. She has
escaped destiny now, at any rate.”

“No, for destiny decreed that she should thus fall; also has decreed that, in
spite of her attempt at self-destruction, she should be restored to all her former
beauty and usefulness,” said Dr. Luttrell, as he smilingly put the broken piece
in his pocket.

Claudia looked at him with flushed cheeks and brilliant eyes.

“But this matter of destiny,” said she. “Are you resigned to be thus blindly
impelled hither and thither, and to feel all effort and resistance a useless struggle?
Does not this belief deprive you of all interest in life?”

“Not at all. Life to me is an interesting novel, of which I am the hero.
Fate turns the pages, and I read as fast as I am permitted. It is far less trouble
and much more exciting than your idea of writing the book yourself. Authorship
is not my rôle.”

“At least you should never be angry with those who disappoint or thwart
you,” said Claudia, in a low voice.

“To the philosopher, disappointment is a word without value or meaning,” returned
the other. “It is folly to try to guess what is written on the other side of
the page; but if you will do so, and find you have guessed wrong, why, there is an
end of it—why be disappointed? What must be, will be; and why vex yourself
by quarrelling with destiny? When you chose to marry Mr. Livingstone instead
of me, you thought you decided for yourself; but you did not, and I knew you
did not, and so felt neither anger nor sorrow; neither blamed you nor loved you
the less, for I knew that you accepted this necessity of fate as unwillingly as I
did. I knew, too, that this marriage ceremony would prove no solvent to the
secret affinity which must forever bind our souls together, let our tongues belie
it as they may.”

He fixed his gleaming eyes on Claudia's face.

She returned the look defiantly.

“You have no right to say that,” replied she. “Since I was married I have
never spoken a word to you that should prove that I remembered—”

“Nor I to you; but have you not known it?”

“No,” said Claudia, desperately.

Luttrell smiled.

“Say no, if you will, but do not try to think no,” returned he, quietly, “for
nothing is so weakening as self-deception.”

“But I will not—you shall not—I, at least, am no fatalist, and will not have
my free will thus quietly taken out of my hands,” persisted Claudia. “I do
not choose to remember or to know more than that Dr. Luttrell and his wife
are pleasant acquaintances of Mr. and Mrs. Livingstone.”

Dr. Luttrell smiled and bowed, hiding his shining eyes with their drooping
lids.

Claudia waited for denial, for argument; but none came. She nervously replaced
the chessmen in their box, and glanced toward her late adversary. His
face wore an expression of regret, of mortification, perhaps, but he did not raise
his eyes.

“I should have said friends, instead of acquaintances,” said she, softly.

“The first is the better word,” replied Luttrell, coldly.

“Then you do not wish me for a friend,” said Claudia, wounded beyond her
self-possession.

“I do not believe in friendship,” returned Luttrell; “we have acquaintances
more or less intimate; we have passions and affinities; but friendship is to me
a word without meaning.”

“You are cynical,” said Claudia, bitterly.

“Not at all; I am philosophical, and it is one of my philosophies to talk as

little as may be of myself, or of my own experiences. Do you notice how heavily
the air of these rooms is charged with electricity?”

Claudia glanced at him inquiringly.

“I mean the moral atmosphere. There is enough passion, intrigue, hope,
despair, restlessness circling about our heads to furnish matter for a score of
romances.”

Claudia slightly moved her position so as to command a view of the drawing-rooms.

It was the moment when Percy and Neria, standing hand in hand, looked farewell
into each others' eyes. Rafe Chilton had drawn his chair close to Francia's
side, and while toying with her fan, murmured behind it words to which she listened
with blushing, half-averted face and down-dropped eyes.

Mr. Livingstone, aroused from his nap, studied the stock-list with frowning
brow and muttering lips.

Unseen by all, Mr. Vaughn and Fergus Murray stood just within the doorway,
the keen eyes of each taking in the tout ensemble of the scene, and each
drawing from it his own conclusions.

“I see,” said Claudia, in a low voice; and rising, she went to greet her
guests, and to break up the too obvious tête-a-tête between Francia and a man
whom she knew both her uncle and her brother disapproved.

16. CHAPTER XVI.
FRANCIA'S MISTAKE.

With slight notice of his sister or the rest, Fergus passed into the other
room, and standing beside Neria, said impatiently,

“When are you going home, I wonder?”

“To Bonniemeer?”

“Yes, I am tired of stumbling over that mooning Percy every time I come
here. As for Chilton, I am afraid that some day I shall take the trouble to impart
to him my opinion of himself; and that might lead to unpleasant results.”

Neria placed her cool hand upon his.

“Dear Fergus,” said she, “cannot you make your circle of tolerance a little
larger? One is so much happier in charity and love with all men. And it
grieves us when you are ill-pleased.”

“I cannot flatter myself that my words are so important,” said Fergus, sullenly.

“You wrong yourself and us in saying so; us, by doubting our love and
sympathy, and yourself in refusing to accept this love and sympathy, which
would, admitted to your life, render it so much more peaceful and beautiful.”

“Others are not like you, Neria,” said the young man, in a softer tone.

“All here are like me in caring for you, Fergus.”

“How much does Francia care, when she encourages that profligate fellow,
after the expression of my disapprobation; after her own promise to give up his
acquaintance?” asked Fergus, gloomily.

Neria looked troubled, but presently answered cheerily,

“Franc is so charming and so much admired, that we must be reconciled
to seeing a good deal of homage offered at her shrine, and sometimes by unworthy

worshippers. It does not harm her, and by-and-by she will be tired of
her position as divinity. “We women have four seasons like the year,” and it is
spring-time with her yet.”

“Some women's spring-time has all the freshness of her's without its crudeness,”
said Fergus, smiling into Neria's eyes.

“But not the rich and glowing promise,” returned Neria, half sadly. “See,
Mr. Chilton is going.”

“That is a pity—for Francia.”

“Now, Fergus, don't be cross with the poor child. You have not been kind
to her for some weeks.”

“Because she has allowed Chilton to haunt her like her shadow.”

“To be unkind to her yourself, is only to make his courtesies seem the more
agreeable. She is coming in here, and I shall go away and leave you to make
friends. We go home next week, and it is quite time you were on good terms
again. Be gentle and careful.”

Francia approached with a nervous smile upon her flushed face.

“I thought Mr. Percy was here,” said she to Neria, but glancing timidly at
Fergus while she spoke.

“He went away a few moments ago. Sit down, dear, and sing us that little
barcarolle, won't you? Fergus has not heard it.”

Francia seated herself, played a simple prelude with faltering fingers, and
tried to sing; but in the first notes her voice trembled, broke, and in a sudden
burst of tears she ran away from the piano, and sought shelter in the deep bay-window.

With an expressive glance at Fergus, Neria went into the other room, and
seated herself near Vaughn, who was carrying on a desultory conversation with
Mr. Livingstone.

Fergus hesitated a moment, and then followed Francia, who crouched sobbing
upon an ottoman.

“Franc!” said he, softly, as he seated himself beside her.

No answer.

“Don't cry, Francia. I'm not angry.”

“But you will be.”

“No, I won't. I suppose you couldn't help his coming.”

“N-o-o.”

“But you need not have let him whisper in your ear.”

A fresh burst of sobs.

“O Franc, I wish you would be more womanly; show a little more dignity,
or at least a little more regard for me.”

“There, I knew you would.”

“Would what, child?”

“Would scold. And you will be so angry.”

“No, but I am not angry, and not going to be, only sorry. I love my little
cousin too much to be really angry with her.”

“I don't think you have loved me very much this last month,” murmured
Francia out of her handkerchief.

“It is because I love you so well that I have been sorry to see you—well, I
won't say any more. So you thought I didn't love you, little girl?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I never thought you didn't love me, so you see I was the wiser of the

two. Now I will tell you what I shall do to prevent any such mistakes in future.
I shall tell all the world that I love you and you love me, and that you are
my own little Franc, and no one else is to come within six feet of you, or to
speak to you any lower than they would to Mr. Livingstone. Then I shall send
you back to Bonniemeer, and keep you safely there until I have a nice little
cage all ready for you here or somewhere else; and then I shall come and bring
you to live in it forever and a day, and—how do the story books end?
isn't it?”

He put his arm round her as he spoke, and drew her close to his side, but
even in the dim light was startled to see the pale face and wild eyes she raised
to his.

“O, Fergus, Fergus!” cried she. “Why did you not tell me sooner?
How could I know—and—and I am engaged to Rafe Chilton.”

Fergus started to his feet, and looked down with terrible eyes upon the fair
young face, that seemed to wither beneath his gaze.

“I would not have believed,” said he, at last, “that you could sink so low.
Forget from this moment, as I do, that any other tie than our unfortunate relationship
has ever drawn us together.”

He left the room, the house, without another word; and Francia, sinking upon
the floor, child-like, cried herself to sleep.

So Neria found her an hour later when Vaughn, the last of the guests, had
departed, saying to his ward as he bade her good-night,

“I have something to say to you to-morrow. Will you ride with me at
eleven?”

“Yes, Sieur.”

17. CHAPTER XVII.
THE PERRY WOODS.

O, blue-eyed Katie Coleman, do you remember the summer days that you
and I, two merry hoydens in our earliest teens, laughed or dreamed away among
the joyous Perry Woods? Now it was a butterfly, a tiger-moth, a glittering
dragon-fly which we chased, and left uncaptured at the last; now it was the
white and yellow violets in the meadow beyond the wood that tempted us to
the destruction of hose and shoon; now it was the nodding Solomon's seal, the
purple orchis, the gay columbine, that we sought upon the hill-side, and though
we lost each a shoe in the meadow, we found whole handfuls of lady's-slippers
in the wood. And do you remember, Katie, when we pulled the farmer's radishes,
and sitting under the edge of the wood, eat the stolen treasure with its
clinging soil, and even while the acrid flavor brought tears to our eyes, assured
each other that it was a feast. Ah, pretty Katie Coleman! Twenty years
since then, my friend, twenty stages from that idyllian age of golden romance!
But the sunshine that flecked the turf of Perry's Woods with sheen still glimmers
duskily through my life, and shows me here and there around my feet a
flower that, without it, I might never see.

And if this blue sky above my head arches also over yours, may it shed all
balmy dews upon your path, all peace and love upon your life, for the sake of
those blithe days bygone. And if, my Katie, you now dwell above, as I beneath

the sky, I know right well that your pure heart and gentle nature will have led
you to other woods and other flowers, fairer even than the sunny memories of
youth.

So it was to Perry's Woods that Vaughn and Neria rode upon the breezy
March morning when he spoke. The sky was a pure bright blue, islanded with
great white cumuli. The south wind smelt of violets a-bloom whence it had
come. The willow twigs made a wreath of rosy mist along the brook-side—the
brook that warbled loud and warbled soft its spring-tide song. The earliest
bluebird of the year praised God from the topmost branches of the elm. The
exquisite tracery of twig and branch against the lucent sky was better than
foliage, and the springing grass under foot was fairer to the winter-withered
senses than all the flush of bloom that should bourgeon the summer.

Neria sat upon her white palfrey, and with her smiling eyes seemed to gather
in and taken possession of the scene until its charm incorporated itself in her
being, and shone forth again, adding a new and subtle beauty to what had seemed
finished already.

Vaughn looked only at her, and the love of a man's strong nature made his
face as that of a god. She turned suddenly, and met his eyes—met and read
them, and her sweet face grew pale.

He took her hand.

“Neria, where are the words that I should say to you? How can I hope to
tell you the reverence and love that has become my life? How dare I ask God
to give to me, alone, the pure angel whom he has vouchsafed to mankind?
You have so little of earth, dear Neria, that I cannot ask you to mate yourself
with me, who, alas, am all of earth; but, sweet, if I may wear you on my heart as
a blessed amulet, if I may stand between the world and you, and you shall stand
between Heaven and me—if I may help you to make others happy, and you will
help me to mend much that is amiss in my own life—Neria, if you will be the
angel in my house and in my heart, then can I ask no more of Heaven than to
give me life and grace to show continually how I prize its gift.”

The sweet content of the spring-morning changed on Neria's face to doubt
and alarm.

“Sieur, I have not thought of this,” said she, simply.

“Think of it, now, dear child.

“I cannot. I must disarrange all the habit of my thought to place you in the
position of—”

“Of a lover, you would say. I feared it would be so, dear. I am too far
away from you—in years, in experience, in the circle of life—for you to find my
love other than oppressive and unwelcome,” said Vaughn, sadly.

“No, not that, Sieur, but it is so new. May I think about it a little, before
I say any more?”

“Surely, dear, as long as you will, but you may not try to force upon your
heart the belief that you can return this love of mine, and so offer yourself a
sacrifice upon the altar of self-devotion. If you cannot give yourself to me
frankly and fully, Neria, tell me so at once, and we will forget all this, and you
shall be again to me a daughter, a trust; something to be loved, and guarded, and
reverenced, as Arthur's knights guarded the San Grail, though no man among
them dared lay finger upon it.”

He turned his horse's head while he spoke, and they rode slowly home.

It was that very evening, as Vaughn sat alone in the twilight of the deserted

drawing-room, that the faint perfume always enveloping Neria, suddenly floated
around his head, although he had heard no step, and a slender hand crept within
his own.

He looked up. Through the shadow of the twilight a fair face shone down
upon him, saint-wise.

“Is it my angel, or the angel of mankind?” asked he, softly.

“O, Sieur, do not call me an angel; I am so weak, so ignorant! But if it is
true that I can help you a little, let me do it in your own way.”

It was not the loving confession he would have liked to hear, but it was acceptance;
and the heart of the man was stirred as with strong wine, while for
the first time he took his bride in his arms, and reverently kissed her lips.

18. CHAPTER XVIII.
COMING HOME.

The great content of his new happiness disposed Vaughn to be more indulgent
than even his wont to the wishes of his only child, and although he could
not approve or sympathize in her choice, he would not absolutely refuse consent
to it. He did not, however, refrain from expressing to Mr. Chilton his views
with regard to some passages in that young man's life, and informing him most
distinctly that his engagement to Francia must be a conditional one, to be broken
at any time when her friends considered him to have failed in keeping the good
resolutions that he now professed.

Chilton, quite seriously in love, and rather proud of bearing away the beauty
of the season, as Francia had been styled, found himself very willing to subscribe
to even harder conditions than these; and immediately removed his lodgings
from a hotel to a quiet boarding-house; reduced his allowance of cigars to
three per diem; confined himself in his convivialities to light wines; turned the
cold shoulder to several of his former intimates; spent nearly an hour every day
in the law-office, whose door-plate bore his name in conjunction with that of a
partner who did all the work and assumed nearly all the profit of the concern;
and, in brief, resolved, as he himself expressed the determination, to “try the
Falstaffian lodge, `eschew sack, and live cleanly.' ”

Neria's consternation and regret upon first hearing of Francia's engagement
were extreme Her pure and true instincts had always negatived any feeling of
admiration for Mr. Chilton's appearance or manners, and her sympathy with
Fergus caused her painfully to appreciate the severe disappointment and sorrow
underlying his silent displeasure. She, however, said but little upon the subject,
especially to Francia, whom she treated with an added tenderness and
delicacy, sufficiently expressed by Francia's playful wish, that she were a little
girl instead of a great one, that she might call Neria mother.

Claudia was content with both engagements. Mr. Chilton was a man of
wealth and fashion, and would, of course, immediately renounce the open offences
against morality which had somewhat disturbed society in its wish to render
him its highest consideration. As for the rest, Mrs. Livingstone's standard of
life was not very high, and she held the tenet that every young man was either a
sinner or a hypocrite.

Mr. Murray took snuff, and blandly congratulated Vaughn upon his own and
his daughter's engagement.

Fergus almost deserted his sister's house, and professed himself absorbed
in business.

It was arranged that Neria's quiet marriage should take place as soon as its
preliminaries could be arranged, and that until then she and Francia should remain
with Claudia, while Vaughn vacillated between the city and Bonniemeer,
where he was pleasing his luxurious taste by some alterations and new furnishings
in honor of the bride who was to be.

It was on a joyous April day that he finally brought her home, and, before
entering the house, lingered a moment upon the terrace with her, to admire the
capricious beauty of the landscape, where all earth seemed frolicking in her
girlish glee, and afar upon the horizon line the bright blue ocean tossed its glittering
foam against the bright blue sky.

Vaughn drew Neria close to his side.

“My wife,” whispered he, “tell me that you are happy.”

“O, so happy!” said Neria, brightly. “Such a heavenly day, and coming
home to our own dear Bonniemeer, are enough for happiness.”

“But to be with you in any weather, and at any place, is enough for happiness
to me,” urged the bridegroom, in a tone of half-playful reproach.

Neria looked at him a little wonderingly, and then raised her face heavenward
with a smile of serene satisfaction; but whether evoked by his words or the
joyous scene, Vaughn did not dare inquire.

“Come, spirit,” said he, leading her toward the house, “I am afraid to let
you stay here, lest you suddenly float away and leave me desolate. I will close
you within walls, and only allow you to see the sky through non-conducting
glass, until you are a little naturalized by sympathy with me. I anticipate that
in course of time our natures will become equalized, to a certain extent, at least.
You are to elevate and purify me, and I am to strengthen and practicalize you. So
shall we both fill more perfectly our places in this world, and in each other's hearts.

Neria regarded him with a dreamy smile, and softly said,

“I cannot tell. It is all so new and strange to me as yet, but I am sure that
you will be to me what you have always been.”

“O no, dear child, but more and better,” said Vaughn, eagerly. “Do you
not feel the change that love has wrought in our relations to each other?”

“But I have always loved and reverenced you,” returned Neria, with the
pathetic intonation peculiar to her voice when she found herself perplexed or
troubled.

Vaughn smiled a little dubiously, and led her into the house.

“See, now, my ocean waif, the bower I have been building for you,” said
he, leading the way through a richly-furnished bridal chamber and dressing-room,
to the entrance of one of the apartments recently added to the house.

“Here is a boudoir, where you may, if you choose, fancy yourself still beneath
the sea.”

He threw open the door and Neria, standing upon the threshold, uttered a
little cry of delight.

The arched ceiling, divided into four compartments by heavy mullions, represented
in fresco, Venus rising from the sea, surrounded by rosy little Loves;
Arion riding his dolphin, and drawing all the creatures of the deep to listen to
his wonderful melodies; the nymph Tyro yielding half coy, half willing to the
wooing of Neptune, who drew her toward his wave-borne chariot; and last, an
exquisite design showing a fair child asleep in a great sea-shell floating upon a
smiling sea, and rocked by the tiny hands of Nereids, whose sweet faces and

shining hair floated above the waves, while their gleaming shapes showed fairly
through the pure water.

From the cornice fell heavy folds of sea-green silk, draping the walls and
lying upon a carpet of white velvet, embossed with groups of sea mosses and
grasses, with sprigs of coral interspersed. Upon the mantle shelf, itself upheld
by sculptured Tritons, lay two-great sea-shells with flowers and trailing vines
drooping over their rose-red lips, and between them an exquisite marble group,
showing Andromeda chained half-lifeless to the rock, closing her eyes to shut
out the sea monster, while Perseus stole to her side, and looked with admiring
wonder upon her rare beauty.

Two or three paintings, gems of ocean scenery, hung upon the walls, and
on the étagére lay some rare mosaics, cameos, shells, and sea pebbles. A little
book-rack was filled with the poets Neria loved, the volumes bound in silk of
the same tint as the hangings of the room. The furniture was of ebony inlaid
with mother-of-pearl, the chairs and couches luxuriously cushioned with silk of
the prevailing tint. A wide bay window let in a flood of morning sunshine,
and commanded a wide view of the distant sea.

“Do you like it?” asked Vaughn, who had watched, with loving delight, the
varying expression of Neria's face as she silently made the tour of the little
chamber, gathering in all its beauty with her swift and comprehensive glances. As
he spoke she came toward him and raised her lips to his with innocent grace.

“How can I ever do anything for you who are always doing so much for
me?” asked she.

“Do anything for me, darling? By simply being, you do everything. My
white angel, my pure saint, do you not know that it is by thus putting the
smallest portion of my love into deeds, that I relieve my heart of this burden
of joy which almost cleaves it in twain! Neria, you do not know, you do not
faintly guess how much I love you. And you—ah, my love, my darling, be a
little human—blush when I kiss your lips thus and thus; droop those pure eyes
before the passion of my gaze; let those calm pulses beat, and pause, and beat
again, as mine do when I clasp you in my arms. Neria, love me as I love
you!”

And Neria, pale, passive, disturbed, answered in her plaintive voice,

“I do love you, Sieur—I love you very much.”

Vaughn impatiently opened his lips, but left the words unsaid. Taking the
slender hands of his girl-wife in one of his, he looked down into her troubled
face for a moment, then smiled a little sadly, and tenderly smoothed her hair.

“You are tired, dear child,” said he; “come into your chamber and rest a
little. I will send up your trunks, and Mrs. Barlow, the housekeeper, to help you
with your toilet.”

Neria mutely obeyed, but when she was left alone could not rest for wondering
why the love that had always seemed good and sufficient in Vaughn's eyes,
had suddenly grown so inadequate to satisfy him.

19. CHAPTER XIX.
PUTTING THE BUTTERFLY INTO THE CHRYSALIS.

“Who shall say that we are out of the reach of fashionable gayeties?” asked
Vaughn, merrily, as he entered the boudoir where Neria, pale and pensive, sat
reading aloud to Francia, who wrought at some embroidery secretly destined to
adorn those “wedding clothes” over which the idlest little maiden grows industrious.

“What is it?” asked Francia, eagerly, while Neria raised her languid eyes to
her husband's face.

“I have been to Carrick,” said he, “and in the post-office was addressed by
Jones Merton, a young gentleman pursuing the profession of blacksmith in that
place, but just now more interested in the management of a ball to be given to-morrow
evening at the Mermaid's Cave, in honor of the fishermen who leave
home upon the following day to be gone all summer. Mr. Merton, after giving
these particulars, closed with a pressing invitation to me to be present myself,
and `bring my folks.' I told him I should be most happy to attend, but feared
that the ladies of my family would be unable to accompany me. Did I do
right?”

“No, indeed, papa, you did very wrong. I should like of all things to go,”
exclaimed Francia. “Shouldn't you, Neria?”

“I don't believe I should,” said Neria, slightly smiling. “But I will go to
chaperon you, if Sieur likes to take us.”

“No, indeed, Neria; I shouldn't think of letting you make such a sacrifice;
nor can I imagine any combination of person and place so incongruous as you
in the ball-room of the Mermaid's Cave,” said Vaughn. “If Franc likes to go,
I will take her. The society of Carrick is not exigeante, in the matter of chaperons.”

“Then I am not incongruous, papa,” pouted Francia, so comically that her
father kissed her ripe lips, as he answered,

“You are a little girl, and it is of small consequence what you do or leave
undone.”

“I am eighteen, and not so very little”—persisted Francia—“not so little
but that I can put my arms about your neck, for all your six feet of dignity,
monsieur le père.”

She suited the action to the word, and suddenly found herself lifted from the
floor and borne round the room in a very secure, if not a very dignified, position.

“There, now go and ask your mamma what you shall wear, and don't be too

fine for the company,” said her father, replacing her upon the ottoman where he
had found her, and seating himself in such a position as to get Neria's profile
against the green background of the hangings.

“My mamma, indeed!” exclaimed Francia, laying her bright head upon Neria's
lap and looking up into her face. “Well, respected parent, what shall I
wear?”

“Something that may be washed afterward, I should say,” rejoined Neria.

“O, you fastidious child! I dare say the people will be just as nice as those
we met last winter, only a little less cultivated.”

“And a little more fishy,” suggested her father.

“Well, Neria can bear to go to their houses and stay whole hours, seeing to
sick people and babies and all; so I think I may dance with them one evening!”

“Yes, indeed; I was only jesting,” said Neria. “I have no doubt you will
enjoy yourself very much; but I wouldn't wear anything elaborate. White
muslin, with a few blue ribbons, will be quite sufficient.”

“And don't put on your pearls,” suggested Vaughn, “or they will think you
mean oysters.”

“Or your coral, lest they should think you mean lobsters,” added Neria.

“You horrid aristocrats!” cried Francia, indignantly. “And yet you both
see more of these people than I do, or could bear to.”

“Neria goes among them, not for her own pleasure, but for their good,” suggested
Vaughn, significantly.

Franc blushed a little, but put the lesson aside with a blithe laugh.

“And so do I,” declared she. “I am going to give them a lesson in dancing.”

“I beg your pardon, my dear; here is a letter for you which I forgot until
this moment,” said Vaughn, suddenly, drawing from his pocket and handing to
Francia a letter addressed in Mr. Chilton's bandwriting.

“Thank you, papa,” said she, shyly taking it from her father's hand and running
away to read it.

Left alone with him, Neria glanced doubtfully at her husband, who was attentively
regarding her, then, opening the book in her hand, asked,

“Shall I read to you from `Aurora Leigh?' ”

“Not just now, dear. I would rather have you talk. Neria, you grow paler
and thinner every day; your cheerfulness is forced, and you are never joyous.
All your occupations are matters of resolution, not of inclination. You are silent,
thoughtful, and would always avoid me, did you not force yourself to endure
me. You are totally changed from the Neria who married me two months
ago, and I have seen the change working, day by day, from the very morning of
our arrival here. Now, dear child, explain it to me, as you might to your own
father. Forget, if you will, that I have ever claimed another relation to you,
and may God and you forgive me if I judged wrong in assuming that relation.”

He took her hand in his. It was cold as death, and every trace of color had
left her face, while, in the large, luminous eyes, such a depth of sorrow, doubt,
apprehension, expressed themselves, that Vaughn, covering his face with his
hands, groaned aloud.

“O, Neria, Neria,” cried he, “you will die, and it is my love that is killing
you.”

Neria softly laid her hand upon his head.

“Have a little patience, Sieur,” said she. “It is all so new to me—I am so
young. I did not know what love meant—other love than that I had always

felt for you. I am very heartless, I think—I believe I cannot love in the way
you would like me to, and I am afraid that, by trying so much, I have done harm
to the love I should naturally have given you. I am afraid, Sieur, I never should
have married any one, but have been your child, and loved you as I could.”

“Miserable, selfish, coarse-natured creature that I am,” muttered Vaughn.
“What have I done? Because an angel hovered near me, I must grasp and
bind her to my side, trying to make her as myself. Neria, I see it now—I see
better than you can see yourself, the struggle that has almost killed you; I feel
your sublime self-renunciation and my own blind selfishness far more acutely
than you could ever feel them. Psyche and Silenus were as well matched—I
see now, I see it all; and, if I had not been love-blinded, I had seen it sooner.
I have watched you from day to day, and said, `she is weary,' `she is ill,' `she
is pre-occupied;' `to-morrow, or the day after, it will be different, and in the
end she will love me.' Now, I see that this will never be, and pray God that I
see it in time. Neria, from this moment I am your father, your brother, your
friend—what you will. I shall never again alarm you with a love that you cannot
comprehend, and with which you have no sympathy, but show you only an
affection that you can return in kind. We will forget the fatal error of our marriage,
and go back to the sweet relations of the old time. You and Francia will
be my children, and I will be a tender father to both. Does this please
you?”

Through the forced calm of his tone pierced the sharp cry of a wounded and
rejected love—the cry of a man's strong heart crushed back upon itself in all
the vigor of its ardent life—the cry of a broken hope.

Dimly as the words of an unknown tongue, this voice reached Neria's heart,
and, though she could not comprehend its suffering, she instinctively tried to
solace it.

“But we loved each other very much in those days, Sieur,” said she; “and
so do I love you very much now. Why will you not be as happy to return to
the old quiet way of loving? I shall ride and walk with you, and you will read
and talk with me, and all will be well again. Do you not like it as well?”

“As well, and better, my Psyche, if you will be as happy as you were then,”
said Vaughn, raising to meet her gaze, his face pale, but resolutely calm.

“I will be as happy as you could wish,” said Neria, joyously, as she lightly
kissed his brow. “And you?”

“And I shall be happy,” said Vaughn, not returning the caress.

So Neria, who would silently have broken her heart and died, rather than
consciously embitter any existence that God had created, accepted the sacrifice
of a man's life as simply as she would a flower; and Vaughn, devoting himself
to a future of constant watchfulness, self-restraint, and feigned content, knew
that his sacrifice must remain unappreciated, unthanked, forever—for not the
most implacable coquette is so pitiless to the man who worships her as is the
wife who knows not how to love.

With the rapid prescience of strong emotion, Vaughn, sitting calmly at his
wife's feet, saw his future life outspread before him, and resolved upon even the
minutiæ of his own conduct. Like Francia? No; she could never be like
Francia, nor must he permit himself the caresses with her that he offered to his
child. A guarded and undemonstrative affection was all that must be permitted
to appear; a thoughtful attention to her wishes and comfort; the careful training
of her intellect in study and conversation; a cautious enjoyment of her society;
a great and constant care to hide every symptom of suffering or discontent.

So far he had arranged the weary programme, when Neria's voice, blither
than it had sounded for many a day, said,

“I am so glad you thought to say this to me, Sieur; and now let us forget it,
and quietly return to our old ways. Don't you think I ought to go to the ball
with Franc?”

Vaughn stared at her as might a man preparing himself for death, if asked
whether he preferred his cravat tied in a bow or a knot.

Neria smiled merrily.

“A penny for your thoughts,” said she. “I was speaking of the ball at Carrick.”

“O, certainly, the ball. I promised to take Franc, I believe.”

“Yes, but ought I not to go with her?”

“It is not at all necessary, so far as she is concerned; but if you fancy it on
your own account, go, by all means,” said Vaughn, quietly.

“I believe I will. I feel so gay, Sieur, now that I may be myself once
more.”

Vaughn smiled back her smile, and then abruptly left the room, feeling that
he could bear no more just then.

20. CHAPTER XX.
THE BALL.

Francia's letter, among more important items, contained the announcement
that Mr. Chilton's only brother, a lad of sixteen years, and a midshipman in the
United States Navy, had just arrived at home from a long cruise, and was about
to set off upon another.

Between the two, he had so strong a desire to be introduced to his brother's
fiancée, that Mr. Chilton had taken the liberty to invite him to Bonniemeer for
a night, and they would arrive the day after the letter. Nothing could be more
fortunately timed than this visit, as Francia immediately declared; for, besides
providing her with an escort of her own, it would give the visitors an opportunity
of seeing a phase of society to which they had probably never been introduced.

Her father and Neria acquiesced in what seemed to give her so much pleasure,
although neither of them could feel any great delight in the prospect of seeing
Ralfe Chilton, or extending their acquaintance with his family.

With careful hospitality, however, Vaughn sent his carriage to Carrick to
meet the coach upon the ensuing afternoon, and the two young men arriving in
time for tea, were informed of their prospective amusement, and then left in the
library to be entertained by Mr. Vaughn, while the ladies went up to dress.

Chilton, whose boasted self-possession and sang-froid were always severely
tried by the presence of his prospective father-in-law, fell into the mistake of
many young men, in supplying the place of ease by audacity, and told stories,
made jests, and asked questions, until Vaughn's glacial politeness froze him

into sudden silence, and the host, turning to his other guest, kindly questioned
him of his voyage, of his fancies for sea or land, and showed himself so thoroughly
master of one of the most difficult arts in the world —that of conducting
a conversation between a boy and a man—that Ned Chilton afterward declared
to his brother that his “governor-to-be was just the jolliest old brick there was
going.”

The door opened to admit, first, Neria, looking like the spirit of the mist, in
her dun-colored barege and green ribbons, then Francia, radiant in a diaphanous
white tulle and coquettish little bows of violet ribbon that contrasted well with
her clear complexion and sparkling eyes.

Chilton went to meet her, and his whispered admiration did not lessen the
bloom he admired or soothe the flutter of spirits in little Francia's heart.

The midshipman stood afar off and gazed, his heart filled with a boy's admiration
of beauty, his mind perturbed with a boy's wish to say something expressive
of that admiration, and a boy's terror of making himself ridiculous by
attempting it.

Neria did not know more of boys than she did of men, but a graceful instinct
led her to his side.

“You are not surprised at your brother's choice?” asked she, smiling, as
she followed his eyes.

“In his place, I shouldn't have been able to make a choice,” said the midshipman,
gallantly, although blushing scarlet while he spoke, and ready the next
instant to bite his tongue through lest he had been too forward.

Neria was a little surprised, but smiled unaffectedly.

“You sailors learn flattery with navigation, I believe,” said she. “Have
you been long at sea?”

Ned, following this lead, launched into his nautical adventures, and by the
time the carriage was announced, was quite at his ease, although suffering a
slight relapse under the doubt whether he should offer his arm to Mrs. Vaughn,
or leave that privilege to her husband. The question was solved by Neria herself,
who, while still speaking to him, quietly slipped her hand under Vaughn's
arm, and thus doubly attended, followed Francia, who was already seated in the
carriage.

When the party from Bonniemeer reached the Mermaid's Cave, still kept by
our friend Burroughs, now a widower, they found the festivities in full progress.
Prisoned in a gallery at one end of the large, low ball-room, sat the orchestra,
consisting of the two violins and a bass viol which, on Sundays, officiated in the
village choir. The area of the hall was well filled with a joyous company, the
ladies as smartly dressed as their wardrobes would allow, the swains varying in
costume, from swallow-tailed dress-coats with brass buttons to the more becoming
blue flannel shirt and belted trowsers—the fisherman's ordinary dress. A
prevailing atmosphere of fish and good humor was very apparent, slightly vitiated
in certain cases by the use of a perfume composed of musk and bergamot,
popular, under various titles, among the less enlightened classes of the community.

“O-h!” crowed Francia, clasping her hands over Chilton's arm. “Isn't it
charming? O, see that man shuffle, and oh, do look at that girl opposite him.”

“Barnum ought to get hold of the whole affair and set it up in Broadway.
It would draw immensely,” replied the young gentleman, fixing his eye-glass
upon his nose and coolly surveying the scene.

Mr. Vaughn turned round quickly.

“Francia!” said he in a sterner voice than she had often heard from him.
“Let me beg you to make no more remarks of this sort. These people are our
neighbors and well-wishers; they are in their own quarters and enjoying themselves
in their own way. If we come among them at all, it must be as a civility,
not as an insult.”

A deliberate look into Mr. Chilton's face pointed the rebuke, and when
Vaughn quietly led the way to the upper end of the hall, Francia and her lover
mutely followed. Here the party was welcomed by Jonas Merton and Cephas
Wild, the hearty master of the schooner Mary Ann, bound for the Banks upon
the ensuing day, and acting meantime as second manager to the grand ball given
in honor of the expedition.

These gentlemen Mr. Vaughn presented to his wife and daughter, and requested
for himself an introduction to some of the young ladies who sat near.
In these introductions Mr. Chilton and his brother shared, and the midshipman,
resolved not to lose any of his opportunities, immediately led a partner to
the foot of a country-dance already commenced.

“If you'll pick out a dance for next time, Miss Vaughn, I'll speak to the
music about it. Anything you'd rather have, so's't we know it,” suggested Captain
Wild, who had engaged Neria as his partner.

“But your programme is arranged already, is it not?” asked she, in some
surprise.

“That don't make no difference. We'll dance anything you'd rather.”

Could the courtesy of the Tuileries go farther?

Neria expressed her appreciation of the politeness, but begged that the
dance might go on in its regular order.

“Well, next comes Fisher's Hornpipe,” said the captain, consulting a scrap of
paper in his pocket-book. “How do you fancy that for a dance, ma'am?”

Neria was forced to acknowledge that she had never seen it, and begged to
have the figure explained beforehand.

“Never see Fisher's Hornpipe! Why, don't they dance up to the city?”
asked the mariner, in amazement.

“O yes, but seldom country dances. In those crowded rooms, cotillons and
the round dances are more convenient,” replied Neria, quite seriously.

“Round dances? Why, what sort 's that?”

“Polkas, waltzes, galops, and several others. Don't you dance the polka
here?” asked Neria, almost as much surprised as the captain had been at her
ignorance of Fisher's Hornpipe.

“I don't believe there's a feller here that knows polky by sight,” said the
captain, musingly. “Like enough, some of the gals do—they sort of pick up
things, you know. But you said waltz, didn't you?”

“Yes.”

“Like enough, now,” pursued the manager, “Jim Todd can play a waltz, and
you and the Square might dance it.”

“O no,” exclaimed Neria, alarmed. “I had much rather dance what the
rest do. Please tell me about the Fisher's Hornpipe.”

“That's easy enough. It's just down the outside, down the middle, cast off
right and left, and four hands round. Stop, we'll try it on beforehand, if you
and Miss Vaughn will stand up a minute 'long o' me and Jonas. Trypheny, you
and Zeb stand up, too.”

Trypheny, a tall, handsome brunette, who had just come in with the fine-looking
young fisherman alluded to as Zeb, took her place in the impromptu set,

and received Mr. Chilton's bold look of admiration with a conscious smile and
toss of the head, which made Zeb's eyes travel wrathfully in the direction of her
coquettish glance.

“There, that's all there is to it,” said Captain Wild, after taking his partner
twice through the figure. “Now we'll show 'em how it's done.”

He led Neria to the top of the set already forming; Francia and young Merton
came next, and next to them Chilton with Trypheny, whom he had quietly
invited while she was leaning upon the arm of her lover, who had not considered
it necessary to explicitly engage her for the first dance, supposing it an already
conceded privilege. He now stood indignant and astonished just where
the faithless fair one had deserted him, watching with wrathful eyes the movements
of his rival, who, scorning the etiquette of the dance, chose to stand by
his partner while the set was forming, talking in a style of careless flattery rather
appalling, but utterly captivating to the rustic belle.

“Rafe is making a fool of that girl, and she doesn't know it,” whispered
Francia, laughingly, to Neria, who shook her head disapprovingly; while Vaughn,
who did not dance, watched the movements of the young man with an uneasy
eye.

The other set was ambitiously headed by Ned Chilton, who had secured the
prettiest girl in the room as his partner, and left two others in the full conviction
that he had rather have danced with them. The music began, and Neria,
floating up and down the long lines, and through the intricacies of “cast-off”
and right and left, with perfect grace and accuracy, seemed to shed upon the
homely dance and dancers an atmosphere of fitness and refinement not always
to be found among the dances and dancers of the salons.

“I was wrong,” thought Vaughn. “This contact does not degrade her—it
elevates them. I did injustice to the strength of her influence.”

Next came Francia, who, commencing with the gravest propriety of bearing,
found herself, before she reached the end, so carried away by the exhilarating
motion, the sharp, quick time of the melody, and the half subdued impulse of
her partner, that not Trypheny herself made the chassé down the middle so
rapidly, or reached the foot in such a state of breathless mirth.

“Take care, little girl,” whispered her father, as she returned to his side;
“don't fall into the other extreme, and be too familiar instead of too supercilious.
Watch Neria, and see how she bears herself.”

Captain Wild had no sooner seated his partner than he sought the music
gallery, and the result of his instructions to the band presently appeared in a
lively strain from the first violin, greeted by Francia with the exclamation,

“A waltz! a waltz! How perfectly splendid, only I don't care to waltz with
all these—gentlemen! Must I, papa, if they ask me?”

“I fancy there is small danger,” said Vaughn, laughing. “Captain Wild
just said there was not probably a man in the room who had ever seen a waltz,
and this one is played entirely for our benefit. Mr. Chilton is coming for you.”

“Will you waltz, Franc?” asked Chilton, approaching.

“Certainly; but tell them to play more slowly.”

The message was transmitted, and Francia floated away upon the arm of her
lover, who, however he might fail in certain traits of morality and honor, certainly
possessed the cardinal virtue of dancing, to perfection, while Francia herself
deserved the title of Terpsichore.

“Will you do me the honor, Mrs. Vaughan?” asked the midshipman, blushing
and bowing.

“Thank you, but I only waltz with Mr. Vaughn,” said Neria, in a low voice;
and Ned went to look among his new friends for some one who knew how to
waltz.

Vaughn hesitated whether he should accept the sweet intimation of a resolution
he had never imagined, and then asking himself why he should be denied
a privilege which, with most ladies, any stranger might claim, he smilingly took
his wife's hand and said, “Come, then!”

Vaughn had waltzed in Vienna to the music of the elder Strauss, and the
“ gh born” frauleins and countesses who had been his partners were wont to
assure him that he danced better than their own countrymen. With a difference,
perhaps, he did, but the difference was on the side of stateliness, and a certain
grandeur of motion, that never deserted him. The waltz is the only round
dance in which it is possible for a man to look like a hero, and the waltz was the
only round dance to which Vaughn ever committed himself. Neria's style had
also its peculiarity. In dancing, especially in waltzing, she seemed to lose her
slight affinity for earth altogether, and airily glided over the floor like a dream
of beauty, visible but immaterial.

“Lean upon my arm a little, my mist-wreath,” murmured Vaughn, drawing
her closer to his breast. “You are too much of a fairy.”

Neria glanced smiling up, and her warm, pure breath swept his cheek.
Vaughn could hardly repress the wild desire to raise her in his arms, and cover
those smiling lips with the kisses tingling on his own. With a terrible effort he
paused, and released her from his embrace. “That is enough,” said he, abruptly,
and Neria looked wonderingly into his face for the cause of the harsh change
in his tone.

“Are you dizzy?” asked she, kindly.

Vaughn recovered himself, and smiled. “It is some time since I waltzed,”
said he, “and I find it does not agree with me. I shall not try again, but if you
like it, do not hesitate to accept such partners as your taste approves. You
must not give it up because you are married.”

Neria only answered with a smile, and the music ceased.

“Take partners for chorus jig,” shouted Jonas Merton, and Captain Wild,
after a whispered word with Mr. Vaughn, presented the young fisherman called
Zeb to Francia as “Mr. Lewis,” while an aspirant for Neria's hand appeared in
the shape of an uncouth lobster-catcher, named Barrows, whose bandy legs,
crooked fingers, and beady black eyes would of themselves have suggested his
avocation. Neria, a little startled, and not a little repelled, replied to his invitation
somewhat coldly.

“Thank you, but I am rather tired, and will sit still this dance.”

A look of blank mortification displayed itself upon the lobster-catcher's face.
“'xcuse me,” said he, “for taking the liberty to ask you.”

Neria's quick feelings were touched, and she made room upon the bench beside
her. “I do not know this dance,” said she. “Chorus jig they call it, do
they not?”

“Yes'm. Like enough you'd find it kind o' rough. A body gets pritty well
tuckered out by the time they're at the bottom on 't,” said Barrows, glancing
wistfully at the vacant seat, but not daring to take it.

“Do you go away with the fishermen to-morrow?” pursued Neria, smiling
in spite of herself at the gaping look of admiration with which the lobster man
regarded her.

“No'm. I'm a lobsterer, I am.”

“Indeed? And how do you catch lobsters?”

The chorus jig was shorter than the answer of the delighted Barrows; and
before it was over, Mrs. Vaughn, with no compromise of dignity or good taste,
had secured a humble admirer for life.

Francia, meanwhile, was undergoing a somewhat startling experience. Zeb
had placed her at the head of the dance, and briefly explained the figure, part
of it, by the direction, “first lady turn second gentleman until the music is
through.” Pondering a little upon this curious phrase, Francia arrived at the
designated point in the dance, and gave both hands to a stalwart young fellow,
who, with a little smile of amazement, enveloped the dainty offering in his own
hands, as brown and hard as a well-dried side of leather. Then they turned,
and they turned again, and again, and again, and again, until Francia, dizzy, bewildered,
and somewhat indignant, was very glad of the aid of the young fisherman's
sturdy grasp in keeping her upon her feet. The next gentleman performed
the same evolution, and, finding that this was the regular order of procedure,
Francia entered into the spirit of it, and allowed herself to be twirled
as rapidly and for as long a time as the music and her opponent's strength
allowed. Arriving at the foot, she perceived, by looking up the dance, that she
had been treated with the greatest circumspection, and that the tours de force
in progress between the fishermen and their more usual partners were quite another
affair from what she had experienced. In fact, the less agile and athletic
young ladies were continually whirled off their feet, and fell either to their knees
or into the arms of the whirler, who, to do justice, was generally ready to offer
aid. One young lady, of rather diminutive stature, became so exasperated by
repeated occurrences of this nature, that upon being whirled to the floor by a
powerful young fellow, standing in relation of cousin to her, she sprang to her
feet, and inflicted a box upon his ear so heartily as to affect him to tears, and
every one else to laughter, while mademoiselle herself impartially indulged in
both.

Four-hand reels followed, and Ned Chilton won the admiration of the company
by his skill in “shuffling out the tune,” and bringing down the final stamp
on the exact turn of the measure. His only rival was his partner, Trypheny,
who, with her hands upon her slender waist, head set saucily back, and lips and
cheeks glowing scarlet, looked as Rafe Chilton found an opportunity to whisper,
“Quite too charming.” So thought Zeb Lewis, who had given up dancing and
devoted himself to communion with the green-eyed monster, who prompted him,
as the reel finished, to seek his betrothed, and emphatically inform her that if
she was ever going home with him again she had “got to go now.” Trypheny,
somewhat awed by the suppressed emotion in her lover's face, submitted to authority,
and, with one sidelong look of farewell in Mr. Chilton's direction, allowed
herself to be led away.

The party from Bonniemeer soon followed, leaving the majority of the revellers
to dance until the day dawn summoned them to their hardy toil.

21. CHAPTER XXI.
THE GREAT ORGAN.

A few weeks after the ball, the post brought in a letter from Mrs.
Livingstone to Neria, in which among other matters she mentioned that

Dr. Luttrell was looking for a quiet house upon the sea-shore where he might
spend the summer with his wife, who was very much of an invalid, and suggested
that Cragness would probably suit him exactly, and give some pleasant
neighbors to Bonniemeer. In fact she acknowledged she had already mentioned
the house to Dr. Luttrell, who was much pleased with her description of
it, and only waited for her permission to formally apply for it.

This suggestion Neria referred at once to Vaughn, without even confessing a
certain repugnance in her own mind, to seeing strangers installed in the shadowy
rooms so associated in her mind with her old friend and teacher, Gillies.
Vaughn, however, who had seldom been at Cragness, and regarded it simply as
a piece of property, thought it very well to turn it to account, and in compliance
with his advice, Neria answered Claudia's quasi application so favorably that
in the course of a few days, Dr. Luttrell himself came down to look at the premises,
previous to engaging them.

Mr, Vaughn drove over with him to Cragness, to the consternation of Mrs.
Brume, who was, as she expressed the situation, “all in the suds”—a dilemma
shared by her lord and master, who, as the gentlemen drove up, was to be seen
at the back door, with rueful face and reluctant arms, splashing a heavy “pounder”
up and down in a barrel half filled with dirty clothes and hot water.

Nancy, who, through the mists of her tub, had seen the approaching visitors,
found time, before they fairly stopped at the door, to clutch off the uncomely
cap adorning her grey hairs, to replace it with a smarter one, to put on
a collar and stern brooch of Scotch pebble, and to tie a white apron about her waist
as tightly as if, like a Hindoo devotee, she sought to cut herself in twain, by
way of penance for her sins. Finally, she wiped her face so vigorously upon
the discarded tow apron as to impart to her features a genial glow, not unlike
that of the sun setting behind a fog-bank. Then she darted to the back door,
and, catching Reuben by the arm, said, in a rapid undertone:

“Go round to the door—there's folks!”

And, after all this by-play, the daughter of Eve stood in her door, a minute
later, the picture of innocent surprise, as she exclaimed:

“Well, I declare for it, Mr. Vaughn! I don't see how you got up 'thout
some of us seeing you.”

Vaughn returned her greeting with the debonair manner which made him the
idol of his humble neighbors, introduced his companion, and mentioned their
errand.

Mrs. Brune readily accompanied them through the house, not unwilling, perhaps,
that her employer should see how faithful she had been to her duties, although
left without supervision or control.

In the library all stood as it had done upon the night when its last master
departed thence to voyage upon unknown seas, with an unknown pilot at the
helm. Over the fireplace, the knight in golden armor, his face covered with his
helmet bars, still guarded the secret of the place, and, from the scroll at his
feet, still faintly glimmered the proud device, “Dieu, le roy, et le foy du
Vaughn.”

“A somewhat gloomy chamber, this,” said Dr. Luttrell, looking about him,
with a slight shiver.

“Decidedly so,” assented Vaughn, striding to the window.

“The last proprietor and one of the servants died here very suddenly, I understand,”
pursued Luttrell. “Was it in this room?”

“Yes, I believe so. Do such associations disturb you?” asked Vaughn.

“Certainly not. I am not superstitious by nature, and a medical education
blunts one's mind to imaginative terrors very thoroughly. I was wondering
whether there is anything unhealthy about the place. Mrs. Luttrell, as you
know, is quite an invalid.”

“Candidly speaking,” returned Vaughn, “I should think the gloom and
darkness of this room would be very depressing to an invalid; and what affects
the spirits is apt to affect the body, especially when the latter is unsound.”

“That is true in some cases,” said Luttrell, reflectively; but my wife is not
in the least fanciful, and cares very little for the moral or imaginative atmosphere
surrounding her, so that she does not miss the material luxuries to which
she is accustomed.”

Vaughn simply bowed, not choosing to enter into a discussion of Mrs. Luttrell's
peculiarities, especially with Mrs. Luttrell's husband.

“What is this, an organ?” asked the doctor, penetrating, with his keen
gaze, the dusky corner where poor Gillies's familiar was niched into a recess built
to accommodate it.

“Yes, and a fine one, as I am informed. Mr. Gillies imported it, at a considerable
cost, from Germany.”

“Ah? I have done a little in this way myself. Indeed, there are few
things I have not tried, and still fewer which I have not found wanting,” said
Dr. Luttrell, turning the key in the door of the organ and throwing it open.
“Yes,” continued he, “this looks like quite a grand affair. I should like to try
it, if you will not be bored, Mr. Vaughn.”

Of course Vaughn was delighted at the prospect, and courteously seated himself
to listen.

“But the bellows—how is that managed? Does some one outside attend to
it?” asked Luttrell, looking about him.

Vaughn did not know; but Mrs. Brume, on being summoned, explained that
Mr. Gillies, not choosing to be dependent on human aid for his capricious minstrelsy,
had invented a piece of mechanism, and had it attached to the organ in
such manner that he could introduce air by his own action.

This machinery was set in motion by turning a crank, which she pointed out.

“Aha, that is easily done,” said Luttrell, seizing the handle and attempting
to move it; but the rusted wheels refused to turn, and when, applying more
force, he jerked and pushed the handle violently; it suddenly gave way, and a
loud whirring noise within the organ told that some fatal injury had been committed.

“The organ is faithful to its master. It will serve no other man,” said
Vaughn, lightly, as Luttrell, half angry, half mortified, began an apology for the
mischief he had done.

“With your consent I will make it serve me, if I send to Germany for the
man who built it to repair it,” said Luttrell, eyeing, with grim determination,
the thing that had foiled him.

“Pray do as you like with it, if you come here,” said Vaughn, rising; “but
the air of this gloomy room is chill as that of a tomb. Let us go.”

“As chill as that of a tomb,” repeated Doctor Luttrell, softly, as he followed
his host from the room.

A few days later Vaughn received a letter announcing that his late guest engaged
the house and domain of Cragness, upon terms already specified, and
would take possession as soon as the summer weather should be fairly established.

22. CHAPTER XXII.
OBI.

When Mrs. Rhee left Bonniemeer, just previous to Vaughn's marriage, she
had gone no farther than Carrick, and still kept up a sort of left-handed connection
with her old home through the negress, Chloe, who, in the fine summer days,
would frequently creep over the two miles of road, staff in hand, peering sidelong
at every creature she met, and muttering to herself, until all the children,
and some of their elders, were quite sure that she was a witch. Through the
old nurse, Mrs. Rhee constantly sent messages of regard and remembrance to
Francia, with numerous humble petitions that she would come and visit her, if
only for a few moments. Francia's kind heart would not allow her to neglect
these petitions, and the consequence was that she often called upon the whilom
housekeeper, until one day, her father passing Mrs. Rhee's cottage, and seeing
his daughter's pony at the door, entered the little parlor, where he found the
young lady seated in Mrs. Rhee's lap, while a refection of cake and currant
wine upon the table showed how she had been amusing herself.

In a few decided words Vaughn informed his daughter that he was ready to
escort her home, and, when she had gone out, he added to Mrs. Rhee:

“And I do not wish Francia to be upon these terms with you. It is not in
woman's nature that you should keep our secret inviolable under such circumstances.”

“I do not know that I shall always keep it,” returned Mrs. Rhee, defiantly.
“You have pleased yourself in marrying, why should I not please myself also?”

“Because you dare not brave my anger,” said Vaughn, quietly.

Mrs. Rhee looked at his white face and steady eyes, and turned away her
head.

Vaughn strode to the door, but returned and held out his hand.

“Let us be friends, Anita, for the sake of the dead, and of the past—a past
which no future can undo; but remember that I am master.”

The woman took his hand, and kissed it passionately.

“You are master,” said she, and when he was gone gave way to a tropic
storm of sobs and tears.

So Francia was informed that she was to go no more to see Mrs. Rhee, without
especial leave; and soon lost all inclination to do so, in gathering anxieties
and apprehensions caused by her lover's irregularities, reported to her by certain
officious correspondents in the city; while his own letters grew every week
briefer and more unsatisfactory.

Old Chloe's walks to Carrick remained undisturbed, as were indeed all her
other movements; for Vaughn had advised his new housekeeper that the old
nurse was a privileged person, not to be controlled or reproved by less
authority than his own or Mrs. Vaughn's.

It was to Neria, then, that Mrs. Barlow came one day, and, after some preamble,
inquired if Mrs. Vaughn knew that Chloe was in the occasional habit of
leaving the house privately, in the middle of the night, and absenting herself for
several hours. Where she went, or what she did during these periods, Mrs.
Barlow could not pretend to say, nor had even inquired. If it were one of the
maids she would not be long in finding out, continued the worthy woman, but
Chloe was different, Mr. Vaughn had said she wasn't under any authority but
his own, and perhaps he wouldn't even like to have her watched. She had
hardly liked to speak, but concluded Mrs. Vaughn had better know.

Neria quietly assured her that she had done quite right in speaking, and
promising to attend to the matter, dismissed the housekeeper, (a worthy, but
commonplace woman, whose pride of office had been somewhat wounded by
Mr. Vaughn's injunction), far better satisfied with her position and her mistress
than she had been inclined to find herself.

“She's got a kind of a tact about her, Miss Vaughn has, that sets everything
straight that she touches with so much as her finger-end,” was the decision
that evening confided by Mrs. Barlow to James, the English groom, whom
Vaughn had long since promoted to the position of body-servant, and who had
gradually assumed various other duties which, in an English establishment,
would have belonged to the office of steward or major-domo.

“You're right, there, Mrs. Barlow,” replied James, on the present occasion,
“and the Squire's done a better thing this time than he did before, I can promise
you.”

“You knew the first Miss Vaughn, then?” asked the housekeeper, curiously.

“Yes, I knew her,” replied close-mouthed James, picking up his cap and
eaving the room.

It was on the ensuing night that Neria, unable to sleep, sat at her window,
dreamily enjoying the beauty of the moonlight view, and listening to the distant
beat of the rising tide upon the beach. The low sound of a closing door startled
her from her reverie, for the hour was past midnight, and the orderly household
had long since retired to rest. Suddenly the housekeeper's story returned to her
mind, and she at once concluded that the untimely wanderer must be old Chloe.
A sudden impulse to solve for herself the mystery of the nurse's nocturnal
wanderings, took possession of her mind, and hastily wrapping herself in a dark
cloak, with the hood drawn over her head, and protecting her feet from the
heavy dew, she glided down the stairs and out at the garden-door, which, as
she had correctly judged, was the one she had heard so cautiously closed.
Outside, she paused a moment to look about her. Far down the garden path a
distorted and crouching figure crept along between the roses, and reaching the
end, passed through the little gate leading to the grove, beyond which lay the
pine wood and the lake. Swift and silent as a shadow, Neria followed, bearing
with her the perfume of the roses and the lilies, that opened wide their chalices
to cast incense upon her path, for all Nature loved Neria, as Neria loved
Nature.

Through the garden and through the dim oak wood they passed, until at its
farther edge Neria paused, and, holding herself in the shadow, watched attentively
the motions of the old negress, who, advancing to the foot of an oak tree,
standing by itself in a little glade, busied herself in removing from its hollow
interior an accumulation of brush and leaves. These she laid on one side, and
then, thrusting her arm far into the cavity, groped for a few moments, and finally
brought out an immense toad. Him she set upon the ground in the moonlight,
and, prostrating herself before him, appeared to offer some prayer or supplication,
to which the singular deity ungraciously replied by sparkling eyes and swelling
throat. Rising to her feet, the negress described, with the sharp-pointed stick
in her hand, a circle some three feet in diameter upon the sward, and, baring
her head and feet, paced three times around it, chanting in a dim unearthly
voice some barbarous rune, ending with a wild wail to which the screech-owl in
the neighboring wood shrieked response. The circle complete, the negress
placed the toad carefully in its centre, and describing another circle precisely

similar, took her own position in its midst in an attitude as nearly resembling
that of the toad as her form was capable of assuming. She now addressed to
him some words, still in the unknown tongue of the chant; and after waiting a
few moments, and finding that he remained motionless, took from her pocket a
little vial and poured upon his head a few drops of liquid, which apparently put
the poor creature into a state of frantic pain, causing him to writhe, leap, and contort
himself into every possible shape. Without losing one of these motions,
the negress applied herself to imitating them as exactly as possible, and the
wondering spectator in the wood knew not whether to find the sight more grotesque
or horrible, as the swollen reptile and the negress, deformed almost below
humanity, vied with each other in such gruesome gambols as might fit the
familiars of witch and warlock sporting in the moonlight upon some haunted
heath.

Exhausted at last, the toad turned upon his back and lay apparently lifeless.
Still Chloe imitated him, and lay like an ugly corpse upon the sparkling sward.
Presently, however, she cautiously arose, and taking the toad in her hands,
bathed his head with the abundant dew, and warmed him in her bosom. When
he began to show signs of returning life she moistened her finger in his mouth,
and signed herself upon the brow and breast, muttered another unintelligible
charm, and finally replaced him in the tree, securely covering him with the
débris under which she had found him.

Her next movement was to carefully pluck the grass from the spot where the
toad had lain in his final exhaustion, and also that upon which her own head
had rested at the same moment. This she carefully wrapped in the leaf of a plant
which she had plucked as she came through the wood, and then turned her
steps toward home, passing close beside Neria, whose slender figure was hidden
by the trunk of a giant oak. As silently and as stealthily as they had come,
the two shadowy figures returned toward the house, and the negress reaching it
first, entered, and closed the door.

Neria, who was close behind, heard the heavy bolts shot into their places,
and remained for a moment in doubt as to her own course, not wishing to let
the negress know that she had been watched, and yet seeing no other way of
effecting her own entrance. After a moment of hesitation, she glided along the
terrace to the window of the little room used as Vaughn's private study. This
room communicated with her own apartments by a winding stair, and Vaughn
had of late converted it into a sleeping-room, averring that his late and uncertain
hours of retiring made it more convenient. The maidenly instincts which
Neria's brief and peculiar married life had not overcome, made her hesitate
and tremble in tapping at this window, and when at last she did, it was so
lightly that Vaughn, lying awake to indulge the bitter thoughts which in the
daylight he was better able to withstand, hardly knew whether the sound
were other than the pattering of the vine leaves against the glass. It was repeated,
and drawing aside the curtain, he looked out. Neria, shrinking away
from the window, stood motionless, draped in her dark cloak, her pale face dimly
showing beneath the hood, the moonlight sparkling in the dew-drops that
gemmed her drooping head.

Vaughn threw open the window.

“Neria!” said he, in a hushed voice. “Is this really you?”

“Yes, Sieur. Do you not know me?”

“You came so spirit-like it might have been your wraith. But where are
you going—what is amiss?”

“Nothing, Sieur, but I want to come in.”

“To come in! What, the queen of Bonniemeer and of its master, wandering
forlorn through the night and begging shelter for her royal head!” exclaimed
Vaughn, gay in the sudden revulsion from his first terror. “Will you come in
at this window, or must I open the hall-door for your majesty?”

“Can I come in at the window?” asked Neria, dubiously.

“Surely. Give me your two hands, put your foot on the ledge in the stonework,
and—so!”

He drew her in at the window with the word, and as she lay a moment in
his arms, pressed his lips to hers.

She smiled, but struggled to her feet. He immediately released her, and
asked, gravely,

“Why are you out so late, and so thinly dressed, dear child? See, your
hair, your cloak, are drenched with dew. Your hands are cold and damp—you
are as pale in the moonlight as a true ghost. Explain.”

Neria sank into an arm-chair, for she was indeed almost exhausted, and told
her story as briefly as she might. Her husband listened attentively.

“The poor old creature must be deranged in mind,” said he. “She is very
old, for she was already past middle life when I first saw her.”

“She came here to take care of Francia and me, did she not?” asked Neria,
a little surprised at his hesitation.

“No, dear, she was here before. I have always taken care of her on account
of past services, and we must still protect her, although it may become necessary
to restrain these wanderings. Can you imagine any object in the strange proceedings
you saw to-night?”

“None,” said Neria, hesitating. “None that I can mention with any show
of reason, and yet I felt—O, Sieur, I felt like one who sees his scaffold built
before his eyes. I cannot tell why. I know it is fanciful, perhaps unjust, and
yet I feel sure that all these spells and charms were in some way directed
against me.”

She fell into a fit of aguish shivering as she spoke, and raised her face to
Vaughn like a little child who seeks protection. He stooped and took her in
his arms, gathering her to his broad breast with an impulse of yearning tenderness
not to be withstood.

“My poor little dove, my timid nestling!” murmured he, “who would harm
you? What creature so monstrous as to wish you ill? Do you not know that
my life stands between you and hurt? My darling, my darling, may I never tell
you how much I love you?”

Neria nestled into his arms and laid her head upon his breast, with a sigh of
content. Vaughn's heart gave a great throb. Had the happiness for which he no
longer hoped, come to him now of its own sweet will? Did Neria love him at
last, wife-like? He tried to deny the hope, he tried to doubt, he tried to reason,
and in the end, with a terrible shock, the great love that he had bound down
within his heart burst its bonds, and rising in its might, took possession of the
man who had striven to deny its God-given life. He pressed her to his heart,
he covered her lips, her eyes, her brow, her hair with kisses; he murmured in
her ear every caressing name, every passionate endearment which he had been
wont in half-bitter, half-plaintive mockery to lavish upon her picture, her glove,
her airy image. But with an unmistakable movement of repugnance, Neria repulsed
him, and extricating herself from his embrace, hurried to the door of the
staircase leading to her own apartments.

Vaughn followed, and, seizing her by the hand, demanded passionately,

“Why do you leave me thus? Why do you refuse my caresses? Do you,
then, absolutely loathe me?”

“No; O, no!” said Neria, faintly. “But do not touch me, do not kiss me
again! O let me go, I am faint.”

She snatched away her hand, and groped for the handle of the door, swayed
heavily forward, and fell swooning upon the stairs.

With a sharp revulsion of feeling, Vaughn raised her again in his arms, bore
her reverently up the stairs, and laid her upon a couch near the open window.

A flaçon of cologne-water stood upon the dressing-table. He applied it to
her temples and poured some drops into her mouth. In a few moments she
revived, opened her eyes, turned them upon Vaughn, shrank away and closed
them again. He took her hand. It was withdrawn.

“I have broken our pact,” said he, with stern sadness; “but it was because
I deceived myself. I fancied for a moment that you returned my love, might return
my caresses. Even now I will have no doubt remaining between us.
Speak plainly and as frankly as you would pray to God. Do you love me; do
you think you will ever love me other than as a child loves its father, a sister
her brother? Will my caresses ever be other than repugnant to your feelings?”

Neria sat upright, her white face, gleaming eyes, and cloudy hair, giving her
the look of the angel of tears and sorrow. She raised her hands in unconscious
deprecation of her own words as she said,

“O, Sieur, how can I bear to tell it you, but I fear I never can; I fear that
if we are to be happy at all, if even I am to live at all, you must never again
forget what you have promised. Sieur, I pray God that I may die soon, and
leave you free to love and marry soon one who will love you as I cannot. O, I
pray that I may die and leave you free.”

The plaintive tone in her voice deepened to a heart-break, and as she finished
speaking, she fell into a passion of tears and sobs, shaking her slender form to
its centre. It was the first time in all her life that Vaughn had seen her weep,
and he was more terrified than he had been when she swooned.

“May God be merciful to us both!” cried he, bowing his face upon his
hands, while through his heart thrilled the fierce pang of which a man's tears
are born.

Presently he took Neria's hand. It lay cold and lifeless in his own.

“My wife,” said he, solemnly, “for you are still my wife, to cherish and to
guard, if not to love, all this shall be set right for you, if not for me. You will
forgive what I have made you suffer, and not blame my broken faith too harshly;
for, O, child, a man is not as a God, and my strength was taxed heavily, heavily.
Forgive me, Neria, and show that you forgive, by never in your inmost heart
again wishing me the terrible punishment of your death.”

He waited for no reply, but was gone; and presently stepping from the window
where Neria had entered, he sought the wood, and wandered there until the
night was done, the summer night of moon, and stars, and richest balm of
dewy flowers, and dreamy chirrup of half-awakened birds, and wooing whispers
of the warm west wind, and solemn diapason of the distant sea; and yet, the
night than which no night was ever blacker, or fiercer, or more blankly starless
in the life of Frederic Vaughn.

23. CHAPTER XXIII.
THE GREAT BANNER.

The days had come when the “blood-red blossom of war” bloomed upon
our fields, and the tocsin was loudly summoning her laborers to reap the
harvest which, sown by anarchy and oppression, is in the divine order of events
to be gathered into the garners of peace and widest liberty.

The stern echo of this cry had jarred discordantly upon Vaughn's bridal joy
and he had answered it with his wealth, his influence, his earnest wishes. Himself
he had withheld, for he had said he was no more his own, but Neria's.
Now, however, as devotees will give to God the heart that earth has broken,
Vaughn was ready to offer to his country the life that love had wrecked.

The next day after his decisive interview with Neria he applied for a commission
as colonel, volunteering to raise and equip the color company of a new
regiment at his own expense.

Pending the answer to this application, Vaughn busied himself in setting his
affairs in order, with the same solemn tenderness with which a man who feels
his death at hand, will care for the welfare of those he loves and must leave
behind. Heedful even of Neria's fantasy, as he deemed it, he sent for Chloe to
his study, and closely questioned her touching her nocturnal rambles; without,
however, telling her how he had heard of them.

The old negress appeared at first utterly stolid, but when pressed for the
motive to her curious pantomime with the toad, she mumbled some broken sentences
implying that she had been working a charm for the benefit of her own
health, and that to preserve its efficacy this charm must remain a secret.

The explanation seemed to Vaughn very consistent with the superstition
and secretiveness of the negro character, and he contented himself with
warning Chloe that such exposure to night air and damps was far more likely
to injure than to benefit her health, and desiring that she should in future omit
them. He further informed her that he was about to leave home for some time,
and inquired if she would prefer remaining at Bonniemeer, subject, of course, to
Mrs. Vaughn's pleasure, or be placed with Mrs. Rhee at Carrick. Whichever
home she selected, however, Vaughn decisively forbade any private communication
between the two, and sternly desired the old woman to understand that no
messages from Mrs. Rhee to Miss Vaughn were to be delivered, whatever might
be the urgency of the housekeeper's entreaties.

Chloe turned up her head, and gave Vaughn one of her wicked sidelong looks.
So forcibly did the action remind him of some ill-omened bird, some crafty
raven who had learned a secret of sin and shame, and only waits the fitting
moment to prate it in the ears that last should hear it, that he could not restrain
a smile.

“'Pears nat'ral 'nough, arter all, dat Miss 'Nita like to hab missy Franc
come see her odd times,” began she; but Vaughn, no longer smiling, raised a
finger.

“Hush, woman!” said he, sternly. “If you speak of what is forbidden, I
shall know that you are crazy, and send you to a mad-house.”

“Lors, mas'r, it be you dat's mad, not me,” replied the old woman, with such
simplicity that Vaughn remained uncertain whether she had understood him or
not, and after ascertaining that she preferred remaining at Bonniemeer, contented
himself with placing a considerable present in her hand, and charging
her, in a kind but authoritative manner, to remember his injunctions.

Chloe mumbled thanks; and with a promise of compliance, shuffled away,
pausing with the door in her hand to once more glance sidelong at her master,
and mutter in her own barbarous dialect some unintelligible phrase.

“I wish she had chosen to go, but I cannot turn her out, and I believe she
is harmless,” said Vaughn, as the door closed; and then, dismissing the unpleasing
subject from his mind, he turned to more important matters. The management
of his large property he continued in the hands of Jones, Brown, and
Robinson, the hereditary advisers of his house; but for a personal and confidential
adviser in any difficulty, Vaughn recommended Neria to apply to Mr. Murray,
whose talents as a business man were undeniable, and whose interest in the
concerns of his kinsman's family was not to be doubted, although occasionally
shown in a somewhat unadvised manner.

Neria acquiesced in everything, listened patiently to her husband's minute
directions and council, and opposed none of his arrangements, not even the
primary one of leaving home. Indeed, since the hour when the decisive though
involuntary expression of her distaste for his love had so wounded Vaughn's
heart, Neria had grown timid, silent, and pre-occupied; brooding, not as her
husband bitterly told himself, over the untoward fate that had bound her, past
release, to his side, but perplexing herself afresh over the yet unsolved mysteries
of love, of her own life, and of man's nature.

So the days went on, all flowers and sunshine and song of summer birds
upon the surface, while dead men's bones, and crawling worms, and cold, and
dark, lay beneath the surface. So with the great earth herself, so with many a
smaller sphere swinging in a smaller orbit, and yet indissoluble from the finely
graduated scheme of the universe. No Thalberg, no Gottschalk, no Listz can
so endlessly vary his theme as can nature, and yet the foundation of each variation
is the theme itself.

Vaughn received his commission, and was busied day after day in the city
with regimental affairs.

At home, Neria and Francia wrought silently at the great silken banner destined
to be borne by the men of Carrick, who had answered to Vaughn's
spirited appeal for their support and assistance so unanimously that the corps
d'honneur which he proposed to raise, was almost entirely composed of men
who had either grown up with him, or who had from boyhood looked upon him
as their natural leader and adviser.

So Vaughn led forth the men of Carrick, and Vaughn's wife and their wives
remained in their lonely homes.

24. CHAPTER XXIV.
MRS. LUTTRELL.

The Luttrells were settled at Cragness after several delays on account of
weather and the health of the invalid; and Neria, with Francia, drove over to
call upon them.

Shown into the library by Nancy Brume, they found Mrs. Luttrell lying upon
a couch near the window, alone. She half rose to meet them, but sank back
with a murmured apology for her weakness, and looked indeed so fragile that
no apology was needed. While Francia, always fluent and at ease, made talk
upon the weather and the debilitating influence of the first hot days, Neria
looked at the invalid with a painful and perplexed interest.

It had so chanced that they had never met in the city, and Neria found it
impossible to account for the impulse of tenderness and sympathy now possessing
her. She could not even decide whether the face of the invalid was more
prepossessing or painful in its wan loveliness.

Tall and slender in figure and handsome in feature, Mrs. Luttrell had, at the
time of her marriage, been considered a beauty; but now, her abundant fair hair
seemed to have lost its light and gloss; her complexion, from delicate, had become
transparently pallid; her white teeth shone ghastly between lips almost
as white, while her large blue eyes had acquired a singular expression of
anxiety and terror, a dreamy watchfulness, a weary foreboding, never lost, as she
listened or as she talked. Her slender hands, too, Neria noticed had assumed
an unnatural pearly whiteness and a stiff and laborious motion, while beneath
the nails appeared a violet tinge instead of the rose-red hue of health.

Her manner, too, was changed. Naturally serene and undemonstrative, it
now was marked by uncertain flutter, a rapid alternation from animation to abstraction,
with frequent lapses into reverie. In a pause of the chat, which even
Francia found it hard to sustain, Neria kindly inquired if Mrs. Luttrell found
benefit from the sea air.

“The sea air?” repeated the invalid, vaguely. “Oh, it makes no difference
about that.” She stopped with a frightened start, and presently continued, in a
tone of forced gayety:

“O, I am doing very well—quite as well as I could expect. The doctor says
it is only that I am nervous.”

“How long have you been so ill?” asked Francia.

“I don't know when it began—I can't think,” replied Mrs. Luttrell, in a low
voice; and from the last word she seemed to drop into an abyss of reverie, so
profound that neither of her guests liked to interrupt it.

Through the half-open door glided the figure of Dr. Luttrell, and, although
noiselessly, his wife, who had lain with her back to him, raised her head and
moved, so that she could see him; nor from that moment to the end of the call
did her eyes ever wander from his face for more than a moment. This fixed
and anxious gaze did not, however, seem to embarrass its object, who never, by
any chance, returned it, although he occasionally addressed his wife. The ladies
of Bonniemeer he professed himself delighted to welcome, and hoped they
would often take compassion upon Mrs. Luttrell, who was too much of an invalid
to move about much.

The conversation no longer lagged. Inquiring if Neria had seen the sunset
of the preceding night, Luttrell launched into some new theories of atmospheric
effects, solar rays, and the aurora; had some new discoveries in the moon to
narrate; and, with a turning toward Francia, closed with a droll story of a farmer
who must cut his salt hay in apogee, and, because his work pressed, sent
to Cambridge to request that apogee might be put off a week or two, offering to
pay “anything in reason” for the accommodation. Then be spoke of Vaughn's
devotion to his country's cause, and, with a half glance toward his wife, said
that “had he not a paramount duty at home, nothing should deter him from following
so fine an example.”

A sudden impulse drew Neria's eyes to Mrs. Luttrell's face as these words
were spoken, in time to see the doubt, the terror, the torturing uncertainty,
deepening and deepening in the great blue eyes, while they dwelt as earnestly
upon the speaker's face as might those of a child on the page where is written
a fascinating tale in an unknown tongue.

Luttrell felt the gaze—felt its expression, too, as the sudden knitting of the
brows and compression of the lips sufficiently proved; but still he never looked
toward his wife, never paused in his conversation, but presently, as if unconsciously,
took a fire-screen from the table, and, playing with it while he talked,
held it between his wife and himself.

The face of the invalid grew clouded. She moved uneasily upon her couch,
closed her eyes for a moment, and lay quite still, as if gathering strength for a
struggle, and then opening them wide, while all the power of her body seemed
gathered in their luminous rays, she fixed upon Luttrell a gaze which pierced
through every defence, every subterfuge—a gaze which, though it might drain
the vital energy of that delicate organization, could not fail of its object. Luttrell
paused suddenly in what he was saying, threw down the fire-screen, and
walked to the window. His wife moved slightly, that she might still keep her
eyes upon him.

Neria found herself oppressed and agitated with the mystery floating around
her, and blending with the old mystery of the place, which had of late begun to
haunt her with a sense of duty unfulfilled. She glanced at Francia and rose to
go. Mrs. Luttrell half rose, made an adieu as brief as courtesy would admit,
and sank back. Her husband, visibly anxious to escape the room, seized his
hat and escorted the ladies to their carriage. As they drove down the hill they
saw him turn toward the beach and stroll away with the air of a man who has
several hours to dispose of, and is in no hurry.

“He won't go home very soon, by his looks,” said Francia, laughing, as she
touched her ponies with the whip.

“No.”

“How do you like Mrs. Luttrell?”

“She is very interesting—I pity her.

“Well, I don't know. She didn't seem interesting to me; I thought her
too much taken up with herself, and dull, like all sick people. I like Doctor
Luttrell ever so much,” returned Francia, positively; and Neria said, pointing
to the headland before them,

“See the Lion's Head against the evening sky. Isn't it grand?”

25. CHAPTER XXV.

The weather became oppressively hot, and Mr. Chilton, forsaking his usual
summer orbit, came quietly down to Carrick and took lodgings at the Mermaid's
Cave, Colonel Vaughn's absence preventing his receiving an invitation to stay
at Bonniemeer.

Neria watched the effect of this movement upon Francia with much interest,
for it had been too obvious during the last few weeks that some great anxiety
or doubt had taken possession of the child's mind, and was exerting a morbid
influence on her character. Neria, fastidiously delicate in her fear of intrusion
upon the personality of others, asked no questions—refrained, even, from that
mute sympathy which sometimes is more intrusive than a direct appeal; and

Francia, for the first time in her life, seemed inclined for meditation rather than
speech, so that, whatever lay beneath the surface, life at Bonniemeer went on as
usual. Mr. Chilton was there much of his time, of course, and seemed quite
sufficiently devoted to his beautiful fiancée—all the more so, perhaps, that she
no longer beamed full moon upon him, but had her hours of depression, abstraction,
even of pettishness. Also, she occasionally appeared with red eyes and
feverish lips—new symptoms in her sunny life. The lover was not slow to perceive
these changes, but, question he never so tenderly, could get no satisfactory
explanation of them, and occasionally departed for Carrick in an undignified
state of mind, characterized among children as “the sulks.”

Two or three weeks had passed after this fashion, when, one morning, as
Neria was about sending to Cragness to inquire for Mrs. Luttrell, Francia offered
to ride over herself.

“Mr. Chilton will be here soon, I suppose,” suggested Neria, glancing at
her watch. “You might wait and have his escort.”

“It's not worth while to delay,” returned Francia, hastily. “He may not
come before dinner, and it will soon be too hot to ride. I will just go over
alone.”

“Very well, dear,” said Neria, a little puzzled, for she knew that Francia
had once minded neither heat nor cold, and would have thought it little to wait
hours for her lover's company.

The black pony was brought round, and as Francia, settling herself in the
saddle, glanced toward the window with a nod and smile, Neria was struck with
the change a few weeks had wrought in her face. From very pretty she had
become lovely. The eyes that had been but roadside violets, smiling frankly up
at every passer, were of a sudden violets shyly blooming in the deep recesses
of a forest, where never penetrates the sun to drink the dew that trembles on
their lips—never comes ruder step or harsher voice than the fawn's and the
nightingale's.

The night of a year ago, when—she crowning him with water-lilies—Fergus
had called Francia Undine, floated into Neria's memory, and while she thought,
“It is the soul slowly crystallizing in the midst of her life that I see in her eyes
to-day,” she sighed.

Francia did her errand, and heard from Mrs. Brume that the invalid was no
better—in fact, grew daily worse; and, to the inquiry if Mrs. Vaughn could
send her anything, or offer any service, Nancy replied, with some hesitation,

“Well, if you or Miss Vaughn could come and set up a night with her, I
should be dreadful glad, for there's no one but the doctor and me, and we're
pretty near tuckered out. She's so notional she won't have a nuss, though I've
heerd him offer to send to the city for the best that's to be got.”

“Certainly we will come,” replied Francia, readily. “That is, I will; and I
have no doubt Mrs. Vaughn will, although she is not so strong as I. One of
us will come to-night.”

“That's real clever of you, now, I do say. I didn't expect both on you,
though the more the merrier; and you've got sickness to home, too.”

“Yes, poor Chloe does not grow any better; but Aunt Sally takes good care
of her, and Mrs. Vaughn sees about it. Good morning.”

“Good day, Miss Franc,” said the housekeeper, and stood in the door, one

skinny hand shading her eyes, while the other gathered together an apron not
absolutely clean, watching the graceful figure of the young girl as she rode
slowly down the beach.

“'Pears like there's something on her mind,” soliloquized she, at length.
“Wonder if she's heerd—”

Nancy went back to her work, and Francia rode pensively along the sands,
where now the noonday heat began to quiver in a shimmering cloud, while the
dunes heading the beach seemed parching and bleaching to a ghastlier white,
and the scattered tufts of beach-grass lay prostrate and wilting. The round
spot of shade at the foot of each ragged mound crawled slowly nearer to its
base, and following, inch by inch, the fierce sunlight drank up the dew that the
night had pityingly let fall upon the scorching traces of yesterday's heat.

A mile from Cragness the road to Bonniemeer wound in between two of
these dunes, and Francia had already drawn her pony's rein toward it, when eye
and hand were arrested by the sight of two figures, at some distance up the
beach, seated under the shadow of a great rock, against which the female figure
leaned, while her companion, stretched upon the sand, rested upon an elbow,
with his head so near her shoulder that, in that drowsy atmosphere, a speedy
contact seemed inevitable.

Francia's eyes were good, and her perceptions keen. Also she was Colonel
Vaughn's daughter, and with a sharp turn of the bit she guided her pony back
to the sands, put him to a canter, reduced, as she approached the rock, to a
walk, at which pace she passed, glancing across the two figures as she glanced
across the sands, across the gulls, as Lady Clara Vere de Vere glances across
the face of young Lawrence, when she no longer cares to remember him.

As she approached, Chilton sprang to his feet and advanced a step toward
her; then, catching the expression of her face, paused, and stood in all the awkward
embarrassment inevitable to the most polished dissembler at some points
of his career. His companion turned her face seaward and giggled nervously.
Leaving them thus, Francia paced slowly on, sitting her horse with the nonchalant
grace of an accomplished horsewoman, who feels herself free from the
restraint of spectators.

Surely, a throne is not such vantage ground as a horse's back. Mounted,
the rider who understands his horse, duplicates all the highest attributes of
humanity. He is braver, he is nobler, he is more decisive, apter to attempt redress
of the wrongs about him. Had Arthur's knights been foot-soldiers would
there ever have been a Round Table? Had the horse refused co-operation would
chivalry ever have glorified the earth, would the noble madness of the Crusades
have done its mighty work upon the civilization of the middle ages? “When I
am the king and you are the queen” we will apportion to every new-born child
a steady horse, upon whose back he shall be cradled, shall learn to sit upright,
shall find his home by day, his rest by night.

That evening, when Mr. Chilton appeared at Bonniemeer, very ill at ease, and
as doubtful of his reception as he had a right to be, he found Francia seated
with Neria in the drawing-room.

She bade him a courteous good-evening, but made no movement to meet
him, asked no questions as to his occupations through the day, showed neither
displeasure nor pique toward him, or indeed evinced any emotion whatever; and
the slight shade of reserve pervading her demeanor was so delicately drawn as
to give no ground for comment, or warrant any appeal for explanation.

Chilton made his adieu at an early hour, and walked slowly back to Carrick,

wondering whether he was most pleased or annoyed at the course his fiancée had
chosen. When he was gone, Francia rose, and, flitting restlessly about the room
for a few moments, came and threw herself upon the floor at Neria's feet, laying
her head upon her lap. It had been a favorite attitude of hers till lately, and
Neria fondly smoothed the bright brown hair that rippled beneath her fingers
like the tiny waves of a sunlit sea.

“Neria, darling, what shall I do?” whispered Francia.

“Ask your own heart, dear, not me,” said Neria, sadly.

“But, if my heart has misled me once?”

“Was it your heart or your fancy, your vanity, that misled you, Franc?”

“But, if I have done something and think I should not have done it, is it
worse to try to undo it, or to go on, hoping time will mend it?” asked the girl,
earnestly, while she raised a pale face to the mournful one bent over her, and
Neria said:

“O, Franc, how dare I advise you? I, who have guided my own life so ill.
I am afraid, dear, I cannot help you, and yet I will not refuse. Think of it to-night,
question your own heart, question the Father who, sooner or later, heals
all wounds, soothes all sorrows. Take council with the night, and if, to-morrow,
you still wish for such help as I can give, come and you shall have it.”

They kissed and bade good-night, each taking for her companion through
the sleepless hours, the Gordian knot which life presents to every one of us, and
which most of us spend our years in the effort to unravel, finally perhaps borrowing
of despair a sword to sever, not the knot, but the life entangled in it.

With the morning came Fergus, an unexpected envoy from his father to
Neria, upon some matter of business. The ladies were together when he
arrived, and from Neria he turned to Francia, who found beneath the courteousness
of his greeting, a formality and constraint that she, sighing, told herself
had been unknown to the old time. She sat while he talked with Neria, and
listened, not to his words but to his tones, firm, deep, and resolute. She looked
through her long lashes at his face; it was perhaps a little thinned, but full of
energy and determination.

“Very little effect could such a girl as I have on a nature like that,” thought
Francia sadly, and sighed.

At sound of the sigh Fergus glanced toward her, but directly averted his
eyes, and continued his conversation with Neria. So Francia took her sick
heart to the solitude of her chamber, and there listening to its moanings, determined
upon an experiment for its relief, in the heroic style of treatment.

When Mr. Chilton called, he was told that Miss Vaughn was not well and
could not see him. He came in, and encountered Fergus, and although Neria
exerted herself to fulfil every hospitable obligation to even an unwelcome guest,
Mr. Chilton found the atmosphere of Bonniemeer so oppressive that he declined
an invitation to dinner, and departed, to return in the evening.

Francia did not show herself until tea-time, when she came down stairs, pale,
but with such an expression on her face that Neria looking at her, thought “she
has resolved.” Fergus glanced once, and then away. Perhaps his own eyes
were for the next few moments more thoughtful than their wont, and certainly
he did not speak, but what Fergus thought on this, as on many points, it was
only Fergus who knew.

Tea over, Neria was called from the room a moment, and Francia, trembling
very much but still, with the heroic mood uppermost, said, quietly:

“Fergus, I should like to speak to you. Will you walk toward the lake
with me?” Her cousin looked at her with ill-concealed suspense, but replied:

“Certainly, I shall be very happy to do so. Will you go now?”

“Yes, if you please.”

“If Mr. Chilton calls, please say I am out,” added Francia, to the servant,
as she and her cousin passed through the hall.

Down the garden path, and through the dim oak wood to the pine grove
where the brown needles spread carpet-like under foot, and the heavy odor in
the air told where the sun had lain hottest, and still Francia had not spoken,
save in brief replies to the commonplace remarks of Fergus. They reached
the mere, whose placid waters lay sleeping in the twilight, with fairy palaces all
of gold and mother-of-pearl, showing fairly in their depths as the evening sky
bent down to kiss them. The boat lay there, the very boat where, twelve months
before, they all had sat—the memory brought so sharp a pang to the poor wounded
heart that from its very suffering it gained courage, and Francia desperately
began, “Fergus, you are my cousin, and I have no brother. I need a brother's
help and council to-night—will you give them to me?”

It was quite a moment before the answer came, and then it was,

“If you ask them in a matter where I may properly give them.”

“O, Fergus, do not be cold, do not be cautious; what concerns me, concerns
you; what I may properly confide to you, you may as properly discuss.”

“Go on, if you please, Francia.”

“You don't call me Franc now.”

Fergus glanced at her in surprise. The inconsequence of the reproach in
the midst of so much earnest feeling was so purely feminine a trait that his
virile nature failed to comprehend its consistency.

Francia as little comprehended his glance of surprise.

“Did you not mean to change?” asked she; “I am glad of that, but indeed
everything seems changed about us both. Last year, Fergus—do you remember?”

“What was it you wished to consult me upon, Francia?” asked Fergus,
gravely. Francia paused, collected herself, and said at last,

“It is this. If you have done a thing—made a promise, perhaps, and find
you were wrong—feel sure indeed that you should never have done it—what
then? Is it worse to break your promise, or to keep it, knowing it to be a bad
one?”

“You are too indefinite. I cannot answer so general a question,” said Fergus,
turning a little away from her, and looking far across the shining water to
where, over the eastern hill, hung a crescent moon with a great white star beneath.

Francia tried to speak, but the throbbing of her heart choked her voice.
She glanced at her cousin. Pale and stern, his eyes still bent upon the wan
moon, he gave no answer to the look. She tried again.

“It is about myself and Mr. Chilton,” said she, desperately. “I am afraid
I never ought to have been engaged to him. I am afraid I never really cared
for him. I think it was only my fancy, my vanity, that he appealed to. I
never have been quite happy, and lately, since I know what sort of a man he
is—” She waited, but Fergus remained silent and immovable.

“Ought I to break the engagement, Fergus, or to keep it? Which is more
dishonorable?”

At last he turned toward her, and in his brooding eyes she read the answer
before he slowly spoke it.

“Four months ago, Francia, when I, with every reason to suppose my love

returned, asked you to be my wife, you told me of this engagement. I gave
you then my opinion of it; I mentally foresaw that this very moment must arrive;
this, the beginning of a train of disgust, mortification, disgrace, should
you become Rafe Chilton's wife; of unceasing regret for a solemn promise
broken, a degrading experience undergone, if you do not. Choose between these
alternatives for yourself; I am the last adviser you should have sought. It is
a cardinal principle of my life to interfere in no affairs not connected with my
own. This certainly is not, and I must decline to express any opinion upon it.'

All the spirit of the Vaughns flashed in Francia's eyes, mantled in her
cheeks, and curved her lips.

“You will excuse me,” said she, coldly, “for intruding upon you affairs,
which, as you say, are certainly none of yours. I had been so foolish as to
imagine that being mine they might have an interest for you. The mistake will
never be repeated, and I hope, in the improbable event of your requiring sympathy
in some trouble of your own, you may meet a friend as nearly like yourself
as possible.”

She walked quickly up the path with feet that scarcely seemed to touch the
earth, and head haughtily uplifted to the evening sky. Fergus followed, saying
quietly,

“You are angry, and unjust, as angry people always are. When you think
calmly of what I have said, you will see that I am right.”

Francia did not reply, but hastened on toward the house, nor did her cousin
make any further attempt to conciliate her. In the hall they parted coldly, and
the next morning Fergus returned to the city.

26. CHAPTER XXVI.
THE VENETIAN GLASS.

Nothing is so selfish as love-sorrow. Not the maelstrom itself is so absorbent,
and, from Huldy Ann, whose mother complains that she is no longer
“wuth her salt,” to Rosa Matilda, whose canary bird would starve but for the
parlor-maid's attentions, you shall find its victims self-absorbed, dreamy, and
forgetful of the life about them. So Francia never thought again of her promise
to Nancy Brume, until that worthy woman sent to Bonniemeer an explicit
inquiry, whether she was to count upon either of the ladies there as “a watcher”
for Mrs. Luttrell.

Francia, vehemently remorseful for her negligence, insisted upon going the
first night, and returned in the morning with a melancholy account of the condition
of the invalid, whose prostration of body had become excessive, while her
mind alternated constantly from gloomy depression to excited fancies and hallucinations,
hysterical emotion and frightful mirth.

“You told them I would come to-night, didn't you, dear?” asked Neria,
when Francia had given the experiences of her arduous watch.

“Yes, but I don't think you ought to stay alone with her. She seemed out
of her head part of the time, and was so excited she quite frightened me.
Then she is so weak that she cannot stir without help. It will be too much for
you, Neria.”

“O no, dear. I will ask Mrs. Brume to sleep within call in case any help is
needed, and I am not at all timid.”

“You are nothing that would prevent your doing good to other people,” said

Francia, fondly, and sighed at her own deficiencies, while Neria's heart contracted
with a sharp pain as she thought of Vaughn and the good she had
wrought in his life.

When Neria arrived at Cragness she was received by Dr. Luttrell, who announced
that he should share her watch, as the condition of the patient was so
critical that the end might be expected at almost any moment.

They stood together in the library while he said this, and Neria raised her
eyes to his face with some expression of sympathy and concern upon her lips,
but the words died in an incoherent murmur as she looked. Always pale, Dr.
Luttrell's face was to-night of a ghastly yellowish tinge, scarcely changed even
in the dry lips at which he gnawed incessantly. His eyelids drooped as if to
conceal the tawny eyes, alive with electricity, gleaming and sparkling in their
lurid depths as they wandered impatiently hither and thither, with a watchful,
expectant look—a look of desperation and yet of terror—a look like that of the
baited tiger, who knows the jungle closely environed by the hunters, and with
his haunches gathered for the spring, watches every point at once for the first
assailant.

The vigilant eyes did not fail to perceive and interpret Neria's gaze. They
flashed upon her and away, then back, with a steady daring, and held hers, while
the dry lips said:

“You find me changed, Mrs. Vaughn. It is now two weeks that I have
spent every day and nearly every night at my wife's bedside. Remember, I am
her physician as well as husband and nurse.”

“You must be very much fatigued,” said Neria, slowly, as she tried to analyze
the ominous echo of these words in her mind. “I beg,” continued she,
earnestly, “that you will trust me with the sole charge to-night, and try to rest
yourself thoroughly for to-morrow.”

“No; O, no!” returned the doctor, hurriedly. “That is impossible. To-night
is, I believe, a crisis in the disorder, and I must be present. It is my
duty, and, at any rate, I could not rest.” Nancy Brume opened the door.

“If you're ready to go up stairs, Miss Vaughn, I guess I'll be off to bed.
Like enough I shan't more'n get my forty winks 'fore I'm called up,” said she;
and Neria followed, without reply, to a large and gloomy chamber upon the second
floor, where lay the sick woman, a pale spectre, shadowed and surrounded
by dark bed-hangings and furniture, that seemed to oppress the air of the room
with their funereal atmosphere. The two windows looked upon the sea, which
now came booming up beneath them, each wave smiting the foundations of the
old house with the sullen roar of a cannonade. A half-open door showed a
dressing-room, with a handsome toilet-table and apparatus, among which stood
a shaded lamp, and an arm-chair beside it. Nancy pointed toward the door.

“The doctor 'll set in there and read, so's he'll be handy in case anything
goes wrong. He'll give her the medicine when the time comes.”

With these words she departed, and Neria, approaching the bed, looked
compassionately down at the patient, who had altered sensibly for the worse
since she had last seen her. Her eyes, showing supernaturally large in her
ghastly and emaciated face, were wide open and glazed. Beneath them a circle
of violet stained the otherwise colorless skin, and the same tinge had deepened
under the transparent nails of the hands folded languidly upon the counterpane.
The parted lips were parched and blackened, and Neria tenderly moistened
them with some water in a goblet upon the little stand beside the bed. The
patient looked up and smiled.

“You are Michael, the angel who fights with the devil,” said she, quietly.
“He was here a moment ago, and I suppose is hiding from you. He poured
some fire down my throat while I was asleep one night, and it burns—O, how
it burns!”

She laid her hand upon her chest, and looked piteously into Neria's face,
bending above her with a divine compassion in its every line.

“He keeps his imps in the next room, all in bottles,” pursued the sufferer,
in a mysterious whisper; “and sometimes he brings them out and shakes them
up before my eyes. Then they dance—the imps do—dance just like the fire
down in that old library—did you ever see how that dances in the twilight?—
and when it flashes into the dark corners you can see—ugh, I've seen them time
and again! That was before he caught them and put them in bottles, I suppose.
And then that old man who sits and plays on the organ in the dark—did
you ever see him? He never makes any sound, but he plays and plays till the
ghost of the music fills the whole room—only the ghost, you know; you can't
hear it, but you feel it. It comes creeping, creeping through your blood, till it
chills it to ice. I believe that's the way I first came to be so cold; and now I
never am warm. Good Michael, can't you take the ghost out of my blood? It
freezes me even while the devil's fire scorches.”

Neria took the thin, white hands in hers. They were indeed ice cold, and
had the stiff, hard feel of flesh no longer instinct with vitality. She pressed and
chafed them in her own. The patient smiled gratefully.

“Ah, that is comfortable,” said she. “I feel the little spears of life going
out of your hands into mine. If you had come sooner you might have saved
me; but now I have drank too much of that fire. Wait—I want you to do
something for me—will you?”

“What is it?”

“You see that wardrobe over there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, open it and I will tell you.—Ah, there he comes! Now, where's
your sword! Now you will fight him! Now you can make him take away the
fire out of me!”

She rose in her bed, and, with a long, white finger, pointed past Neria, while
in her eyes the look of terror and foreboding dawning there when she first came
to Cragness shone full-moon. Neria glanced quickly over her shoulder. In
the door of the dressing-room, holding by the lintel, stood Doctor Luttrell, his
ghastly face and brilliant eyes thrown out from the dark space behind him, into
which his figure seemed to melt.

“He's got a head, you see, but no body—that is bad,” said the sick woman,
anxiously. “But you might crush his head. Don't the Bible tell about putting
your heel on his head?”

“Neria did not answer. She was held by the glittering eyes that seemed imperiously
to demand of her her inmost thought. For a moment she quailed and
grew confused, but then a great wave of divine strength and power seemed
to swell through her soul, filling it with a serene assurance. The wild words
of the dying woman bore of a sudden a strange significance. She had called
her by the name of the Warrior Angel, and something of his sublime courage
and ardor raised her to a level above that of ordinary moods. She lifted her
head, and looked back the look of these opalescent eyes, while her own quickened
with lambent fire, and deepened to their darkest hue. The color rose
lightly to her cheeks, her lips parted, and her golden hair seemed touched with
a glory like that of sudden sunshine, or the aureola of a saint.

The white face in the doorway writhed with a bitter sneer, but retreated into
the darkness.

“There, he's gone! But he'll be back in a moment,” gasped the sick woman,
who still sat upright, clinging to Neria, while her staring eyes and pointing
finger seemed plunging into the darkness in pursuit of the object of her terror.

As Neria turned to answer and soothe her, a stealthy foot crept over the
carpet, and before she knew that he was near, Dr. Luttrell's voice said, significantly,
“You see that my wife is very ill, quite out of her senses, in fact, and as
frequently is the case in mania, her fancies are the direct opposite of her impressions
when sane. For instance, she was but now, I believe, describing me as a
fiend, and you, the most feminine of women, if I may say it, as a warrior. My
poor Beatrice!”

He laid his hand upon his wife's brow and smiled pityingly down upon her.
Neria made no answer but watched him attentively. So did his wife, who lay
now perfectly quiet, her whole consciousness apparently absorbed in the wary
questioning look she fixed upon him. Luttrell drew a little nearer to her, and,
still pressing his hand upon her brow, seem to plunge the concentrated rays of
his burning eyes into hers, which soon began to waver, to droop, and finally
closed altogether, while from beneath the long fair lashes, great tears stole out,
and ran down the pallid cheeks.

“She is asleep,” said Dr. Luttrell, turning toward Neria, but not meeting
her eyes. “It will do her good if anything now can. You had best go into
the dressing-room and read, or rest on the arm-chair you will find there. You
need not try to keep awake. I will call you if anything is needed.”

“On the contrary,” said Neria, quickly. “It is I who will stay here, and
you who had better go and rest. I am in no need of sleep myself, and should
prefer to stay with Mrs. Luttrell.”

He glanced swiftly at her, and said, carelessly,

“As you please, of course. I think she will sleep until midnight, when I
will give her a draught.”

He glided away as he spoke, and presently Neria saw him light the shaded
lamp and seat himself to read, in such a position that his eyes commanded both
the bed and the chair in which she sat beside it.

The night wore on, as slowly as it always wears for those who wake while
others sleep; and Neria, who had laid her watch upon the little table at her
side, could hardly believe that its slender hands moved at all, so reluctantly did
they creep over the dial.

For the first two hours she was painfully conscious that the eyes of the motionless
figure in the other room were fixed upon herself, and her own gaze
wandered perpetually from the pallid sleeper at her side, to the circle of light
beneath the reading lamp, showing a book, two white hands, a dark-clad figure
as high as the breast, and nothing more, except the occasional gleam of two
bright points a little higher, flashing out of the darkness toward her.

But no mind, however active, however subtile, can absolutely control the
body, and as midnight approached, Doctor Luttrell slept, at first lightly, but
finally with the heavy exhaustion of overtaxed nature.

As he dropped to sleep, the corpse-like figure in the bed stirred slightly, and
Neria turning, found the eyes of her charge fixed upon her face in a dumb appeal
for help, not to be misunderstood or denied.

“What can I do for you?” asked she, softly.

“I don't know. I think nobody can do anything now,” said the sufferer,

sadly, and with no appearance of excitement or hallucination. She paused, still
looking with anxious entreaty into the heavenly face above her.

“I do not know,” said she, slowly. “But I think there is something wrong
about this illness. I was always well until a few months since, and my symptoms
are so strange. My husband calls this a decline, but—well, it would do no
good to know. A few more hours will end all; and I love him, yes, I do love him
dearly, and shall die loving him. If he had asked me for my life, I would have
given it freely—he need not have taken such pains to steal it. It was long ago.
O so long, that this dreadful suspicion, this great shapeless doubt came into my
mind, and then I began to watch him, to see if I could find out from his eyes—
they are such strange eyes—did you ever notice them? But I never could, and
I don't know now. There is one thing you can do—not that it means anything,
you know, but just to amuse me. Open that wardrobe, please, the door is in the
middle, and on a shelf with some trinkets you will see a ruby-colored wine-glass
in a gold stand. Will you bring it to me?”

“Certainly,” said Neria, a little surprised at the request, and taking the
night-lamp from the fireplace she opened the wardrobe, found the glass without
difficulty, and, as she brought it toward the bed, curiously examined its singular
and admirable workmanship. A golden serpent resting on his coil, reared aloft
his swelling throat and evil head, between whose wide distended jaws was fixed
a bubble-like bowl of ruby glass, capable of holding, perhaps, a spoonful of some
priceless nectar—nectar such as that with which la Borgia stilled the too urgent
reproaches of her injured lovers; and as Neria slightly turned it in her hand,
the faint lamplight striking through the ruby bowl flashed down upon the scaly
folds of the serpent, and glanced off with a gleam like trickling blood. She held
it before the weary eyes, that momently grew heavier and duller.

“Yes, that is it! It is a Venetian glass—one of those that they used to
make in the old time; the art is forgotten now. My mother was an Italian and
this was in her family for generations. Will you have it—or, rather, wait; perhaps
it will not be worth giving. You see that vial on the table—that tiny one.
Now, please pour some of its contents into the glass.”

Neria took the vial—a very small one, without label, and about half filled
with a colorless, odorless liquid—uncorked it, and was inclining it toward the
glass, when Mrs. Luttrell said, hastily, “Put the glass on the table first, for fear.'

Neria, without question, did as desired, and, setting the cup upon the table,
filled it half full.

“That will do; wait, now,” whispered the sick woman, eagerly fixing her
eyes upon the glass, whose contents were already in a state of strange ebullition,
foaming, flashing, and sparkling through and through, as if interpenetrated
with tiny shafts of flame, while a dark wave of color, as if it were the breath of
the serpent, came creeping up the sides of the ruby bowl, changing its pure tint
to a turbid stain. The boiling contents reached the lips of the glass, the turbid
stain sullied the last line of color, and, with a clear, sharp explosion, the glass
flew into a million pieces.

Dr. Luttrell, startled from his sleep, sprang hastily to his feet, approached
the table, saw all, understood all, and turned to Neria with the look upon his
face of Satan summoned to answer for his conspiracy. She confronted him as
did Michael confront that Satan. He turned to his wife, who had sunk back
upon her pillows, pale and breathless. As he approached she suddenly aroused,
and grasped his hands in both of hers, while in her eyes, the weary question answered
at last, gave place to a tender and fathomless love, unmingled with reproach

“It was not needed,” said she. “I would have died if you had told me it
was necessary to your happiness that I should. I knew you loved her better
than me always, but you might have told me, and let me go away somewhere out
of your sight, and die of my broken heart as surely, and less painfully. I have
suffered so much. It was hard to feel my life torn out of me inch by inch—it
was such a brave young life when you began. But don't be sorry—not too sorry
—I am willing now, although when I began to know, I was not—and I fought
against it, fought hard, and tried not to believe. It was to find out that I watched
you always, and I read it at last. It began far down in your eyes, so far that it
only showed like the great dim creatures that live under the sea, and then it
came up slowly, slowly, and every day I read it plainer, until now it is written
there so that a child might read, D, e, a, t, h—that's the way it goes. Don't
look at any one—don't let that angel see, who was here just now—he might
write it with his finger on your forehead, just as God did on Cain's, you know—
I am so tired now—so—tired. Good-by—don't be too sorry—when—”

The next breath that crossed the white lips was inarticulate, then came a
long sigh that seemed to strike a chill through all the air of the chamber, and
then the pale, sad face dropped of a sudden into the sharp outlines, the marble
rigidity, unmistakably distinguishing the most sleep-like death from the most
death-like sleep. The eyelids drooped, but again slowly opened, and with the
last instinct of vitality the eyes turned to those of Luttrell, while from their blue
depths arose once more the solemn question, whose answer was Death, and
stood there patiently—stood, even when Neria, with trembling hands, had closed
over it the lids that could not hide it, stood there when the pale form lay encoffined,
when the earth was laid upon it; and when he, the mourner, came back
to his lonely home, the question was there before him, always, everywhere, waiting,
waiting, always waiting, till it forced the answer to his own eyes, and he
shrank away from men lest they should read it there—shrank most of all from
Neria, of whom the dying woman had bid him beware, as the angel whom God
had sent to write the secret upon his brow.

27. CHAPTER XXVII.
CHLOE'S SECRET.

“So disasters come not singly,” murmured Neria, as she rose from the
couch, upon which she had thrown herself on returning from Cragness, and prepared
to obey a summons to the bedside of Chloe, the negress, whose health
had been rapidly failing ever since her nocturnal excursion, and who now, as she
felt her last moments approach, sent an urgent message to her young mistress,
imploring an interview without delay. Wan and trembling from her late vigils
and the terrible doubts filling her mind with regard to Mrs. Luttrell's death,
Neria came, and seated herself beside Chloe's pillow, looking like a waiting
spirit sent to conduct the almost enfranchised soul to its eternal home. The
violence of the disease was past, as was its suffering; and death, in his grisliest,
most unrelenting form, had laid his hand upon the poor distorted body, soon to
be all his own. “You do not suffer now, Chloe?” asked Neria, finding that the
sufferer did not speak.

“No, mist'ss, I's struck wid def,” said Chloe, simply. “But I's got suffin
to tell you fust, mist'ss. I's hated you awful bad, fust and last, but 'pears like,

now I's goin' to die, as if I see things diff'ent. Miss 'Nita was de one dat put
'im in my head. Mas'r's fust wife was her darter, you see, missy—”

“Mrs. Vaughn was Mrs. Rhee's daughter!” exclaimed Neria, in amazement.

“Yes, missy, and dey was bof slaves, jes' like me,” replied the negress, with
a diabolic grin on her pinched features.

Neria looked at her in silent dismay.

“You see, missy, w'en mas'r was a young fellow, he went travellin' down
Souf, an' one day he see Miss 'Nita put up for sell on de auction block cause
our ole mas'r was dead berry sudden, and his wife was mad wid 'Nita, cause ole
mas'r like her de bes'. So Mas'r Vaughn buy her an' gib her her freedom, an'
den he bought me 'cause I'd alluz nussed Miss 'Nita, an' she was drefful fond
ob me. Well, we stayed long a' Mas'r Vaughn, an' went trabellin in Europe a
while. You see, mist'ss, he was so kin' he couldn' say no w'en she axed to go;
an' she couldn' bear to part from him nohow, she was dat fon' ob him. Den we
come home, and Miss 'Nita's darter, dat had been at de Norf at a boardin'-school,
was growed up, an' Mas'r Vaughn bought her, so's not to let her young mas'r
get holt of her, as he meant to, an' den she was dat pooty, an' arter a w'ile he
married her, an' den lily Missy Franc was borned, but as pooty as she is, she
got de black drop in her, same as ole Clo'. An' 'twor Miss 'Nita put me up to
pizonin' you in de choc'late, an' now I's tole all. Not quite dough—hol' on a
minute, Miss Neria. W'en your mammy was fotch in here dat night dat Miss
Gabrielle died, I was tole to lay her out, 'cause she was stone dead w'en dey
foun' her, an' so I did. She'd got on a braceret dat I gib to Miss 'Nita, an' she
gib it to mas'r, but 'sides dat, dere was a book full ob writin,' wid shiny hooks to
it, an' a picter of a gen'l'man inside ob it, in her pocket, an' a ring on her finger,
an' dem I kep' for mysef.”

“The book with writing in it! O, Chloe, where is that?” asked Neria,
breathlessly.

A capricious gleam of the hunchback's constitutional malice shot from her
eyes. “I didn' t'out, missy, dat I'd eber tell you dat,” said she.

“But you will, Chloe—O, Chloe, I do not know my father's name. I never
saw my mother's face.”

“Dere's lots ob pooty gals down Souf just as bad off as dat, an' wusser,
too, cause dey is sold roun' from one mas'r to anodder just as it happens,” said
Chloe, sullenly.

“Chloe, the Lord is waiting for your soul. Will you go to him and say, `I
might have made one of your creatures happy, and I would not, I did not?”'
asked Neria, with solemn earnestness. A spasm of sudden pain contorted the
whole body of the negress, and she threw herself into a horrible grotesque attitude.

“Obi's a comin' arter me ag'in,” shrieked she, writhing to and fro upon her
bed.

Neria laid a firm cool hand upon her forehead. “It is the truth that tortures
you thus,” said she. “Speak it out, for your own sake.”

But a fiercer convulsion of pain seized upon the unhappy wretch, even as
she spoke. She grasped at Neria's hands, and wrenched them within her own
until the pain forced a deep flush over the pale face of the young woman, who
yet made no effort to release them, who even forgot to pity the suffering before
her in the devouring anxiety that had seized upon her. A sudden and terrible
strength surged through her will, and inspired her whole soul. Fixing her

dilated eyes upon the dying woman, bending her face until her pure breath
mingled with Chloe's expiring sigh, she issued her irresistible mandate.

“Speak; speak out! Where is this paper? Tell me, or you shall not
die!”

“The tree—the old oak tree”—a horrible sound closed the sentence; it was
the death-rattle, and with it the stiffening fingers slid from their grasp of Neria's
hands, the painful struggle ceased, and the sufferings of the unfortunate creature
were at an end.

It was not till night, and in the seclusion of her own chamber, that Neria
unfolded the little canvas-covered package she had found in the cavity of the
oak, where it had lain for months guarded by Chloe's loathsome familiar. A
small, thick note-book, clasped with silver, lay within, and as Neria carefully
opened it, the pages, glued together by mould and time, tore apart as reluctantly
as if they knew that the secret of a lifetime was about to be snatched from out
their keeping. Within the cover lay a miniature, painted on ivory, the picture
of a young man, handsome, proud, noble; the face not of a stranger, but as familiar
to Neria as her own, and yet she knew that she had never seen it in the
flesh. Where then? Her mind wandered to Mrs. Luttrell and her death-chamber,
and chiding itself for the wandering, came back to study every lineament
of the face already beloved, for nature told her that it was her father's. And
still the vision of that great gloomy chamber, with its mournful bed, and the pale
figure lying so motionless upon it, came floating between her and the picture,
enveloped, blurred, effaced it, clamored, “turn to me, I am the solution, this the
puzzle.”

Beneath the picture lay a bit of folded paper. Neria opened it, and found
a little plain ring, small enough for her own slender finger, and engraved with
the initials G. de V. from E. V. This, Neria laid aside with the picture, and
turned impatiently to the little book which was, she hoped, to explain everything.
It was a journal, and the first date was that of twenty-two years before:

Here am I at Venice, and here I will stay for a while, at least, for in truth I am tired
of rambling. Besides, where are eyes like those of Giovanna Vascetti, and where such
clustering locks of gold? The real Venetian style so rare out of Titian. Heigho! What
more is there of life? I believe I have seen it all, and une vie réchauffée must be the
tamest of all feasts. Love! Bah, I have loved a hundred women, and twenty of them
had hair as bright and eyes as blue as those of Donna Giovanna. What do I care? I
wonder if one mightn't drop lazily to the bottom of these canals and lie there very comfortably.
It would save such a deal of bore, as they say in England. England? Well,
home I may as well call it, for I believe I was born there. Stop, I will begin by registering
myself duly at the commencement of this my journal, that the Austrian mouchard
who, doubtless, will read it, may find no trouble in identifying its writer, and bringing him
to justice for whatever treasonable expressions he may see fit to insert. First, then, I am
Edward Vaughn, five-and-twenty years of age, six feet high, with brown curled hair, hazel
eyes, etc., etc. My father was Alfred Vaughn, a gentleman of America, State and town
unknown, to me at least. He left home on account of fami y differences, and not as an
emissary of the American Government to spy out the secrets of that of Austria—(that's
for you, mon mouchard.) My mother was a Spanish gypsy, with whom my father chose
to fall in love, and I suppose, to marry. I never saw her, or heard much more than is
here set down. I have lived at English schools and college until three years ago, when
my father appeared, from the Lord only knows where, said to me, “Come, my friend, let
us be comrades. Forget that there is a tie of blood between us, as I shall; otherwise we
shall hate each other.” I saw that he had reason in his decree, and I assented. We lived
in Paris, Petersburg, in Vienna, at Baden, Rome, London, wherever the world lives. We
saw it, and Vaughn père showed its secrets to Vaughn fils; until when, a year ago,

Vaughn père went to flaneur in another world, Vaughn fils was quite competent to protect
himself in this. Voila tout!

So finished the first entry. Those that followed it were more fragmentary
and interrupted, giving little information beyond memoranda of the writer's engagements,
and occasional aphorisms in the same spirit as the first page. But
under a date of two months later, came an entry, more carefully written, which
Neria devoured as fast as her eyes could decipher the blurred and faded script.

Giovanna is an angel, and I—well I am ashamed of my audacity in loving her. Here
is her little note before me—“my heart, my soul, my noble lord, my king and law,” so she
calls me—and I? When I look back through my life and count its stains—stains of which
the smallest and faintest puts me beyond the pale of her most daring conception of wickedness,
I feel such torture as Satan might, if bound at the foot of the Throne. And she
loves me! Yes, all her pure bright life is placed between my hands to cherish or to
crush. If I bid her forth, she will leave her father's palazzo to-night, and join me in wanderings
as wild as those from which my father rescued his gypsy bride. Ah, ha! I
wonder, after all, if that gypsy mother does not rule my blood, and if I might not be happier
as king of a tribe, with a bold-browed, black-eyed queen at my right hand, than with
this golden-haired maiden, who shrinks, if I do but bend my brow a little earnestly.
Pshaw! Heaven sends an angel to draw me out of the slough, when I sink deeper every
day of my life, and I hesitate to yield myself to her guidance. Let me not believe that
my taste is already too vitiated to appreciate a pure love, that caviare and not bread is my
staff of life. No, rather I will hope that it is conscience, which withholds me from too
eagerly accepting this affection; that it is because I feel too keenly the vast gulf between
this pure child and myself, which life—my life has set. If I marry her, can I assure myself
of her happiness, and without such assurance, should I not be the basest of mankind
to join her to my capricious life and uncertain fortunes? Have I the strength to make
myself what Giovanna's husband should be, and, failing in the effort, would not the humiliation
of failure sink me lower than I already am? Bah! It is too late to make Egbert
Vaughn into a saint, and he is yet too much of a man of honor to pretend to be other
than he is, or to sully the innocent life of the purest woman he ever knew by bringing it
into contact with his own. It is better, my Giovanna, that your blue eyes should weep a
few idle tears now, at what you will fancy my unkindness than that by-and-by your heart
should weep tears of blood at the certainty of my unworthiness. Go you your way, and I
mine—the one leads up, the other down.

Neria paused, and taking the picture from the table, looked at it long and
earnestly, seeking, in the noble cast of the features, the lofty bearing of the head,
a contradiction of the characteristics which the journal made no attempt to disguise.
But still the haunting remembrance of the chamber at Cragness, and
Mrs. Luttrell's death-bed swept between her and the pictured face. She kissed
it sadly, and laid it down, murmuring, “My father still! I know that you
were my father.”

The next date was three weeks later, and under it was written:

“L'homme propose, mais le Dieu dispose,” is as true a saying to-day as when it was first
spoken. Giovanna is my wife, and here we are hidden in the little village of Fieschi, as
happy and as loving as the ringdoves that coo all about our cottage. And it has all come
about in such an irresistible sort of fashion, that I take no shame to myself for inconsistency,
even when I read the last two or three pages of this journal. It was just after
writing them that I got Giovanna's little, teary, heart-broken note, saying that the old
dragon of a marchesa had discovered her daughter's tendresse for my unworthy self, a
foreigner, a herctic, and above all a mauvais sujet; and, that at the end of a terrible scolding,
had come the decree that my poor little girl was to return forthwith to her convent,
and there await the movements of her parents, who were already arranging a match between
their daughter and Count Montaldi, the ugliest, oldest, and richest man in Venice. She

did not say, this little Giovanna of mine, “Come and rescue me, for I love you,” but
she did say, “Good-by forever—unless I see you for a moment on the road to the convent.”

Of course I was on the road to the convent, and with the aid of one servant personated
so successfully a whole troop of banditti, that coachman and guard fled in terror
from the first glimpse of our excellent get-up, and the hideous old duenna, hiding herself
in the bottom of the carriage, shrieked dismally,

“O, Donna Giovanna, we are but lost maidens. These banditti respect neither youth
nor beauty.”

We left the ancient dame uncomforted, for her mistake was precisely the idea we
wished to inculcate; and, diving into the mountains, soon found the three horses hidden
there since morning, mounted, and in a few hours were safely housed at this place, recommended
by my valet, who was, I believe, born here. Before night we were married, and
already my wife has nearly done blushing when Paolo addresses her as signora.

The last words were nearly unintelligible, and Neria vainly tried to separate
the few succeeding leaves; the mould and damp had so firmly united them that
she found it impossible, and it was only with great difficulty that she was able
to decipher the following brief entry, under the date of nearly a year later:

The child is gone, stolen I have no doubt, Giovanna is inconsolable, and I am more
affected than I would have believed possible. Paolo must have played traitor and sold
the secret of our hiding place to the Vascetti, who, considering Giovanna irredeemably
lost, have snatched her infant as a brand from the burning, and will educate it to take its
mother's place in their house. I suspect all this, but cannot know, at least, not at present.
My immediate concern is to hide Giovanna where they will not get hold of her also.
We must leave the country I think. The old dragon would not flinch at poisoning her,
if she fancied it would wipe out the stain upon their name.

After this, for many pages, Neria could distinguish only an occasional word
or sentence from which to infer that the writer, with his wife, had removed from
Italy to Switzerland, and that he had satisfied himself that his child was actually
in the hands of the family of his wife, from which he found it impossible to rescue
her. The next decipherable page was dated in England somewhat more
than a year after the last entry, and ran thus:

I have decided at last to go to America and look for my father's family. Giovanna
wishes it. She is haunted with terror lest this child should be stolen from her as was the
first. It is a pretty little creature and we call her Neria, because she was born upon the
sea. We shall take passage in a sailing vessel bound for Boston, in Massachusetts, within a
few weeks, our means not allowing us to indulge in the luxury of a steam-passage. Indeed
we have been obliged to sell some of our valuables already, to raise the necessary
funds. Giovanna has insisted upon disposing of her most important jewels, and would
even have sold the serpent-bracelet, the hereditary ornament of the daughters of her
house, would I have permitted it, but this must be kept, at any rate, to deck the arm of
little Neria, when it shall have attained mature proportions. I am sorry Giovanna could
not have possessed the goblet also. She says an ancestress, a second Lucretia as it
would seem, had these two golden serpents fashioned in precise similitude, except that between
the jaws of the one was set a tiny Venetian goblet, and in the head of the other,
intended to be worn as a bracelet, was placed a small quantity of a deadly poison, which
may be ejected by pressing the finger upon the jewel forming his crest, when a slender
spear shoots forward, pierces the finger and leaves death in the wound. Thus the possessor
of this brace of serpents commands, through them, both the lives of others and his
own safety. My gentle Giovanna will never be likely to use the weapon or need the defence,
but I like the idea of these hereditary jewels, and thank the sanguinary ancestress
for her idea, and also for leaving us her name, graven upon both serpents beneath the
crest of her house. Fiamma Vasetti, thou wast a woman of rare fancy and had a very
pretty idea of assassination! Well, well, what is all this to the present. I must set myself

to making the necessary arrangements for our passage. I wonder if any of the
Vaughns survive, and if they will own their errant kinsman. Not that I will ask more
than a welcome of them: I mean to earn my living for myself somehow, but just how I
cannot now say. Since I am husband of Giovanna, I dare not pursue the little occupations
by which my honored father accumulated the property his son has just spent. I
detest the sight of a green table and a pack of cards, and would as soon play with the
bones of my ancestors as with those my father so often tossed, and so invariably to his
own advantage. Eh bien! I find by my father's papers that his family lived near a little
town called Carrick, and thither we first will betake us on arriving in America. If these
Vaughns repudiate me they cannot fail to welcome my lovely Giovanna, my innocent little
Neria, and if they will make them happy I ask nothing for myself.

This was the last. A few more pages had been partially written over, but
the disconnected words still legible gave no clue to the meaning of the whole,
and Neria was fain to finish the sad story for herself. She readily conceived
that the voyage had been accomplished, that her father had died either upon the
passage or soon after his arrival in America, and that the hapless wife thus
widowed had attempted to reach, with her infant, the unknown friends, of whom
her husband had doubtless told her. Reduced to absolute penury, she had
probably been obliged to perform the last part of her journey on foot, and before
reaching Carrick had sunk upon the spot where Mr. Vaughn had found her.
Neria covered her eyes and shuddered, as fancy, or it may be something which
is not fancy, pictured before her the black bitter night, the angry sea, the desolate
shore, and the poor young mother struggling on, her baby in her arms,
shrinking before the piercing blast which froze the tears upon her cheeks before
they had time to fall, while close behind her stalked Death's grim form, his
fleshless jaws grinning, his bony hand already outstretched to seize his unconscious
prey.

“My mother, my mother!” moaned Neria, and in the bitterness of her pain
felt a momentary resentment at Vaughn, that he had not arrived in time to
save mother as well as child.

She took up the journal again and strained her sight in the effort to distinguish
something more in the blurred pages at the end of the book. Here and
there a word was easily to be read, but nothing connected or intelligible, until in
the middle of the last page appeared the words: “secret cipher of the Vaughns,
formed by using our motto as an alphabet, it has been—” Neria dropped the
book, as a sudden conviction flashed across her mind. “The secret! Poor
Gillies's secret!” murmured she, and flying to her desk she found and opened
upon the table the letter of Reginald Vaughn confided to her keeping by the
musician. Her eyes ran hastily over the familiar sentences until she came to
the cipher, upon which she had so often and so vainly pondered:

Edaolu oe Oludluv.

The motto of the Vaughns was as familiar to her as her own name, and
hastily writing upon a bit of paper the words: “Dieu le roy et le foy du Vaughn,”
she placed the letters of the alphabet beneath the letters of those words, and
by assuming the upper letter as the name of the lower one, found herself possessed
of a new alphabet, by whose aid she translated the three words of cipher
into the phrase: “Father of Heralds.”

Here, however, was a fresh enigma; and Neria, utterly exhausted in body and
mind, put it aside for the consideration of a calmer moment, and locking the
journal, the picture, and letter in her desk, threw herself upon the bed with eyes
already closed, just as the earliest bird uttered his warning note of the coming
morn.

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE GOBLET FRAME.

When Neria awoke from a brief and disturbed sleep, it was some time before
she found it possible to understand what change had come upon her life.
And as one after another of the strange revelations which Fate, after withholding
them from her most urgent researches, had capriciously piled before her in a single
day, rose to he mind, she set it aside to turn to another, which for the moment
seemed more important. She was herself a Vaughn then! She had the
same right by birth to his proud name, as the husband who had bestowed it
upon her. She might name her mother with tears, perhaps, but without a blush.
And her sister? Did not that dying woman say that the Venetian goblet was
an inheritance from her own family, and was it not in exact similitude with the
bracelet which Vaughn had, soon after their marriage, given her as her sole inheritance,
the only relic of her parents? And was it not thus—and as this
thought flashed into Neria's mind she caught her breath sharply as if the poisoned
tongue of the golden serpent had pierced her own flesh—was it not the resemblance
in her father's picture, to the face of that most unhappy and foully-wronged
of women which had haunted her when she first beheld it? Had
she not sufficient ground for the conviction that Doctor Luttrell's wife had
been her own and only sister? And he? With what emotions must she henceforth
meet him? And what was her duty, in regard to communicating her suspicions
to those who would sharply investigate their foundation? And even
were they verified, what satisfaction could the result bring to the life already
broken upon the dark and cruel purpose of this insatiable man?

And Francia! Brilliant, careless, beautiful Francia! whose life had yet
known no darker shadow than a lover's quarrel, how could she bear the shame
and misery of the story the old nurse had told of Vaughn's first wife, and her
mother? But at this point Neria once more paused aghast. Vaughn! Her
husband, the man whom if she had not wholly loved she had revered and
trusted, and accepted, in his every deed and thought, as worthy to be her law!
What was this story of his early life, almost his present life indeed? Mrs. Rhee
had lived at Bonniemeer until Vaughn's marriage with herself, and Chloe had
distinctly said that the housekeeper had loved her master with an idolatrous passion,
and had jealously sought the life of the woman to whom he had given the
love for which she had pined through so many years. How had this woman
dared to love him thus, and how had he received her love?

Neria hid her face in her hands, and a hot blush tingled over her face and
neck, and even to her fingers' ends. O, if Vaughn was not pure and good, what
hope was there that she should ever love him better than she had done? And

the hereditary secret of the Vaughns, whose solution became more binding upon
her than even before, now that she was herself a party to it, and now that a
certain clue had been placed in her hands—what was she to do in this matter?

A sudden resolution formed itself in her mind, and seating herself at the
table, she hastily wrote a few lines to Fergus, merely saying that she needed his
help and counsel, and begging him to come to her without delay. The address
was hardly written, when, after a gentle tap, the door was opened by Francia,
who entered so quietly that Neria, looking up in surprise, was startled to see
how pale and haggard she looked, and how large her eyes had grown in a single
night of watching and weeping.

“I have come to see if you are ill, dear,” said the girl, gliding behind
Neria's chair to avoid her questioning eyes.

“No, Franc, but I can see that you are,” and Neria, rising, took Francia's
hands in hers, and looked into her fair face, while the malign assertion of the
old negress rushed back upon her memory—“She got de brack drop in her veins
for all her pooty looks.”

With a sudden and womanly impulse, Neria opened her arms, and taking her
adopted sister close to her heart, kissed her tenderly, and with a warmth very
unusual to her ordinarily reticent temperament. Francia, whose heavy eyes
needed but this invitation to overflow, hid her face upon the other's neck, and
wept unrestrainedly, while Neria, gently smoothing the ripples of her hair, found
something terrible in the thought that this poor child had come for shelter and
comfort to her of all others—to her, who had become the recipient and possible
betrayer of a secret, before which these tears should dry as morning dew before
the terror of a devouring flame. The very idea that she must hide so much,
even while appearing to receive and repay the mute confidence of these tears,
made Francia's presence distasteful to Neria's sensitive truthfulness, and after
a few moments she gently withdrew from the embrace, and said, with an attempt
at cheerfulness,

“I fancy we are neither of us very well or bright this morning, darling. Will
you please tell them to send me some coffee up-stairs, and then take something
yourself? I will not come down just now.”

“Yes, Neria,” and Franc, wiping her eyes, and a little hurt at feeling her
confidence repelled, was turning away, when her eye caught the direction of the
letter upon the table. A quick wave of color swept into her wan face; and as
she hurried away, a second burst of tears gave a significant clue to the origin of
the first.

Neria looked after her thoughtfully, and from the door her eyes turned to the
letter upon the table. “Yes,” said she, aloud, “it is right that I should tell
Fergus all—everything. He has as much right to know these matters as I.”

An hour latter, Mrs. Vaughn ordered her pony-carriage, and drove herself
along the beach to Cragness, at which place Doctor Luttrell still lingered. Inquiring
for him, she was shown at once to the library where he was sitting.
Surprised, and yet relieved that she should come to see him, Doctor Luttrell
advanced to meet his guest with outstretched hand. Neria looked at him quietly,
and the hand sunk as if palsy-smitten.

“I supposed by your coming to see me that you were my friend,” said he,
sullenly; “or is this a business call? I am aware that my lease has expired.”

“It is a business call, but not connected with your lease,” said Neria, calmly
disregarding the sneer. “I wish to ask you some questions with regard to the

late Mrs. Luttrell.” She fixed her eyes upon him as she spoke, and he, resisting
the impulse to evade or quail before that straightforward glance, held his
feline eyes unwaveringly upon hers, although in the effort his lips grew white,
and contracting slightly upon themselves gave a cold gleam of his glittering
teeth between. To speak was impossible, but a haughty bow signified his assent
to the proposed inquiry. “Will you tell me Mrs. Luttrell's maiden name?”
asked Neria, presently. An expression of relief crossed Doctor Luttrell's face.
“I thought all the world knew her to have been Miss Davenport,” said he,
with a sneer.

“I knew that she was so called, but I have reason to suppose that she had
the right to another name by birth,” pursued Neria, undauntedly.

Dr. Luttrell considered for a moment, but seeing no sufficient reason for attempting
to conceal facts with which Neria appeared, at least, partially acquainted,
he assumed an appearance of candor, and said, “Certainly. You
have very probably heard that Mrs. Luttrell was actually the daughter of an
Italian noble, the Count or Marquis Vascetti, who, like many of his countrymen,
retained nothing of the ancient splendor of his house, except its haughtiness
and its traditions. Mr. and Mrs. Davenport, spending a summer in Venice,
hired the palazzo of the Marquis, who retained a modest corner for himself, his
daughter, and one old servant, the last survivor of the hereditary retainers of
the family. The Davenports became much interested in the daughter, whose
name was Beatrice, and when, one fine morning, the old marquis was found
dead in his bed, and it seemed probable that the bed itself must be sold to pay
for burying him, they stepped in, as the Deus ex machina, put the old man decently
under ground, or under water, (as it is of Venice that we speak), pensioned
the servant, left the palazzo to the Jew who had foreclosed his mortgage
upon it, and taking the poor little orphan under their paternal and maternal
wings, brought her home as their adopted daughter. Voila tout! And if you
find this bit of family history a bore and out of taste, remember, madam, that
it is you who have asked it of me.”

In the course of his long address he had recovered his native coolness, and
in speaking the last words, looked into Neria's face with an assured smile,
mingled with something of supercilious inquiry, as to her motive in thus questioning
upon matters which, as he intimated, were not her own.

To this unspoken taunt Neria quietly replied. “You will excuse the apparent
intrusiveness of my inquiries when I tell you that Mrs. Luttrell was my
only sister. I will not trouble you with particulars; but of the fact, your late
account of her parentage has enabled me to speak with certainty. With this
explanation I think you will no longer wonder that I should feel a more than
common interest in her life, or in her death.” And with this last, she fixed
upon him such clear bright eyes that he shrunk as from the pitiless gaze of the
noonday sun, and could only stammer with averted eyes,

“Your sister?”

“Yes, my sister; and it is of you—of you, her husband—the sworn protector
and defender of the life and happiness of that unfortunate girl, that homeless
orphan—poor in the midst of wealth, because denied the ties and the love that
make the humblest home a happy one—it is of you, Wyvern Luttrell, that I ask
a reckoning of my sister's year of married life—the year which has closed, in
pain and terror, the story of her young life. Why is she dead at two-and-twenty,
she who should have lived to see the glory of maturity—the peaceful joy of age?
Why is she dead?”

As her regard had pierced his heart, so did her thrilling voice strike through
his brain. He shrunk together, and, with sidelong, sullen look, that dared not
rise above her feet, muttered, “How am I to tell? Her time had come?” Neria
paused a moment, while her soul gathered its strength, and the solemn light
of prophecy made her face awful in its angelic beauty. Then she said: “And
God's time will come at last for you and for me. Dare not approach me until that
hour.” Livid and shrunken with terror and impotent rage, he made no reply,
offered no response to her gesture of farewell, but stood, with down-dropped
head and hanging arms, like Eugene Aram, when, in the clear morning light, he
saw, in all its hideous meaning, the vision of his sleeping hours.

At the door she turned and said, coldly: “My sister, in her last moments,
gave me the remnant of that ancient jewel of our house, whose Venetian
glass was shattered by the draught you were about to administer to her.
It is a sacred relic to me, but can hardly be so to you. Will you give it to me?”

He looked toward but not at her, muttered something in his throat which his
white lips refused to articulate, then left the room, and presently returning with
the goblet frame in his hand, offered it, without a word, to Neria.

She took it as silently, hastily sought and found the minutely engraved initials
and crest which completed the chain of evidence establishing her own and
Mrs. Luttrell's parentage, and then, with no pretence of leave-taking to the
guilty man who stood watching her with doubt and terror struggling in his
feline eyes, she withdrew, leaving him alone with the shadows and the memories
of that ghostly chamber.

The next morning brought Fergus again to Bonniemeer. Neria welcomed
him joyfully, and at first felt as if half her perplexities were removed, now that
she had so efficient a counsellor and assistant to whom she might confide them.
But, when seated with him in the library, she began to consider at what point
of the story she should commence, she found herself restrained by delicacy toward
Francia, by honor toward Vaughn, from repeating the details given her by
Chloe, while a reluctance to show her suspicions of Doctor Luttrell with any
one whomsoever, deterred her from giving more than a vague outline of her sister's
life and death.

But the finding of her father's journal and its contents, the proof obtained
from it of her own and Mrs. Luttrell's parentage, as well as the identity of the
bracelet and Venetian goblet with the hereditary jewels of the Vascetti, all these
she related fully, as also the story of the secret trust bequeathed by Reginald
Vaughn to John Gillies, and by him to herself; all this she repeated clearly
and without reserve, ending by placing before the young man the letter of his
granduncle, the few lines left with it by Gillies to her, and the journal containing
the key to the cipher.

Fergus listened attentively, read minutely, and then asked:

“Is Doctor Luttrell still at Cragness?”

“Yes, but leaves to-day.”

“Then to-morrow we will go over there, and I shall try to prove the correctness
of a theory which suggests itself to me in connection with this story of the
cipher. Meantime, allow me to congratulate myself upon the relationship newly
discovered between us. I had rather consider you as my own cousin than as
my uncle's wife.” He took her hand and kissed her cheek as he spoke, and
Neria felt a strange thrill in this her first recognition by her kindred. “Now
show me, if you please, your father's journal and picture, with the bracelet and
goblet frame,” continued Fergus.

Neria laid them upon the table, and the young man took first the picture,
which he examined minutely.

“Yes, this is a Vaughn,” said he, at length, “there is no mistaking either
the family likeness or the likeness to yourself. You show no trace of your
Italian blood, unless in your golden hair, which is truly Venetian and like that of
Titian's women.”

Neria looked up in surprise, for a compliment from the truthful and exact
Fergus was a circumstance; but he, not noticing the look, was now curiously examining
the bracelet and goblet frame.

“Yes,” said he, “here is the name on each, `F. V.,' for Fiamma Vascetti.
And the fact of Mrs. Luttrell's inheriting this goblet is certainly proof of the
strongest in support of your consanguinity. Do you imagine the bracelet still
to possess its death-dealing powers, or has time destroyed them?”

“I have never been able to move the spring which should project the little
shaft mentioned in father's description,” said Neria. “Perhaps he or my mother
had it destroyed, and sacrificed the romance of the thing to the safety of its
wearer.”

“Probably,” replied Fergus, after some futile efforts to move the emerald in
the head of the serpent, who seemed to writhe and coil beneath the torture of
the attempt. “That would have been the common-sense course to adopt with
regard to so dangerous a plaything, and I presume you are correct. Now, if
you please, I will take this journal to my own room, and see what I can make
of it.”

Neria signified assent, and, when Fergus was gone, sat for some time indulging
the pleasant consciousness that she might safely rely upon his clear head
and decisive judgment for important aid in her various perplexities. Unconsciously,
she compared him with Vaughn, and found herself better content with
the uncompromising integrity, commanding will, and stern self-control of the
one, than with the other's more suave, more polished and finely graduated characteristics.

Francia did not appear until teatime, and then scarcely looked at Fergus,
who treated her politely, but with indifference. Neria watched both uneasily.

“She loves him only too well,” thought she; “but he—how does he regard
her? and, even if their love should be mutual, what would Fergus think of
Chloe's story?” With these questions perplexing her mind, Neria became
more silent than her wont. Francia scarcely spoke at all, and Fergus evidently
only talked to avoid silence.

29. CHAPTER XXIX.

Under these circumstances, the time could not but pass heavily, and Neria
had several times sought a private interview with her watch, hoping to find the
proper hour for retiring arrived, when the sound of a carriage driving rapidly up
the avenue was heard, and the next moment it passed the front of the terrace,
where the cousins were seated.

“Whom have we here, I wonder?” inquired Fergus, rather superciliously,
as a common covered wagon stopped at the foot of the steps, and a man in fisherman's
costume leaped out.

“Some one on business, probably,” said Neria. “Will you see him, Fergus,
and, if I am right, send him round to the housekeeper?”

“I shall suggest, also, that this house has a less conspicuous entrance than
the front door,” muttered Fergus, slowly walking down the terrace. But he had
not yet reached the steps when the visitor ran lightly up them, and with a civil,
but not deferential bow, inquired:

“Can you tell me where to find Miss Vaughn, if ye please, sir?”

“Miss Vaughn? Do you wish to speak with her personally?” inquired Fergus,
in surprise.

“Yes. I've got something for her.”

“Oh, a parcel. You may leave it at the top of the steps, and I will see to it.”

“No; that won't do,” returned the man, in a voice less rude than determined.
“I have a word to give along with the parcel, and I must see Miss Vaughn herself.
Is that her down there?”

Fergus looked rather indignantly at the speaker, but found something in his
bronzed face and manly bearing which so modified his first impression, that he
only said, quietly:

“You are very decided in your tone, my man; but I will ask Miss Vaughn
if she will see you.”

“That's right,” replied the intruder, briefly; and, running down the steps,
he rolled up the back curtain of his wagon, and began to handle a heavy mass
of something lying in the bottom of it.

Fergus watched him for a moment, and then went to summon Francia, who,
accompanied by Neria and himself, approached the steps just as the man, ascending
them with some difficulty on account of the bulky nature of his burden,
arrived at the top, and deposited it at their feet.

“Mr. Lewis!” exclaimed Neria, as she recognized the young fisherman, and
saw the nature of his burden.

“What is this? who is this man?”

She stooped as she spoke, and examined, by the light of the failing moon,
the features of the body which, pinioned, helpless, but convulsed with rage and
shame, lay writhing at her feet.

“Which is Miss Vaughn?” asked Lewis, recovering his breath by a painful
effort, and, looking from one lady to the other.

Francia stepped a little forward. The young man bowed and removed his
hat.

“This fellow, I believe, ma'am,” said he, putting one foot lightly upon the
parcel lying between them, “is a friend of yours, or, perhaps, you only think he
is. I've brought him here to-night to tell you what he is, and leave it for you to
say what shall be done with him.” Francia made no reply, and he continued:
“I come home unexpected last night, partly because I'd had such luck with my
fishing I thought I might as well be married before I got another v'y'ge, and
partly because I was sort of anxious—just why I couldn't tell. I hadn't been in
town ten minutes when I went to see the girl I've been a year expecting to marry.
Her mother looked scared when I asked for the gal, and said she didn't
know where she was. I told her if she didn't she'd ought to, and I was going
to look for her. I asked round a little at the neighbors, and, finally, one fellow
told me, with a sarcy grin, that he reckoned I'd find her somewhere up the beach,
along with this fellow.”

The fisherman's foot emphasized the last word by a slight motion, beneath
which the “fellow” writhed like a wounded snake.

“I knocked down the man that said it, of course,” continued Zeb, quietly.
“But I went up the beach, and just as I was going to turn back I heard Trypheny's
voice talking to some one. They were sitting under the lee of a big
rock, and I walked up to the other side and hearkened a bit to what they were
saying. Just what it was I ain't going to tell you, for it wasn't talk fit for you, or
any woman who thinks much of herself, to listen to; but among the rest I found
he was planning to take her off to the city when he went, and she was in a hurry
to go. That was enough; and I stepped round the rock, picked up the mean
rascal who wasn't even man enough to hit back when I struck him, and gave him
as much of a thrashing as it was in me to give to such a white-livered sneak; and
then I tied him up this fashion, put a cobble-stone in his mouth to keep him
quiet, and left him propped up against the rock while I took Trypheny home to
her mother. I didn't say much, nor I didn't feel mad as she thought I did. If
it had been something that could have been got over, I might have tried to put
it into words, and, after a while, be done with it. But nothing that any human
being could say will ever undo the ten minutes I spent listening behind that rock,
nor can ever put the girl I had thought so much of in the place she's fell from.
So I said nothing to her and to her mother, no more than that if she didn't know
where her daughter had been, I did now, and that I bid her good-by, once for all.
Then I went and got a horse and wagon, drove up the beach to where my young
man was waiting very patient for me, loaded him in, and brought him here. Now,
ma'am, it's for you to say what I shall do with him next.”

“It is not for Miss Vaughn, it is for me to decide that question,” said Fergus,
in a voice of suppressed rage. “Untie him, Lewis, if you please.”

“Wait. It is for me to say, I think,” interposed Neria, with quiet dignity.
“That no violence shall be committed in my presence, or within my grounds.
Fergus, you will not touch this man in any manner.”

Fergus turned impatiently toward her; but when he had met her steady look
and fixedly returned it, he bowed his head—that head so seldom bowed in deference
or submission to any one—and murmured,

“Pardonnez moi. Votre volonté est ma loi.”

Neria slightly bent her head, still more slightly smiled her thanks, but before
she could again speak, Francia laid a hand upon her arm.

“No one has my right to act in this matter,” said she, in a voice whose suppressed
emotion tingled through its every tone, and made her low accents as
thrilling as the trumpet pealing the onward charge of an army. All paused and
turned to look at the slender girl who stood beneath the moon, transformed in
an instant, as it were, to a stern Dian pronouncing judgment on Actæon, a
Boadicea rehearsing wrongs which no blood could ever drown. The pride of
her father's house, the brooding sense of injury, the life-deep passion of her
mother's race shone together in her eyes, throned themselves upon her lips, as
presently she spoke, looking at Lewis.

“The insult this man has offered me, the bitter wrong he has done to you,
are not to be in the lightest measure undone or satisfied by any insult, any penalty
that could be inflicted upon him. What you said with regard to that unhappy
girl, holds good for him. Any words that could be framed by mortal lips
would but insult the feelings they could never express. Any attempt at retribution
would, while it gave us only an angry disappointment, comfort him with
the idea that his crimes were expiated. What I will have you do is simply this.
Remove his bonds and leave him to slink away into the night, alone and unnoticed,
like a faithless hound whom one scorns to beat, but turns from the doors,
as no longer worthy of so much as a hound's place in the regard of man or
woman.

“Untie him, Lewis, and let us see that he departs. One would be sure such
a thing did not lurk about the house.”

No one offered reply or opposition to the haughty words and gesture. The
fisherman silently cast off the lashings, and removed the gag which had held his
captive quiet, but ostentatiously refrained from any roughness or insult. When
he had done he stood aside, and beneath the scornful eyes, the more scornful
silence of those whom he had so foully wronged that he could never do them
right again, Rafe Chilton, the exquisite, the debonair, the curled darling of
many a boudoir, the successful rival of Fergus Murray, the chosen husband of
Francia Vaughn, slowly rose from the dust where he had grovelled, and stood
before them shaking with rage and agitation. He turned to Francia.

“You've had your say, my beauty,” began he, in a voice thick with passion,
“now hear me!”

Fergus uttered an angry exclamation, and would have interfered; but Francia
with a hand upon his arm, while her eyes never wandered from the face of
the speaker, silently asserted her right to control the moment.

“It is all very natural that you should feel a little mortified at being jilted
for a common fisherman's daughter, and that between the disappointment and
the cursed pride which is a part of you, that you should be somewhat bitter in
your remarks, but for all that I know you love me still, and would at a word follow
me over the world—”

“Francia! you shall not restrain me!” exclaimed Fergus, shaking off her
hand indignantly, but still with her eyes upon the face of the man whose words
could no longer be held of so much value as to be an insult, she again grasped
her cousin's arm and said below her breath

“Hush! let him speak!”

“Yes, Francia Vaughn,” continued Chilton, in a tone of concentrated bitterness,
“you love me now as you loved me when you let me steal you from that
proud fool of a cousin who dared not then, and dares not now resent either my
deeds or my words, and I want no better revenge for this night's work than the
chance of telling you that I never cared for you so much as for your father's
money, and that just by your own outrages and your own insolence you have
driven me to a determination that with all your pride and all your pretended anger
you will not hear unmoved. I will marry the girl whom I love better than
ever I loved you—a girl whose pride and whose honor and whose very existence
begin and end in my love; and when I give her to the world as my wife, if that
world says that pretty Francia Vaughn wears the willow wreath that Trypheny
Markham may wear the bridal roses, who shall contradict it?”

He finished and stood staring malignantly into her face, hoping to find there
some trace of the anger or chagrin he had hoped to arouse. But no marble was
ever colder or more changeless in its scorn and pity than the face of Frederic
Vaughn's daughter, as she looked and listened until his own eyes wavered and
he half turned away. Then Francia, still with her hand upon her cousin's arm,
led him toward the house, saying softly to herself in a tone of bitterest self-contempt,

“And I fancied that I loved him!”

Fergus made no reply, but as Neria entered the door after Francia, he quietly
drew back, and would have returned to the spot where Chilton still stood, had
not Neria lingered beside him, saying quietly,

“Remember, Fergus, that you are under the roof of my husband and Francia's
father, and must respect our wishes.”

“But it is too much—too much that you require,” muttered Fergus hoarsely,
as he half threw off her grasp.

“If it is much, so much the deeper the gratitude your forbearance merits.
Fergus, for Francia's sake!”

“For Neria's sake!” whispered Fergus, as he suffered her to lead him into
the house.

Lewis slowly mounting his cart was already driving away, and as the heavy
hall door closed upon him, and he felt himself alone, an outcast and a social
outlaw where he had been an honored guest, the bitterness of defeat writhed
serpentlike about the heart of the libertine, and stung to its black centre.

30. CHAPTER XXX.
THE RIDDLE READ.

The next morning, after a tête-à-tête breakfast, for Francia kept her room,
Fergus and Neria drove to Cragness.

Nancy Brume opened the door to them, and in answer to Mrs. Vaughn's inquiry,
said that Doctor Luttrell had left upon the previous evening.

“And though the old place ain't the delightsomest of housen at the best,”
pursued the worthy woman, as she opened the door to the library passage, “it's
perked up wonderful since he took his black favored and his cat's eyes
out'n it.”

In the library, with closed doors, and with the solemn mystery ever brooding
more or less tangibly over the house and its inmates, boldly confronting and as
it were daring her to its solution, Neria sank into the arm-chair of the bay window,
her sensitive organization succumbing, even while her spirit rose to the
crisis which instinctively she felt approaching.

Before her dazed eyes the dim room seemed to reel and shimmer like objects
seen through mirage; the black books crowding the shelves on every side seemed
gathering momentum for a forward plunge, which should bury the intruders beneath
an avalanche of dead men's thoughts and fancies—thoughts and fancies
which, instead of peacefully perishing with the brains where they were bred, had
been condemned to some such life-in-death as befell the maiden chilled to sleep
for a hundred years, in company with the bear, the crocodile and the serpent.
Above the fireplace the knight in his golden armor seemed stirring in his saddle,
and fixing, through his visor, eyes of gloomy menace upon the irreverent descendants
of his house who dared attempt to pluck from his hand the secret of
a lifetime. From the dusty corner, where stood the organ, shadowy forms
seemed to wave hands of ominous warning, to sigh and moan in a voiceless
lamentation that their realm was to be invaded, their unnamed charge to be
snatched from their guardianship.

Doubt, mystery and menace embodied themselves on every hand, expressed
themselves in every form the place contained, except in the figure of the man
who stood upright in their midst, strong, hard, unimpressible, and regnant.

Upon his thoughtful face Neria's eyes at last rested, and there found support
and reliance. Fergus was the first to speak.

“This secret, Neria,” said he, slowly, “is one that must now be known. If
Reginald Vaughn had been a man of decision and character he would never
have left it for us to settle the quarrel between himself and his conscience,
which seems to have tormented him into his grave. Certainly the absurd compromise
of half concealing and half revealing it to Gillies, a perfect stranger to
him and to the family, could have given him little comfort in his perplexity, and
was the occasion of infinite annoyance to the unfortunate monomaniac, upon
whose shoulders he, in dying, foisted it. He should either have carried it to his
grave or revealed it at once.”

“Do not judge harshly of the dead, Fergus,” said Neria, softly.

“Every man, dead or living, must consent to be judged by his life, and those
of Reginald Vaughn and his legatee seem to me to have been miserable failures,”
replied Fergus, coldly. “Vaughn, as I have said, showed a pitiable
weakness in neglecting to either keep or tell his secret; Gillies, an unpardonable
want of determination in neglecting to unravel it—”

“He could not, interposed Neria, “and his anxiety to conquer the impossibility
hurried him to his grave.”

“Impossibility is merely an arbitrary sign representing an unknown quantity,”
returned Fergus, with a slight smile. “I do not think it need be used in
this instance at all. I already have a theory upon the subject, and shall be
somewhat surprised if we do not, by its aid, spell out this wonderful secret before
we leave the room.

“We already know, through the key contained in your father's note book,
that the words Edaolu oe Oludluv may be translated Father of Heralds, and
it is easy to infer that this sentence, meaningless in itself, contains a reference
to something more important.”

“The oldest English herald of note is Guillim, and in fact I have seen him

referred to by this very title of Father of Heralds. Now, do you know, Neria,
of a copy of his work in this library?”

“No,” replied Neria, doubtfully, “I don't think I have ever heard of him.”

“Then let us look,” returned her cousin briefly, and immediately commenced
the search, while Neria forgot other occupation in watching his energetic movements
and the rare emotion betrayed by his glittering eyes and flushed cheek.
An hour passed thus, and an impatient frown was beginning to darken Fergus's
face, when from the depths of one of the sunken book-cases he drew a black,
moth-eaten quarto volume, evidently of great age. Opening at the title page,
the young man inhaled his breath with a quick sound of joyful surprise, exclaiming,
“The very thing! Old Guillim himself, venerable Father of Heralds.
Now let us see.”

He seated himself, the book upon his knee, and Neria looked anxiously over
his shoulder. With deliberate hand Fergus began to turn the leaves one by
one, searching for some loose paper laid between them, but the end of the volume
was reached in this tedious manner, with no result. Blank leaves at the beginning
and end there were none, and Fergus remained staring a moment at the
quaint colophon in a sort of angry disappointment at the result of his well-laid
calculations.

“Perhaps there is a false cover,” suggested Neria, quietly.

“Of course not. The outside is leather,” replied Fergus, somewhat impatiently
closing the book. “And yet,” continued he, examining it more minutely,
“I don't know but you may be right, Neria. This outside leather slips a little—yes,
I think it has been placed over the original cover and glued down upon
the inside. Let us see.”

A sharp penknife soon established the correctness of this theory, and after
a breathless moment of expectation Fergus drew from between the two covers a
sheet of thin paper, yellow with age and covered with the crabbed and peculiar
manuscript of Reginald Vaughn. It was written in cipher, but with the key before
them the cousins readily translated it to this effect:

“The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children,” says the Book whence
Christendom receives its law. The Book is to me no more than the earliest historical record
of mankind; but in this axiom is closed a great law of human nature. The destiny of
my house has pursued and overtaken me unawares, and I know not how to deal with it,
other than by leaving it to its own fulfilment.

Many years ago the weakness of my own and another's nature, crushed beneath my
father's iron prejudices, led to certain results; chief of which was the birth of an unfortunate
child, whose mother died in the same moment, whose father never will, never can
recognize him as his own. Nor yet has he been utterly abandoned.

It was a heavy bribe from me which induced the Scotchman Gillies to select from
among the inmates of the asylum, where I had placed him, the child whom he as little
knew to be my son, as the child of his own lost sister, and consequently his own nephew.
Could I have done better for the miserable little creature than to place him under guardianship
of his maternal uncle? As he grew to man's estate I found him amply able to
care for himself, and consequently dropped from my fingers the invisible thread which had
so far bound his life to mine. Now I am about to resume it, and under peculiar circumstances.

My earliest recollections are of the stormy scenes constantly occurring between my two
elder brothers, or between one or both of them, and my father, and I still remember the relief
I experienced when after a violent quarrel, in which all three had taken part, it was
announced that Alfred, the younger, had left home, as he professed, forever. Not that he
was to me the most disagreeable of my two brothers, for his storms and freaks of rage

were as temporary as violent, while Egbert's temper was of the sullen and vindictive turn
far more dangerous as well as unpleasant to encounter.

I was, at this period, about twelve years old and, when soon after Alfred's departure,
Egbert married and settled at Bonniemeer, I became my father's companion and friend.
This was the happiest period of my own life; and, as I think, of his also. Our amusements,
our studies, our interests were identical; he treated me as an equal, even while he
adapted himself to my youth and inexperience, and, within certain limits, I was allowed
to treat him with a familiarity upon which his elder sons had never presumed.

Upon certain points, however, he was inflexible, and I, cowardly and secretive by nature,
never dreamed of opposing him openly, however I might secretly disobey him. The
most positive of these restrictions was one never distinctly expressed, but most distinctly
understood, debarring me, as I grew to manhood, from seeking the society of the other
sex. Lazarus Graves was our only attendant, and no woman's face ever brightened the
dim chambers of our home. My father never visited, even at Bonniemeer; and I should
as soon have ventured upon the grossest insult toward him, as to have noticed by more
than a distant salutation the pretty daughters and wives of the fishermen who occasionally
met us in our walks or rides. But strong passions and weak principles are the distinctive
brand of the Vaughn character from the earliest record, as the story of Marion Gillies
and her luckless boy would prove were it here set down, as it most certainly will not be.

Absorbed in my own secret and the precautions with which I surrounded it, I hardly
noticed my father's failing health and increasing gloom. He preferred to be much alone,
and when in my company fell often into profound reverie, from which he aroused himself
with a scrutinizing glance at me that more than once sent the guilty blood to my heart
with the conviction that I was discovered. Now, I do not doubt that my father was considering
the safety of intrusting me with a mystery which weighed even more heavily
upon his mind than the disease already leading him to the grave.

He died, and in his last moments struggled piteously to speak to me. I do not doubt
it was the secret, the shameful secret which even then tortured him with its demand for
an utterance denied to it by death. I could not guess at his Nemesis, nor did I care to
do so, for my own had overtaken me. Marion had died the day before.

I laid my father in the ground and returned to Cragness, the lonely, loveless man I
have remained ever since. The years since then are so nearly a blank that I pass them
over in silence until a day, now years ago, when, in some curious examination of the
carved woodwork above the fireplace of the library at Cragness, I hit accidentally upon a
secret spring, distant six inches in a right line from the spear-head of the knight in heraldic
device there blazoned. Within the crypt, disclosed by the movement of this spring,
I found the secret which, having driven my father to his grave, then turned back to fasten
upon me, and will, as I am certain, never release me until I lie beside him. How to dispose
of it is to me a question as unsettled as my own existence beyond the grave; and
after tormenting myself with it for years I have at last resolved to make this plain statement
of my own personal interest in the affair, to hide the statement as securely as possible,
and then to fly from this accursed house forever. Once abroad I shall die to the
world, soon, as I doubt not, to earth also, and in my legal death I shall bequeath this
place, the secret, and the knowledge of his own, his mother's, and his father's shame, to my
son, John Gillies. I shall place a blind clue in his hand at starting, and after that I leave
him to Destiny, and to the slow and terrible justice of Destiny, which will sooner or later
ordain that through the wrong done by me to him and his, the wrong done by another to
the proud name of Vaughn shall be exposed.

The manuscript closed thus abruptly; and, at the last word, Fergus and Neria,
raising their eyes to each other's face, withdrew them suddenly, while the
frown upon his brow, the burning blush on her's, already verified Reginald
Vaughn's bitter application of the curse ordaining that the shame and suffering
of the father's sin shall be surely visited upon the innocent children so long as
the world endures.

Then, without a word, Fergus folded the yellow sheets together, and hiding
them in a desk upon the table, went to the fireplace, and stood for a moment
minutely examining the carved scroll-work surrounding, like a frame, the dim
blazonry of the shield. From its midst the golden horseman looked sullenly
through his closed visor at his opponent; and, to Neria's strained fancy, the
lance in his grasp seemed quivering with the rage of an approaching onset.

“Six inches in a right line from the spear point,” muttered Fergus, measuring
the distance with quiet exactitude. “And this,” pursued he, after an instant,
as he pressed his finger upon a slight projection half hidden beneath a riblike
scroll—“this must be the spring.”

As he spoke, the spring yielded to the pressure, and, with noiseless motion,
the shield, with its baffled knight, its solemn crest and haughty motto, slid away,
revealing a small closet or crypt constructed in the thickness of the massive
chimney. From its interior Fergus silently took a folded parchment and an old-fashioned
pistol, primed and loaded.

“These are all,” said he, returning to the table, where Neria sat watching his
movements with dilated eyes and pallid cheeks. The panel, released from the
pressure of the spring, slid noiselessly back to its former position, and from its
face the effigy of the baffled and impotent guardian of old Egbert Vaughn's secret,
looked down with ghastly rage upon its audacious heirs.

Beneath the lock of the pistol was closed a strip of paper with these words
written upon it:

If one of my sons shall discover the secret place where is hidden this pistol and the
confession of his father's follies and crimes, I counsel him to lay the latter upon the fire,
and to discharge the first into his own head. So best shall he shield the memory of his
ancestors, and spare himself their inheritance.

These ominous words read Fergus; and withholding them from Neria's outstretched
hand, said, softly:

“No, my cousin. It was not meant for us, and will only shock you. Let us
look at the parchment.”

Laying the parchment upon the table, Fergus carefully laid open its stift
and yellow folds, and seated himself beside his cousin, that they might together
learn the mystery which for a century had hung over the fortunes of their house,
and for more than one of its members had mingled its dusky shadows with those
of the grave itself. A gleam of sunshine, piercing of a sudden the stormy sky,
flashed across Neria's pallid face and wildly lighted her sombre eyes, glanced
over the bent head and dusky face of her cousin, and touched, as with the finger
of Fate, the secret lying before them. Then, flickering upward, it lighted to a
flame the golden blazonry upon the wall, lingered yet a moment upon the closed
visor of the knight, and was gone, leaving a darkness and chill behind which
struck upon Neria's sensitive nerves like a breath from the tomb, whence, as it
seemed to her, they were about to pluck its sacred mysteries.

“O Fergus,” whispered she, pressing closer to his side, “let us leave it as
we find it. It is not good to meddle with the secrets of the dead. Put this paper
back, leave it for another to find, and let us begone. This place is killing
me.”

“Hush, child. Do not yield to womanish fancies now, when all is accomplished.
Give up the secret when it is within our grasp? What folly! Remember,
Neria, we are performing a solemn duty.”

He placed his arm about her as he spoke, and Neria sheltered within its fold
as quietly as on her mother's breast. So together they read:

When I, Egbert Vaughn, was but a boy, I loved my Cousin Maud, and she, in the
pride of wit and beauty, sneered at my passion. I left her with the silent oath that we
would yet change places, and that it should be my turn some day to triumph and hers to
plead.

Three years after, when I returned from my distant voyage, I forgot my oath in wonder
at her beauty and the sweetness of her welcome. I loved her more than I had ever
done, and she confessed to an equal passion. I pleaded for an immediate marriage, and
she and her cunning mother opposed me only so much as to excite my ardor and give
impetus to my wishes.

We married; and I waked from my fool's elysium to find myself the dupe of an infamous
plot.

My cousin, true to the violent passions, the rampant pride and easy principles of her
race, had chosen to secretly marry, during my absence, a fellow so low, so debased, so disgraceful
in every manner that even she dared not acknowledge him before the world, or
even to her own family. He was a sailor—a common foremast hand—and some weeks
after their marriage, had been induced, during a drunken frolic, to ship with some comrades
on board a whaler just ready for sea, and when he recovered his senses found himself
out of sight of land, with a three-years' voyage before him.

This was only a month previous to my return, and Maud Vaughn, remembering that
her marriage was without witness or proof, and under a feigned name, and, moreover,
already weary of her folly, at once resolved to forget the secret chain binding her to it,
secure that, even in case of her husband's return, he would never dare to claim her without
proof or even probability to adduce in support of a pretension which she should indignantly
deny.

In the first moment of my return she spread her lures, and baited her cunning snare
with the smiles and sighs, the blushes and half-uttered regrets for former misconduct,
which might have led a sounder judgment, a colder heart captive. She had not intended
to reveal the secret even when her object was effected; but, cunning and resolute though
she was, she had found in me her master, and I forced the confession from her lips, word
by word, without her finding the power to resist.

When she had done, she cast herself at my feet and implored me to shield her, to aid
her in ridding herself of her disgraceful connection, for the sake of the love I had borne
her, for the sake of the life she would lead in the future—for the sake of her unborn child.
I laughed in her face.

Then she stood up, her eyes all ablaze with the haughty fire of her blood, and bade me,
if I dared, to tarnish the name we both were proud to bear, to cast dishonor on the time-honored
race whence we both were sprung. When she was willing to lay a woman's nature
in the dust, to deliberately break the laws of God and man rather than live degraded
in her father's house, where the proofless marriage would never be credited, was I, she
said, was I—a man—to be less brave, less daring in shielding the honor of our house?

“O noble house!” sneered I, “as all its daughters are `sans reproche,' so should its
sons show themselves `sans peur.' I do not wonder, fair cousin, that you exhort me to be
brave.”

I left her without any promise as to the future; and, day by day, and week by week,
and month by month, I watched the gnawing terror consuming her heart as I dallied with
the secret, half-revealing it to some chance visitor, or pretending solemn confidences with
her own relatives, whom I encouraged to frequent the house. Many a time, as, after a
stern and warning look at her, I have beckoned her grey-haired father or her fiery brother
from the room, have I seen her eyes darken, her lips blanch with the anguish she could
not quite conceal. I never went farther. I did not wish to spoil my own sport; but
chose rather, at times, to quiet the sufferer by periods of cool kindness, or even indifference.
Then, when a feeling of security had nursed her to a little strength, a new blow
fell, waking in an instant all the old terrors.

Was this amusement a little cruel? Does it remind one of the Inquisition or its archetype
and patron down below? Perhaps; but remember that this woman had deliberately

plotted to injure me as never man was injured yet and forgave the injury. I had loved
her with all the trust and strength of my ardent nature; and now I hated her; yes, hated
her with the rancor of a love poisoned at its spring, and I took my revenge after my own
fashion.

Her child was born. The old serpent, her mother, her only confidante, had not yet
discovered that I made a third in the pleasant little family secret, and so came to me the
day after the child's birth with her honeyed congratulations, and an inquiry if my son
should be christened by my own name.

“Give the boy his father's name by all means, my dear madam,” said I, looking her
in the eye until her cheeks grew white beneath her rouge, and her false mouth quivered
with rage and fear. But she mastered herself as only so well-drilled a votary of Satan
could have done, and, looking back my look, said, defiantly:

“Certainly; we will name him Egbert.”

“Ah! I do not wish to be inquisitive; but it is a curious coincidence if it is so,” said I.

She did not ask what I meant, but left the room and the house. They named the boy
Egbert—and I allowed it; for I had resolved to suffer him to grow to manhood before I
should reveal his true birth, and turn him, as an impostor, from my doors. Through the
son, too, lay a new road to the mother's heart, a new weapon in the life-long punishment I
had ordained for her.

It was about a year after this that a returning whaler brought tidings that the ship on
which my cousin's husband had embarked was lost at sea, with all hands on board.

This news I hastened to communicate to the widow, adding the suggestion that, as she
was now free, she might marry whom she would, and that I advised her to make the whole
story public at once, to withdraw from my protection, and make arrangements for a more
reputable life.

I could have pitied her then, if pity had not died out of my heart in the first year of
our quasi-marriage. She implored me not to cast her off, not to compel her to reveal her
early folly and subsequent crime. She confessed, with sobs and groans, her sins toward
me; but she protested that, through all my harshness, she had learned to love me, and
that now no new misery could equal the parting from me, and she ended by a passionate
petition that I should privately marry her again, and, accepting her for the future such as
she would make it, should forget the past and suffer her to forget it.

I have never, even among the beautiful daughters of my race, seen a woman so gorgeously
beautiful as Maud Vaughn; I have never heard so sweet a voice, never felt the
witchery of so seductive a manner, so tender or so winning an appeal. As I stood and
looked at her, kneeling at my feet, every nerve in her graceful body trembling with the
passion of the entreaty she had made, I felt the hard determination which had cased my
heart tremble and crumble beneath the magic of her presence. The old love rose up like
a mighty sea, and swept over all that had come between, burying it fathoms deep. Already
I stooped to gather her to my heart, when the door opened and the old mother
entered with the child in her arms; the child whom they had impudently named by my
name and imposed upon my bounty.

The sight sent back that mighty flood of love and forgiveness with as mighty an ebb.
I spurned the woman at my feet with such words as I never before had spoken to her. I
fiercely bade the wrinkled hypocrite at her side begone, and never darken my doors again.
I snatched the screaming child from her arms and would have tossed it through the window
to the roaring waves below; but its mother caught it from my arms, and stood before
me, defiant and beautiful as a Judith, braving me to my cruel worst.

I rushed from the house and wandered the whole night upon the beach. At daylight
my determination was reached. I would put all future relentings out of my own power,
destroy at a blow all hope for the future in the heart of my temptress, and in so doing
prepare a new torment for her in revenge for the weakness into which she had so nearly
surprised me.

I married another woman, a woman who supposed me already married, and who considered
the ceremony proposed by me as an idle farce to quiet her own conscience.

It was no innocent victim whom I thus deceived, but a woman as wily, as full of passion,
and as lax in moral strength as if she had been born twin sister of my Cousin Maud,
instead of merely being her dressing-maid.

I do not care to linger upon this part of my story, or to give it in detail. It is not
pleasant to remember the white face and steadfast eyes with which Maud listened to my
boast of what I had done, or to remember the year that followed. If when I saw the
only woman I had ever loved slowly dying of a broken heart and a bruised spirit, I found
my own heart as slowly crushed beneath the weight of that dying woman's curse, my own
spirit writhing and tortured beneath the burden of its almost accomplished revenge—if
these things were, I will not tell of them, I will not satisfy the Nemesis which has overtaken
me, by an admission that her work is accomplished. As I have lived, so will I die.

When I found that my real wife, still unconscious of her rights, was likely to become
a mother, I sent her away, and after a time followed with the lady whom all the world but
herself, myself and the wicked old mother supposed to be my wife. Returning to Cragness
after some months, we were accompanied by an infant, who was introduced to the
world as our second son, Alfred by name.

The lady's-maid had returned to England, where some years after she died, never having
suspected for a moment that her generous protector was in fact her lawful husband, or
that the brat whom she believed dead, was actually the legitimate heir of his father's name
and property.

In less than a year after this my Cousin Maud died. Of this occurrence, or of my own
feelings in connection with it, I will say nothing.

Years after I married again, my lady's-maid being as I supposed dead, although I have
since found reason to doubt whether the date of the marriage or the death should be
placed first. Nor did I particularly care, being in those days somewhat reckless, and more
than somewhat contemptuous of life, and law, and my fellow-creatures, especially of women.

My son Reginald's mother was a pretty and innocent girl whom I loved as I did my
dog, my horse, my tame doe. She loved me, too, as far as she was able, and respected
me fearfully. We were happy together, and I was sincerely sorry when she died in childbirth.

Egbert and Alfred Vaughn as they grew up displayed the honest antagonism to be expected
from their birth and antecedents. They hated each other cordially, and I hated
both, the one for his father's sake, the other for his mother's. On my youngest child I
centred such affections as I yet had to offer, and in my own heart recognized him as my
only true son, and heir of such property as I felt at liberty to bestow upon any one; the
estate of Bonniemeer, derived from my Cousin Maud, I had always destined to Egbert
her only child.

With these arrangements in my mind, it was no cause of regret to me when my son
Alfred announced his intention of leaving home forever, in consequence of the constant
quarrels between himself and Egbert, and the harshness and injustice which he complained
of having always received from me. I presented him with a thousand dollars, my
malediction, and a plain warning to let me see or hear of him no more. He sailed for Europe,
and was a few years after reported dead. I have since learned through a reliable but
secret source, that this report was circulated by himself in a childish desire to annoy me,
and to cut off all possible attempt at reconciliation on the part of his friends at home.

He little knew the utter indifference to his life or death which possessed my mind. I
accepted the contradiction without taking the trouble to make it public, and for many
years as completely set aside the memory of my son Alfred as I did that of the vicious
and disgusting woman his mother.

But now arrives the time when failing Nature warns me to be done with the concerns
of earth and resign myself to the great oblivion; and now I prepare the Parthian bolt,
which even from my grave shall reach and punish, through their descendants, those who
half a century ago stung and warped to boundless evil a nature formed by God for boundless
good. The son of Richard Grant and Maud his wife, born and bred as the eldest
son of the house of Vaughn, and heir to its wealth and honors, now in middle life, with all

the pride, the prejudice, the luxury of his assumed station fastened irrevocably upon him,
is now to learn, and to learn in face of the whole world, his own ignoble parentage, his
mother's weak and criminal subterfuge, and the relentless hate and vengeance that even
in his cradle prepared this grand finale to the drama in which he has played so important
although unconscious a part.

Before my death I shall confide this paper to my son Reginald Vaughn, with peremptory
orders to convey it at once to my solicitors, instructing them to take immediate steps
for depriving Egbert Grant of his wrongfully assumed name of Egbert Vaughn, and of
certifying the fact that Alfred Vaughn and his children are my only assuredly legitimate
descendants. The estate of Bonniemeer pertaining to Maud, wife of Richard Grant, in her
own right, devolves upon her son, but failing heirs of his body reverts to me, her nearest
living relation, and in case of such reversion I hereby express my intention of bequeathing
said property to my son Alfred and his descendants, and if sufficient time is allowed me,
shall draw up a formal instrument to that effect.

My son Reginald, rest content with this decision. You alone are, and have ever
been the son of my heart and my hopes. Whether the law would recognize your legitimacy
or not I cannot say, and the question need never be agitated, as I shall leave to you
by name the slender patrimony of Cragness, sufficient, if you are prudent, for all your
needs, especially as I have striven to imbue you with so much of my distrust and aversion
to womankind as shall keep you from the arch-folly called marriage. Over the property
now called Bonniemeer I do not consider myself to have any control, as I never was
legally married to its possessor. It descends, of right, to her son, Egbert Grant.

In concluding this confession, a model father would naturally deduce for the benefit
of his son, various moral conclusions and warnings. I prefer to leave them to your own
common-sense.

The characteristics of our race are almost unfailing in each generation. Their errors
only vary in ranging from folly to crime, according to the constitution of each member.
I have little hope that you will avoid them, but should you find it possible to do so, I
earnestly recommend the course. The old age of lawless youth is not a comfortable one,
even to a man sans peur.

31. CHAPTER XXXI.
THE ORGAN'S REQUIEM.

The darkening sky was black with the approaching tempest now, and a low
peal of thunder mingled with the deep tones of Fergus's voice as he pronounced
the last words, and suffered the parchment to fall from his hands.

In the gloomy chamber seemed to have fallen an uglier shadow than all those
crowding there before; the very air seemed thick with the passion and the
wrong, the crime and the misery summoned from their uneasy graves by the recital
just finished. Out from the record of that wicked life seemed to have
emanated a curse ready to fall upon the heads of those, his luckless descendants
already trembling in its presence. Already it had set its seal upon the wan
face of the girl, the hard rebellious brow of the man. Each looked at the other
through the gloom, as might the children of Cain have looked at each other
when first they learned to read the sign upon their father's brow.

Fergus was the first to speak, and his tone was harsh and bitter:

“Allow me to congratulate you, Neria. You are, it seems, the only veritable
Vaughn among us, although you have lost the name by marriage. Your husband,
my uncle, has as little right to it as my mother had. I wonder where we
shall find our relatives of the Grant connection.”

“Richard Grant's wife was as much a Vaughn as her cousin, our great grand
father,” said Neria, timidly.

“Ah, yes, I forgot; we may claim cousinship still through that immaculate
woman—that woman `sans reproche,' as her cousin so aptly called her,” sneered
Fergus.

In the growing gloom, Neria crept a little closer to his side, and put her hand
in his, saying, softly:

“Dear Fergus, they are dead long years ago. Let their sin and their suffering
rest with them. Let us live as if we had never learned their dismal secrets;
let us hold ourselves in the sunshine and leave these mournful shadows to themselves.
Why should we clasp them to our hearts to darken what should be all
brightness. Let us look for our own faults which, with God's mercy, may yet be set
right; and let us only remember this sad confession when we pray to God to forgive
those who sinned before us, and to keep our own feet from the bitter path
they trod.”

“This paper directs that the children of Richard Grant shall no longer bear
the name of Vaughn. It belongs alone to you,” persisted Fergus; but his face
brightened, his voice softened as Neria spoke and looked.

“Could he speak to us now he would take back that cruel wish. In the
grave all is forgiven. Make peace with his memory, dear Fergus, as you yourself
need pardon. Forgive and be forgiven.”

As she spoke, the tempest, risen to its height, broke in a fearful thunder-clap
directly above their heads; the bolt splintering the topmost crag of the Lion's
Head, and sending its blackened fragments plunging into the flat and pallid sea
at its feet. The old house rocked to its foundation, and the great organ in its
recess quivered through every fibre. Then, like the swan who dies, its agony
found voice, and from the long-silent pipes crept a strange wild sound, as fantastic
and as thrilling as the supernatural tones of the æolian harp. For one moment
its wild waves filled the chamber, then sank, trembling through fine gradations
to a whisper—a sigh faint as that of a dying infant, and were gone. “It is the
answer to my words—it is the promise of peace and pardon,” murmured Neria.

Fergus made no reply. His hard reason refused to accept this solution of
the phenomenon, yet failed to furnish a better. While he still hesitated, another
flash of lightning, yet more blinding than the last, filled the room, and in the
same instant a clattering peal of thunder seemed to burst upon their very heads.

“The house is struck—quick, Neria!” cried Fergus; and, seizing her in his
arms, rushed from the room, through the long corridors, and into the open air,
leaving the storm, the shadows, the grim, golden knight, the confession of Egbert
Vaughn, the memory of his son Reginald, of Lazarus Graves, of John Gillies,
of Giovanna Vascetti, of all the sin and misery which a hundred years had
gathered there, to hold revel together in the dreary house.

But the measure of its days was full; its heaped iniquities might no longer be
forgiven. With a thunderous crash the western wall, riven stone from stone,
fell out, and through the chasm Fergus pointed silently to the organ already
wreathed in flame, whose agile fingers ran across the keys, whose waving garments
fluttered from the choir, whose passionate breath crept through every tube,
and flaunted, banner-like, from the desecrated cross at the top.

Neria looked and hid her eyes.

“Some attempt must be made to save the house or its contents,” said Fergus,
looking impatiently down the empty road.

“Do nothing; it is the hand of God,” replied Neria, solemnly. “Let house
and secret perish together, and let us trust that, with fire from His own hand,
God has purged away the guilt of each.”

32. CHAPTER XXXII.
ULYSSES REDIVIVUS.

The tempest without was less terrible than the flames and ruin within, and
the cousins resolved upon immediate flight. But Mrs. Vaughn's ponies had
already decided the question on their own part, and tearing themselves free had
dashed down the road and out of sight just as the last fatal bolt descended.

Nancy Brume, waiting only to satisfy her conscience by informing her employers
of her intentions, had followed them, and Fergus saw no other course but
to wrap Neria as securely as possible, and with his arms about her, to half carry
and half lead her down the cliff, hoping to find some shelter at its base. But
Neria, wrought upon almost to frenzy by the scenes she had passed through,
was now inspired with a wild terror of the spot and its neighborhood, and refused
to listen to any proposition of lingering, even for a few moments.

“No, no! Let us get on. Anywhere away from this,” was her only answer
to the expostulations of her companion, and when Fergus had marked the rigid
pallor of her face, the wild light of her eyes, and the convulsive trembling of her
limbs, he no longer resisted her entreaties, but led her on through the storm,
shielding her as best he could from its fury, and silently longing to take upon
himself the double of her pain, fatigue and terror, if so she might be spared.
And still as they struggled onward through the tempest, the flames of the burning
house shed a lurid light along their path, and as they turned to look shot
upward in a torrent of fire and smoke, as if earth, refusing longer to conceal the
ghastly secrets of the house, committed them once for all to the Prince of the
Power of the Air, to do with them as he would. Then the fierce flame smouldered
down to an angry glow, and a cloud of smoke and mist wrapped the ruin
from sight.

The way was long and rough, and yet a mile from the gates of Bonniemeer,
Neria's fictitious strength suddenly gave out, and she would have fallen to the
earth but for Fergus, who hastily threw an arm about her waist, and found her in
the next moment swooning helplessly upon his breast.

No human habitation lay nearer than Bonniemeer, but some rods from where
they stood, Fergus remembered a ruined smithy whose broken roof might yet
afford some shelter from the storm; and, tenderly raising Neria in his arms, he
made his way toward it as rapidly as his burden, the blinding rain, and the approaching
darkness would allow.

As they approached the shed Neria, recovering consciousness, struggled to
regain her feet, and Fergus suffering her to so, supported her by an arm about
her waist while with the other hand he drew the light shawl more closely around
her neck. But as they gained the shelter of the smithy and paused, Fergus
looking earnestly into the face of his companion was startled by its unearthly
pallor and the vacant stare of the usually animated eyes. With a rare impulse
of tenderness he clasped her to his heart and kissing her cold cheek, murmured:

“You are too nearly an angel, for the sin and trouble of this world, darling.”

With a faint sigh Neria's head sank upon his breast, and he, not knowing
that she had swooned again, bent his own above it in caressing tenderness.

At the same moment, a man who had, at their entrance, secreted himself behind
the chimney of the forge, and thence attentively watched and listened to all

that passed, stepped quietly through a chasm in the wall of the ruin, and with
bent head and muffled form, made his way through the storm in the direction of
Bonniemeer.

An hour later, Neria, leaning heavily upon her cousin's arm, reached the
house, and was met at the door by Francia.

“Why Neria! How came you to walk in such a dreadful storm, and where
is the carriage? But what do you think? Papa is here.”

“Here!” exclaimed Neria, faintly.

“Yes, indeed. He came in the stage-coach, and one of Burrough's men
drove him over about three o'clock. He wanted to go on to Cragness and meet
you, but you had the ponies, and the carriage horses are both sick, John says,
so—but you musn't stand here in your drenched clothes. Go up stairs, please,
and I will run and tell papa you are come home.”

“No, no, not yet,” cried Neria, catching at Francia's dress as she turned
toward the library door.

“I am so tired and wet, he would be disturbed,” pursued she, in answer to
the look of surprise upon the young girl's face. “Let me go up stairs first and
change my dress.”

“Come then, I will go and help you. Let us be as quick as we can. Papa
must be asleep or he would hear your voice.”

“Wait a moment, Neria,” interrupted Fergus, and drawing her a little aside,
whispered,

“Shall you tell my uncle what we have discovered?”

“O no,” returned Neria, in the same tone, “what need of disturbing him
with it? Let us forget it, or at least appear to forget.”

“Fergus, you shouldn't keep Neria now, she is very wet and will take cold.
Besides, she wants to see papa,” called Francia, from the foot of the stairs; and
Neria obeyed the summons, while Fergus, with rather an angry glance at his
cousin, sought his uncle for the double purpose of greeting him and of relating
the catastrophe of Cragness.

Half an hour later when Neria, refreshed, but still pale and worn with her
recent fatigue of body and mind, came to greet her husband, Vaughn met her
with a grave and even pitiful tenderness very different from the fond devotion
he had been wont to exhibit in the first days of their marriage. And as Neria
raised her eyes to his face she was shocked to see how it had changed since
their separation.

“You are not looking well, Sieur. Have you been ill?” asked she, kindly,
and yet with a timid reserve in her voice, painfully familiar to her husband's ear.

“Not at all, only hard at work,” replied he, releasing the hand he had taken
as he kissed her cheek. “I have found plenty to occupy my time, especially of
late, and I have only asked a furlough now for a week. I shall return to-morrow.”

“So soon?” asked Neria, and to Vaughn's sensitive ear it was as if she had
said, “It is well it is no longer.”

He made no reply, but Francia's voice volubly filled the silence with regrets,
entreaties and exclamations of dismay. Fergus standing in a distant window
with his back to the room, took no part in the conversation. He had fancied
his uncle's greeting to him strangely cold, and his manner repellant although
strictly courteous; and Fergus, man of the world as he was, was still young
enough to allow a slight he could not resent to obviously disturb his mind.

Tea was served, and under the genial influence of the brilliant table, the exquisite

beverage, and the harmonious influence of social feeling, a certain superficial
cheerfulness veiled for a time to each mind its substantial anxieties and
troubles. But when in the great drawing-room they gathered about the smouldering
fire, and looked each in the other's face, a shadow of reserve and isolation
seemed to stand between, dividing those who should have been nearest,
and replacing the fond confidences of a reunited family by the ominous sentence,
“Every heart knoweth its own bitterness, and there is a grief with which
the stranger intermeddleth not.” Only Francia, in whose mind the necessity
of concealing her feelings from Fergus was even more urgent than the feelings
themselves, assumed a liveliness so forced as to border on levity, and without
perceiving that no one listened, no one applauded, that Vaughn was abstracted
and gloomy, Neria pre-occupied with her own thoughts, and Fergus with Neria.

The evening dragged wearily on, and at an earlier hour than usual Neria
rose, pleading fatigue, and bade good-night. Vaughn accompanied her to the
foot of the stairs, and taking her hand looked deep into her eyes.

“Sleep well to-night, pale nun,” said he, sadly. “To-morrow I shall be gone.”

“O Sieur! you do not think I wish it? You do not feel your visit unwelcome?”
asked Neria, in pained surprise.

“My visit? You are right, Neria, I have no home, no wife. Good-night,
child, do not be grieved at what I say, do not think I blame you. You have
been as courteous to me as to any gentleman who might have been the guest of
the house for a night. More, I did not expect, or if I did, I deserved to be again
disappointed.” He smiled as men have smiled while death tore at their hearts
and drank their blood, and left her to wearily climb the stairs and sink forlorn
upon the floor of her chamber, crying,

“O mother, broken-hearted mother, why did you not cast me into the sea
before you died upon its brink? Cruel, cruel life, and O most merciful death!”

33. CHAPTER XXXIII.
NOBLESSE OBLIGE.

The next morning, Colonel Vaughn, returning from his morning walk, was
overtaken by a ragged boy, who thrusting a billet into his hand with the injunction,
“Miss Rhee says you must look at it right off,” turned and shot away in the
direction of Carrick with a rapidity strongly suggestive of a reward in prospect.

Vaughn looked after him a moment in some surprise, and then opening the
paper read,

“I am dying. Come to me once more for the sake of Francia's mother, if not
for the sake of poor Anita.”

As he read, Vaughn's haggard face grew yet paler, and he muttered:

“Does not the day bring its own troubles without calling back those of yesterday?
Anita, Gabrielle, Francia, if I have wronged you, be content, for Neria
revenges all.”

Tearing the paper into atoms, he scattered them upon the fresh autumn wind
and walked slowly homeward.

The unsocial breakfast over, Vaughn took his hat and left the house, but
paused a moment on the terrace, doubting whether he should not mention his
destination, and yet disliking to enter upon the subject of Mrs. Rhee with any
member of the family who had been taught to avoid her name.

Standing thus, Fergus's voice reached his ear through the closed blinds of the
library. “You look ill and worn, Neria. Are you disturbed at anything?”

“How can you ask, Fergus? This terrible secret crushes me to the earth.
It will kill me with its shame and sin,” murmured Neria in reply; and Vaughn
starting as if a serpent had lain at his feet, sprang down the steps and struck
toward Carrick, his brows drawn low above his glittering eyes, his mouth hard
and white with the emotion he suppressed.

Arrived at the little cottage, he was admitted by the old domestic as an
expected guest, and conducted at once to Mrs. Rhee's bedchamber.

“You have come!” exclaimed the dying woman, extending her wasted hands
and fastening her eyes hungrily upon his face. “I was afraid you would not.”

“Why should I refuse, Anita? If you indeed are dying, I shall lose in your
death a heart that once, at least, loved me well.”

And Vaughn, half bitterly, half tenderly pressed the thin hands to his lips; and,
seating himself, retained them in his grasp. Upon the wan face of the dying
woman came the flush and light of almost incredible joy, and the ebbing life
seemed to rush back in a flood to her heart as she cried:

“And you say it! O Frederick, not once, but always—now—this very moment,
I love you as no woman ever will or ever can love you. Believe that, and tell
me you believe it before I die, for it is so many, many years that you have forced
me to be silent, that you cannot know how unswerving my love has been from
then till now.”

“And has this love been joy or sorrow?” asked Vaughn, abruptly.

“A bitter joy, a cherished sorrow,” replied Anita, atter a pause.

“So is love always to one of the two it falls between,” returned Vaughn,
harshly. “Be content, Anita, your love is as happy as mine; happier, for it had
its day, a brief one, perhaps, but bright while it lasted. You were content while
we were abroad?”

“Content!” exclaimed Anita, while the flush upon her cheek deepened to a
fever glow. “Each moment of that time has made tolerable a year of the life
since. I die because those moments are expended.”

“Pity me, then, Anita,” groaned Vaughn, hiding his face upon the bed.
“Pity me, for I have no such memories to support me, and I am a man and cannot
die.”

“She does not love you then, this pale girl, whom you have placed above all the
queens of the earth by giving her your heart and your name?” asked the octoroon,
fiercely.

“She does not love me! She loathes my presence, my voice, my face. If I
touch her she swoons with disgust and terror.”

As the bitter words dropped from his lips Vaughn would, if he could, have
snatched them back, but it was too late. Anita's jealous ears had caught every
one, and she murmured passionately, “If I could but live, if I could but
live!”

Vaughn did not hear her. He was pacing the little room through and
through, and already had forgotten the presence of the dying woman, when she
said meaningly,

“There is good cause, no doubt, for such coldness. Does Fergus Murray
remain at Bonniemeer since your return?”

Vaughn was at her side in an instant, her hands grasped in his, her eyes
chained by the terrible inquisition of his gaze. “Anita! What does this
mean? Explain yourself, or you shall die repenting that you had ever spoken.”

“You should have learned in the old time that to threaten was to seal my
lips,” returned Anita sullenly.

“Yes, but speak! Woman, you will drive me mad! Speak out, for God's
sake.”

“For your sake, who are my God, I will speak. Do you not know that long
before the fatal idea of making her your wife occurred to you, your nephew loved
her and she him? She would have married him, but it was better to be mistress
of Bonniemeer than the wife of a young man with his fortune yet to
make—”

“No. There you are wrong, I will swear,” interposed Vaughn, sternly. “She
has nothing mean or calculating about her. She is above the world in her errors
as in her virtues.”

“O well then,” sneered Anita. “Very likely it was some romantic idea of
gratitude, of sacrificing her own wishes to those of the man who had been a
providence to her when Providence deserted her. She offered herself a victim
to your passion.”

Again Vaughn started to his feet, stung to the heart by an explanation tallying
so cruelly with the experiences of his married life. “And I, who loved her
so far beyond myself, accepted the sacrifice.”

“The sacrifice was incomplete it seems, for she could not conceal, even in
your arms, her regrets for another,” said she, cunningly.

Vaughn paused in his stride, looked at her as looks the wounded lion at the
foe who has hurt him unto death and yet holds himself beyond his reach, and
said nothing.

“It is not for myself that I speak,” resumed Anita; “I am dying, and even
though I lived, I have long since relinquished all hope of your love; but it is
Francia—it is the child of my child who is the true sufferer, the real victim.
Long ago, before you forbade her to visit me, I knew that she loved Fergus, and
when I found her suffering and troubled, I drew from her the secret that was
poisoning her life. She loved Fergus, and Fergus would have loved her, but
that Neria stood between, and drew him to her with the wonderful magic of her
smile. I tried to soothe and quiet her, but the child inherits the passions of
her mother's race with the pride of yours, and she threw herself away upon a
man whom already she despises. Neria married you, and now rewards herself
for the sacrifice by indulging her passion for Fergus in your absence. “Do you
know where they were yesterday?”

“At Cragness,” replied Vaughn, briefly.

“Yes. The whole day alone in that deserted house. Even the woman who
lived there was sent to Carrick, and it was night before they returned home.”

“What scandal are you trying to make of this? The place was struck by
lightning and burned to the ground. Mrs. Vaughn's horses were frightened and
escaped, and she was forced to walk home; of course it was late when they arrived.
Be careful, Anita, not to go beyond the truth.”

“Beyond!” exclaimed the octoroon, with an evil laugh. “Be careful you,
not to go so far as the truth if you still would hold to your idol. How engrossing
the conversation or the business which took them there must have been,
when neither the lady nor the gentleman perceived the tempest gathering in time
to escape it! Nancy Brume had watched it for hours, and went to the library
door to warn them of it, but, although she knocked loudly, no one replied. Mrs.
Vaughn is a great business woman, I believe; probably she was engaged in settling
old accounts.”

“That is enough. Not one word more,” groaned Vaughn, and his torturer,
looking in his livid face and meeting the gaze of his burning eyes, saw that it

was enough, and sank back upon the pillows exhausted with the vehemence of
her own passion. When she spoke again it was in an altered tone. “Frederick,
shall not I see Francia once more before I die?”

“To poison her ears with this?”

“No; I swear before God not to reveal one word of all that has passed between
us. I only wish to bid her good-by, to kiss her lips and feel her pure
breath upon my cheek. Remember, she is the only creature of my blood in the
whole world. You will not deny my dying wish?”

“I dare not. She shall come, if you will promise also not to reveal yourself.”

“I promise. When shall she come?”

“To-day.” I shall not return to Bonniemeer, but you may send for her.”

“You will not return! Will you not let them know that they are discovered?”

“Discovered? I do not comprehend you, Mrs. Rhee,” said Vaughn, with a
haughty coldness. “The scandalous suspicions you have suggested with regard
to my wife and my nephew, inspire in my mind only a feeling of contempt
for the slanderer who can utter them. They harmonize well with the anonymous
letter whose author I now recognize.”

Anita started to her elbow. “An anonymous letter relating to Neria and
Fergus!” cried she, in tones of genuine surprise. “Have you such a one?
It was not from me. I swear it by all that is sacred.”

“It is sufficient. I believe you,” said Vaughn, briefly.

“And this letter, from an entirely different source—does this also excite only
contempt for the slanderer who wrote it?” sneered the octoroon.

Vaughn hesitated; but only for a moment, only until the chivalrous honor of
his nature could assert itself. Then he said: “Yes; I will not believe Neria
guilty of more than the fatal error of sacrificing herself to me, until my own
eyes or her own tongue convict her.”

“Such proof you will never have. She is too careful,” muttered the baffled
woman, bitterly.

“Such proof I shall never have, for a lie cannot be proved. To connect sin
or shame with Neria is to drag the heavens down and trample on them.” But
as the words left his lips, a fiend's echoed in his ear those that Neria had that
morning spoken to Fergus:

“This terrible secret crushes me to the earth. It will kill me with its shame
and sin,” and his proud heart quailed within him. He threw himself upon his
knees. “My God, my God!” groaned he. “Let me not lose my reason, let me
not lose my faith in her. Take life, take honor, happiness, all, but leave me my
faith in her—let me die with her pure image in my heart.” Never prayer was
thus wrung from the centre of a tortured soul, and remained unanswered, never
since He, hanging on the cross, called upon the Father and was comforted.
Vaughn arose pale and serene. The temptress, looking at him, knew that her
power was over, her work done, and with a bitter moan she turned her face to
the wall and was dumb. Without another word Vaughn left the room, and an
hour later was on his way to the great battle he knew to be approaching, and in
whose front he now hoped to lay down the life he no longer cared to keep. He
had not, however, forgotten his promise. In the hurried note of leave-taking,
written to Francia, from Carrick, he had bidden her go to Mrs. Rhee as soon as
possible, and had sent word to Neria that she would receive a letter from him in
a day or two, explaining his abrupt departure in full.

34. CHAPTER XXXIV.
MRS. RHEE'S PARTHIAN ARROW.

To Neria came Francia with her father's note. She found her in the library
with Fergus, who reported the present condition of the ruins at Cragness,
and the attempt he had, by his uncle's desire, put in progress to rescue
such books, pictures or furniture as might have been spared by the flames. As
Francia entered, Neria was saying—

“I am sorry anything is to be done. I had rather everything perished together.”

“That is just of a piece with my news,” exclaimed Francia, in a voice oddly
compounded of grief and vexation.

“Here papa has run away without even coming back to bid good-bye, and
only says it was impossible for him to see us again before starting, but he will
write to you to-morrow to explain; and he says that poor Mrs. Rhee is dying
and wants to see me again and I may go. Come with me, Neria, please. I
don't know what to say to any one who is dying, and I shall be afraid.”

“Afraid of what?” asked Fergus, somewhat contemptuously.

“Not afraid of being too tender with her, as you might be,” retorted Francia,
turning decidedly toward Neria, who sat pale and silent.

“Come with me, won't you?” pleaded she.

“To Mrs. Rhee? Yes, certainly; but show me your father's note. Gone!”

“Yes, actually gone. Here's the note, and I will run and change my dress.
Shall I order the pony carriage?”

“Yes, please,” replied Neria, absently, and as the door closed, turned to
Fergus, her eyes full of perplexity and dismay.

“Why should Sieur have left us so, and why was he so strange while here?”

“I cannot tell, nor do I wish to speculate upon either question. It would be
an impertinence toward my uncle. He promises to write and explain fully to-morrow,
you see,” replied Fergus, characteristically.

“Yes, but I feel that something is amiss. I had meant—I had hoped while
he was here—”

She paused and Fergus would never have asked her to continue, had his curiosity
been excited to its fullest extent. He only took her hand, kissed it lightly
and walked away to the window, lest he should seem to watch the emotion
she could scarce control.

The silence had not been broken when Francia returned, bringing Neria's
hat and announcing the carriage.

Fergus, with silent courtesy, waited upon his cousins to the door, helped
Francia to enter the carriage as carefully as he did Neria, and saw them drive

away before re-entering the house. Upon the library floor he found Neria's
handkerchief, wet with the tears she had been unable quite to repress. He put
it to his lips and hid it in his bosom, whispering—

“Did she weep because she loves him and he is gone, or because she loves
me and fears her own heart in his absence? And I—can I stay here loving
her as I do love her? Did he read it in my face or in my heart? Is this the
pure honor I have tried to guard before everything? I will leave this place to-night.”
And then, sternly suspicious of the tender weakness which had overtaken
him, Fergus drew the little handkerchief from its hiding place, and denying
himself even one more kiss, laid it upon the table, and taking a book, buried
himself in its contents with all the force of his iron will.

The rapid drive to Carrick was almost a silent one. Neria, sad and grave
answered but briefly Francia's first attempts at conversation, and as they approached
their destination the young girl herself grew grave in remembering
their errand.

“You must go up-stairs with me,” whispered Francia, as they stood in the
passage of the little cottage, and she was informed that Mrs. Rhee would see
her. Neria silently assented, and the two entered together the chamber of the
dying woman and stood at her bedside. She was dozing, but opened her eyes
as they approached, fixed them fondly on Francia and then turned to Neria.

“Since you have come here I have something to say to you, Mrs. Vaughn,”
said she, maliciously. “I did not send for you, but Fate has given me the opportunity.
Francia, will you wait below for a few moments? I must see you last.”

“Certainly, if you wish, aunty,” replied Francia, moving somewhat reluctantly
to the door, and casting wondering looks at Neria, who although much
surprised at the request made no movement to contradict it.

“Sit here close by my bedside,” continued the dying woman, as the door
closed behind Francia.

Neria silently obeyed, and Mrs. Rhee gazed scrutinizingly upon the pure
pale face with its fearless eyes and queenly mouth.

“I will move you from that proud calm before I am done,” thought she, and
then said, significantly, “Mr. Vaughn was here this morning and talked to me a
long time of you.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes. You think it strange that he should confide so much in one who has
been no better than a servant in his house. But old habits are strong, and long
before he ever saw you he found in me all that he required of friendship or love.
Why should he not return to me in his disappointment and his grief?”

“I have not blamed him for doing so,” replied Neria, calmly, as the other
waited for an answer.

“But your lips grow white with mortification at finding that he confides in
me what he hides from you. You would give that diamond off your finger to
know what those confidences were,” persisted the other.

“I would not allow you to tell me if you wished. What Colonel Vaughn
desires to keep secret from me I have no desire to learn.”

“You were always a hypocrite, but you never cheated me with your artful
ways, nor do you now,” exclaimed the octoroon, fiercely. “But you shall know,
whether you will or not. You are found out, madam! Your husband has gone
away without seeing you, because he has discovered your intrigues with Fergus
Murray, and will not stoop even to reproach you with your unfaithfulness, he
holds you in such contempt.”

Neria rose and stood looking down upon the miserable woman who sought
to insult her, with a sublime compassion, a lofty innocence.

“I do not know what you are saying, but I will not listen longer. You must
be very unhappy to feel so toward me, who never harmed or wished you ill. It
is not the first time you have hurt me. I knew that you tried to make Chloe
poison me. I knew that you made Francia suspicious and jealous of me, but I
knew, too, your own unhappy story and I forgave and pitied you, understanding
how you should feel me an usurper both of Francia's place and of your daughter's.
And even now, when you have done me this last great injury, I still can
pity, and if before you die your conscience stings you for the evil you have done
and tried to do to me, remember that I have freely forgiven all.”

“Forgive! You forgive me!” screamed Mrs. Rhee, her face distorted, her
eyes glaring with impotent rage. “You dare to stand there, accusing and forgiving
me; you, whose husband has this very day left you forever because he
knew you to be false and a wanton—”

“Stop!” cried Neria, and into her pale face flashed the seraphic power
which had subdued Luttrell, which had drawn her secret from Chloe's reluctant
lips; the power of a nature untouched by sin, though filled with the knowledge
of good and evil.

“Stop! I will not allow you to add to the burden already on your soul.
Do you not see that it is yourself and not me whom you injure? Do you think
any words of yours could make such a monstrous lie look like the truth to a man
like Vaughn, or do you think you could force me to believe that he believed it?
You have failed, utterly failed, and I have no anger, only a profound compassion,
a full forgiveness for you. Pray God to forgive you, also, and thank Him that
you have not been suffered to succeed.”

“Begone! Send me Francia,” gasped the dying woman, upon whom her
excessive emotion was telling fearfully.

Neria left the room without reply, and telling Francia that Mrs. Rhee was
ready for her, added a caution against staying long, as she was already much exhausted.
Half an hour passed while Neria, waiting in the little parlor, resolutely
battled with the doubts and terror, inspired, in spite of her determination, by Mrs.
Rhee's explanation of Vaughn's disappearance.

She was roused from her reverie by quick footsteps running down the stairs,
and Francia's voice calling to her from the passage, as she hurried out of the
house and seated herself in the carriage. Neria followed with some anxiety.

“Is some one with Mrs. Rhee? She should not be left alone,” asked she,
hesitating.

“Yes, I called the nurse from the next room. She did not wish me to stay,”
replied Francia, hurriedly; as she drew her veil closely about her face, and
taking the reins drove rapidly homeward.

Neria looked at her in suprise. The voice, the manner, the reserve was so
unlike Francia, especially toward herself.

“You are distressed at sight of your old friend so near her death, dear?” said
she, inquiringly, when some moments had passed in silence.

“My old friend? Yes, and more of a friend than younger ones. If I had
known her sooner—”

She stopped abruptly, as fearing to betray a secret, and with averted face
urged the horses to a more rapid pace.

Neria leaned back in her seat, her eyes fixed upon the distant shimmer of
the sea, lying like a lake of fire beneath the noonday sun, and the bitterness of
wronged and repulsed affection surged irresistibly upon her soul.

“First Vaughn, and now Francia; she has alienated both with her wicked
falsehoods!” thought she.

Reaching home, Francia threw the reins to the groom, sprang from the carriage
without a word, and hurried to her own room. Neria did not follow her
there, but still stood wistfully watching her retreating figure when Fergus,
opening the library door, asked her to enter for a moment.

“I wanted to say good-bye, that is all. I must return to town to-night, and
am about to start for Carrick now. Can John drive me over?” said he, with
forced indifference of manner.

“You, too!” exclaimed Neria in a tone of sharp distress, and turning, she
would have left the room, but staggering blindly against a chair sank beside it,
her face hidden upon it, and broke into a passion of tears.

Fergus, not guessing the pain and doubt filling her heart to overflowing when
she entered, stood thunderstruck for a moment, and then a strange wild joy
throbbed through his veins. This uncontrollable grief, this emotion so rare in
one so habitually calm; was it that Neria felt his presence a necessity, that she
leaned upon him and could not lose him?

He stooped and raised her in his arms. “Darling! what is this?” whispered
he, in a palpitating voice. “Shall I not leave you? Do you care to
have me stay?” His lips sought hers and kissed them tenderly, but Neria
wrenched herself from his embrace, crying:

“This! O this is worst of all! Leave me, cast me off as they have done,
but do not make me despise myself and you! Such love is worse than the desertion,
the alienation, the hate that others have heaped upon me!”

She fled out of his presence, and Fergus, guessing at his mistake, cursing
his fatal error, and consumed with mortification at his own weakness and the
injury he had done both to Neria's feelings and her opinion of himself, left the
house abruptly, with no further leave-taking or explanation.

35. CHAPTER XXXV.
“NOT LAUNCELOT OR ANOTHER.”

The next day brought Vaughn's promised letter to Neria. It was this:

“So soon! O, I shall be too late; I shall not reach him! O, Francia, why
did you not give it me at once? I must go to him; I must go directly! If it
should already be too late! My God, if it should be too late!”

Francia looked at her in astonishment. Could this be the calm and self-contained
Neria; this wild-eyed creature, moving, looking, speaking with an impetuosity
to which her own stormy moods were calm? And so resolute to seek,
even upon a battle-field, the husband whose danger and whose absence had been
hitherto so tranquilly borne? What could it all mean? But almost before the
question was formed Francia's affectionate nature had set it aside for the more
pressing need of sympathizing with and comforting even an undue affliction.

“I will go, too, Neria, darling, if you must go,” said she, beginning with busy
hands to arrange the clothes in a travelling sack that Neria was already packing.

“Come, then, but hurry; for every moment is a life now!” said Neria, ringing
the bell violently to give the order: “Tell John to harness the horses as

quick as possible to drive me to Carrick, and send Mrs. Barlow to me immediately.”

A few moments later, the two young women were on their road; and that
evening, as Mr. Murray and Fergus sat at their unsocial tea-table they were
startled by the intelligence that Mrs. and Miss Vaughn were in the drawing-room,
and would like to see the elder gentleman as quickly as possible.

Both answered the summons; both heard in silent astonishment the hurried
announcement that Colonel Vaughn's wife and daughter were about to seek him
upon the field of battle, and each replied in his own way—the father by a compassionate
smile and a shake of the head so courteous as to be almost an affirmative,
the son by the curt remark:

“I should think you were out of your senses, both of you. It is perfectly
impossible.”

“I must try it. I must see my husband at all hazards,” exclaimed Neria,
feverishly, turning from one to the other with hands clasped in unconscious
appeal.

“If it could be done at any hazard, however great, Neria, you should try it,
and I with you,” said Fergus, coming close to her, and taking the clasped hands
in his; “but we might not even be allowed to try. It would be impossible for
any but a military man or a government agent to obtain a pass to the front now,
and without one we should be turned back before we were within ten miles of
the scene of action. It is quite impossible, believe me. Do you not say so, sir?”

“Of course, of course; Fergus is entirely correct, my dear, and you can only
submit. In a few days, or whenever hostilities cease, it is very possible something
may be done; but at present it is quite, O quite out of the question,”
replied Mr. Murray, in his silkiest manner, but with a determination in his cold
eyes that smote Neria with dismay.

“Quite impossible?” echoed she, despairingly.

“Quite, my dear Mrs. Vaughn. In fact, the telegraph announces to-night
that action has already commenced with the right wing of our army; and long
before you could reach even Washington the whole force will have marched and
countermarched, have moved this way and that, hither and you, a dozen times.
If my life depended upon it, absolutely my life, madam, I would not undertake
to find Colonel Vaughn until this battle is well over.”

Neria's head dropped upon her breast. “And when it is over he will be
where I shall never find him!” muttered she.

The cool-blooded old man could not hear the words; but even he could not
see unmoved the despairing attitude, the woful face of one so fair, so young, so
delicately nurtured. He laid a hand upon her shoulder, and the dry white fingers
quivered with a motion that was almost a caress.

“Don't be so much disappointed, my dear,” said he, kindly, “Vaughn will be
at home again before long, and that will pay for all.”

Neria looked vacantly in his face, and turned to Fergus. “And do you refuse
to help me, too, Fergus?” asked she, unconsciously using as a weapon in her
extremity the very ove whose confession she had so sharply rebuked a few hours
before.

“Refuse you, Neria?” exclaimed the young man, passionately; “it is not I,
it is the fact that refuses you. I would do more than you think to satisfy you,
if it were possible; but it is not. You can only wait.”

“Wait! But while I wait he will be killed; and then—” She looked at
him, at his father, at Francia. In every face she read denial, and all the pity

and the love covering it could not assuage the sharp pang that pierced her heart,
the bitterness as of death borne in upon her soul by the mocking echo, “Too
late! too late!”

To return to Bonniemeer in this uncertainty was impossible; and for the
next four days the two ladies waited under Mr. Murray's roof for the almost
hourly bulletins flashed over the wires from the scene of action, and regularly
brought to them by Fergus, even before the public could receive them.

At last came the victory; but victory or deteat were one to Neria in the terrible
anxiety devouring her. The returns from the regiments arrived, and hour
by hour Fergus came with cheery step to say, “No bad news yet, Neria.” At last
he did not come until, as the suspense grew intolerable, and Neria was about to
venture forth to seek him, she heard him slowly ascending the stairs. She met
him in the doorway, looked into his marble face and pitiful eyes, and crying,
“Too late! too late!” sank swooning at his feet.

36. CHAPTER XXXVI.
TWO STORIES.

A week later, Fergus returning from “the front” with a companion, brought
him to Bonniemeer, and into Neria's presence.

“This is Reuben Brume,” said he, introducing him. “He was close beside
my uncle when he fell, and he will tell you all.”

Neria raised her dim eyes to the sergeant's agitated face. “Please tell me
everything you can remember of him,” said she, simply.

“Well'm, the kunnel seemed as chirk that morning as ever I see him. I
took particular notice, as we come in sight of the enemy, and he turned round to
cheer us on, how bright his eyes was, and how his mouth shet together as if
there wouldn't be no two ways of settling with him that day. He didn't say
much, only told us to remember any one of us might be the man to save his
country, and he told us to fight for them we loved at home, who was a praying for
our success, and then he sung out “Charge!” and we went in. What come next
I couldn't say particuler. The blood sort of got into my head like it does in a wild
creter's, and I just let drive right and left on my own hook 'thout noticing the rest
on 'em, till I found myself right cheek by jowl with the kunnel. Lord! how he did
fight! He slashing away at a big fellow, a captain, I guess it was, any way, an
officer, who was slashing away again at him, and the two mated so equal there's
no knowing who'd have had the best of it, when up come a big brute behind the
officer and with a yell and a cuss druv his bay'net square through the kunnel's
breast, through the very heart of him, I reckon, for he just throwed up his arms
and staggered back with one mortial cry, and was dead 'fore he reached the
ground. No one heerd that cry but me; but I did—it was your name, ma'am.”

Reuben Brume stopped and turned his face away; but though tears rained
down his bronzed cheeks, and Fergus was fain to hide his face, Neria's eyes
glittered cold and bright as winter stars, and her voice was unshaken while she
asked: “And his body?”

“It had to be left there, ma'am. It wasn't a minute, hardly, just time for me
to smash in that rascal's skull with the breech of my gun, which my bayonet
was lost; when the order came to fall back behind the batteries. Before night
we'd fell back five mile, and though we beat 'em in the end, the place where the
kunnel fell was fur within their lines. The gineral asked leave to send in and
bury our dead, but they refused; they said they buried 'em themselves, but—”

“Colonel Vaughn was dead when he fell?” interposed Fergus, hurriedly.

“Yes, I'm sartain sure he was,” asserted he, stoutly. “The bay'net went in
just about here, and that's right over the heart, and he wouldn't have fell as he
did unless it had been a mortial wound. It touched the life for sartain, ma'am,
and he never suffered no more after that. His eyes was shut, and his face turning
white, in the last glimp I caught, just as we was falling back, and the enemy
piling along after us.”

“Over the bodies of the fallen?” asked Neria again, in that icy voice.

“Well'm, I guess they didn't stop to pick their way much, that's a fact,”
assented Reuben, reluctantly; and Neria turned her stony face toward the window
and seemed to gaze at the far-off sea, smiling and dimpling in the gorgeous
hues of sunset.

At a sign from Fergus the soldier followed him silently from the room, and
from the house, and a few days later shipped on board a whaler for a long voyage,
so careful was Fergus to remove from Neria's path all that might remind
her of her loss.

It was the depth of an autumnal night. Driven before the hurrying wind the
bewildered clouds drifted hither and thither, now huddling in massive groups,
now breaking and fleeing to the four quarters of the heavens only to gather
again, again to flee. The late moon rising through one of these cloud-banks
looked out upon the scene, tipped with silver the crested ocean waves, flaunted
her banner across the combat of wind and forest, and fell like a benediction
upon the golden harvest fields already ripe for the reaper. But from one field
the blessed moonlight shrank affrighted, upon one harvest fell no benediction,
but rather a curse; for when climbing the mountain behind it, the moon hung
where she might view it well, she hid her face and all earth remained in darkness.
It was a bloody battle-field, it was the harvest of a violent and cruel death.

And yet the dying and the dead were not sole possessors of the field, for as
the moon hurrying from the refuge of one cloud to that of another, shot a wild
flood of light upon the scene, a human figure stole from the covert of the wood
and crossed rapidly to the centre of the field, where, sheltered behind a rampart
of lifeless bodies, lay the tall and stalwart figure of a man still grasping a broken
sword, while on his breast lay congealed the blood that had flowed from well-nigh
a mortal wound. He was alive, for in a death-pale face shone two resolute
dark eyes, moving slowly from side to side as if to recall the scene or speculate
upon the chances of help.

Between these wistful glances and the sky, came the dark figure of a man
stooping to peer into the face of the wounded officer, who in seeing it involuntarily
closed his eyes and shrank a little, brave soldier though he was, in thinking
that the knife of an assassin and a thief was to end the life just creeping
back to his frozen heart. But it was no assassin's hand raising that fallen head
to a fairer position, no assassin's voice muttering,

“It's he, sure enough, but be he dead or not is more than I can say. Master,
be you alive?”

Colonel Vaughn's eyes opened wearily, and his white lips whispered, “James!
Is it you?”

“Yes, sir, and main glad to find you alive,” replied the faithful servant, who
having followed his master to the battle-field as he would upon any other expedition,
made the cause in which he fought quite subsidiary to the service that
had led him into it.

“How came you here?” whispered the white lips again.

“Why, sir, I saw you go down, and then our men fell back, as they called it,
I should say ran, and the others after them; but my lookout was to keep near
you, sir, to help you if you was alive, and to bury you if you was dead. So,
passing through a wood back here about a mile, I just swarmed up a thick tree
and waited till they'd gone by, both lots of 'em. Then I waited a spell longer
till it was dark, and then made my way back here. When the moon rose I took
a squint over the field and made out pretty nigh where you lay, and so come
across, and here I be.”

“Faithful fellow. But I will die here,” murmured Vaughn.

“No, sir, you won't, if I may be so bold. I'm a bit of a surgeon myself,
'specially since I was in hospital last month, and I'm going to bind up your
wound and then carry you on my back to a shanty up on the mountain yonder.
There's an old black fellow lives there who's got the name of a wizard among
the country folks. I heard all about it from one of our contrabands, but if he's
the old boy himself he shall take you in and do for you, and when you can move
we'll make a push for camp.”

“Wait. You shall not stir me from this place, James, until you promise to
obey my orders.”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

“You are not to tell this negro my name. Tear off my shoulder-straps, that
he may not know my rank. If I die, bury me here, and go home to tell my wife.
If I recover I shall volunteer as a private under another name. Meantime call
me John Brown, and say I am your brother. You will do all this?”

“Yes, sir, if you say so, of course,” assented the groom, somewhat reluctantly,
but too well trained to express surprise or ask an explanation of what
seemed an unaccountable whim upon his master's part.

“Support me, and I think I can walk. Have you a little brandy?”

“Here is your own flask, sir; it is filled with better stuff than they give us,”
said James; and after swallowing the cordial, Vaughn rose to his feet, and,
leaning heavily upon the shoulders of his faithful servant, slowly crossed the
field of death, and was presently lost in the rustling shadows of the wood.

37. CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE DARK HOUR.

The days and the weeks and the months moved on. The golden autumn
gave way to the majesty of winter, winter softened beneath the kiss of spring,
like a hard old king in the embrace of his girlish bride; spring ripened into the
trancéd glow of summer, and Neria's widowed heart mourned day by day more
passionately, and more remorsefully. Remorsefully, for upon that delicate conscience
lay the burden of a noble life sacrificed to her ingratitude. Not one of
the weary days, not one of the fearsome nights since the news of Vaughn s
death, but she had told herself that it was for love of her, for sorrow at her coldness,
and remorse at the bonds he had placed upon her, that he had gone to his
death so resolutely—that death and he could not fail to meet. Day and night she
bowed herself before God and before His spirit for pardon and comfort, and day
and night she rose uncomforted, for as the flow of Heavenly love warmed and
expanded her heart, came with it the fresh consciousness of the earthly passion
sprung full-grown to life within her soul, and clamoring aloud for the food she
could not give it.

And Francia, the bright, the loving, the joyous Francia mourned also.
Mourned the father she had adored, the joy that had passed from her life and
from her home; mourned her own wasted youth and wasted heart; for this is
the cruel nature of a great sorrow, that it does not absorb and negative the
other sorrows preoccupying the heart where it comes to dwell, but rather stings
and quickens them to new life, inhabiting with them not in peace or in harmony,
but with a bitter fellowship.

To these two in their seclusion came occasionally Fergus or his father, with
news of the great world, its battles, its progress, its interests, or its gossip.
Thus they knew, or might, if they had cared to listen, how the elections went;
how England and France stood waiting, one at either hand, to side with the
stronger against the weaker party, so soon as victory should clearly declare itself
in the family quarrel they so eagerly watched; how gold, and with it bread,
and fuel, and clothes, rose day by day out of the reach of those who most needed
them.

Heard, too, how Claudia, the gayest of the gay, shone starlike at all the festivities
of not only her own city but the other great capitals of the country, and

how, while her husband buried himself to the lips in the gold the misfortunes
of the land was pouring into his coffers, Queen Claudia was forever surrounded
by a cloud of courtiers and slaves whom she managed so well that rumor found
no one among them to honor with the preference. And the hard old man, her
father, in whose heart a certain admiration for this brilliant and evil child replaced
all other emotions of tenderness to his kind, rubbed his dry white hands,
smiled a covert smile and said,

“Claudia is a clever girl, a very clever girl. She enjoys herself and spends
Livingstone's money after her own fashion, but the world finds nothing to take
hold of. A cool head, and a cool heart, too, has Mrs. Livingstone.”

But of all these, one subject alone had interest for Neria, and this was the
war. Since Vaughn's death the only link holding her to earth had seemed to
be the cause in which he died. She read all the news, listened to all the details
brought her by the Murrays, traced through the desolate southern land the
progress of our armies, but more especially the corps containing Vaughn's regiment,
whispering to herself,

“He would have been here now,” or “They need not have made this retreat
had he been with them,” and so, half persuading herself that he was still identified
with the great struggle, she identified herself with it not only in interest,
but by contributing of the means at her command, so liberally as to call down
the censure of her advisers, and a recommendation on more than one occasion
from Mr. Murray to regulate her donations somewhat upon the scale of those
of other and wealthier patriots. But Neria, gentle and yielding in most matters
of business, was here inexorable, saying, with serene decision,

“We need but little here at Bonniemeer, and all the rest goes to help his
armies and his fellow-soldiers.”

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.
CLAUDIA.

It was the twilight of a summer's day, and Neria, from the shore beneath
the ruins of Cragness, watched the curving waves slide up the sands, watched
the glory dying from the western sky, watched the faint light of the young moon
creeping down the wall and peering into the chasm whence had fled upon that
fearful evening the secrets of the gloomy old home of her fathers.

The sound of horses' feet upon the sands broke upon her revery, and, looking
around, she saw Mr. Livingstone dismounting from a carriage driven by one
of her own servants; and rising hastily went toward him, smitten with a sudden
terror by the pallor of his usually florid face and the gleam of his restless eyes.

“Mr. Livingstone!”

“It's me, Mrs. Vaughn.”

Their hands met, and Neria's eyes asked the question her lips could not form.

“Yes'm,” replied her visitor, nervously wiping the forehead where great drops
of perspiration gathered, although the night wind was blowing fresh and cool—
“yes'm, it's me, and I've come to you for help. O, Neria, she's gone, she's—”

His white lips quivered, and he stopped to swallow a great sob, while the
clammy drops upon his forehead broke out afresh.

“She's gone?—who?” asked Neria, turning pale at sight of his emotion.

“Claudia, my wife, ma'am. The woman that I've worked and toiled for day
and night, as you may say; the woman that hasn't had a want nor hardly a whim

that hasn't been satisfied ever since I gave her my name. Money! she hadn't
anything to do but sign a check; and all I had was hers, and shawls, and laces,
and diamonds, and silks at her will. She didn't like the carriage I got her when
she was married, and this very last winter I made her a Christmas present of a
new one. She wanted her servants put in livery, and livery it was, though I lost
one of my best customers, a New England man, by the means. She wanted to
go to New York and Washington for the winter, and I never said worse than
`Suit yourself, my dear;' she wanted to go to Newport, and she went—”

“But how is it? what has happened?” asked Neria, stemming the torrent of
words which seemed somewhat to relieve the over-burdened heart of the injured
husband.

“She's gone, run off; and where, or who with, or for what, I don't know
more than you,” said Mr. Livingstone, pausing in the act of wiping his forehead
again, and staring blankly into Neria's face.

“But what were the circumstances?” persisted she.

“All I know is that three days ago a letter from Newport came in with the
morning's mail, and here it is. He drew from his letter-case a note written in
Claudia's dashing hand upon the heavily-perfumed paper she affected, in these
words:

Good-bye, for you will not see me again. You have been a good master and a good
servant to me, and it was not your fault that you could not be more. I forgive your stupidities,
and part with you upon the best of terms. No one here suspects more than that
I travel to New York to-morrow; so arrange a story to suit yourself.

“It was just as she says there,” continued Mr. Livingstone; while Neria
handed back the note with a look of silent dismay.

“I went straight to Newport, of course, and, without letting on that there
was any trouble, found that Mrs. Livingstone had taken the boat for New York
the morning before, leaving word with the coachman to drive his horses back to
the city, as she should not return that way. I went quietly round to all the hotels,
but could not find that anyone whom I could suspect had been stopping in Newport,
or, at any rate, had left about that time. Several people asked, rather curiously,
if I expected to join Mrs. L. at Newport; and to all I said `No, I only
came down to settle up the bills and get a mouthful of fresh air.' Not a soul but
her father and brother, and you and I know anything of it yet; and if I could
only find her before it's too late I'd forgive her all—I would—and take her back
cheerful.”

“Would you?” asked Neria.

“Yes, I would; for somehow she's got such a hold of me, Neria, it seems
as if I could forgive her if she cost me every cent I've got in the world. It
hasn't seemed to me these three days as if I had got anything to live for. Actually,
I didn't close a bargain with a good Western customer yesterday, though
I might have with a little more talk; but, somehow, I didn't care. But where is
she, and how am I to look for her? I've come to you to know, for you always
could do more with her than anyone else, and you've got a way of looking right
into matters that I never saw in any other woman. Besides I don't mind you
knowing that my poor girl's gone astray, as I would another.”

His voice faltered as he spoke the last words, and his anxious eyes grew dim.
Neria, shocked and pained, assured him that there could be nothing she would
not gladly do to aid him were it possible to do anything, but professing an ignorance
as entire as his own of Claudia's probable movements or probable companion.
She also agreed with him upon the expediency of keeping her imprudent,

if not guilty flight secret as long as possible, and, finally, she promised, at
Mr. Livingston's solicitation, to accompany him should he discover his wife's hiding
place, and to persuade her to accept the forgiveness and opportunity for
amendment so generously offered by her husband.

With this promise Mr. Livingston departed, refusing the hospitality of Bonniemeer
even for a night, as he was eager to hear reports from the detectives he
had already secretly put upon the track.

Toward night of the next day, however, he reappeared, with an excitement
of manner and appearance, added to the disturbance of the previous day, that
prepared Neria for his news.

“Read that, ma'am,” said he, as soon as they were alone.

Mrs. Vaughn took the clumsily-folded letter extended to her, and read, in a
scrawling hand:

Mr. Livingstone is by this informed that his wife and Doctor Luttrell are stopping in
the farm-house of a man named Brown two miles west of the town of —, in the Catskill
Mountains. They call themselves Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and pass for a new married
couple. The writer of this, thinking you might like to know, takes this way of telling;
but if you will take his advice you'll let her go for a bad lot.

“There! What do you say to that?” asked Mr. Livingstone, meeting Neria's
grieved eyes with a look of impatient questioning.

“Poor Claudia!” whispered Neria.

“Yes, but she's run away with that fellow, and she's passing for his wife;
think of that; and this fellow, whoever it is, knows of it, and will tell the whole
world. Then think of me showing my face on 'Change afterward. I'll have the
law of him, if there's law in the land. I'll have damages out of him, I promise
you—good rousing damages, too—if there's such a thing as a judge and jury to
be had, and I wouldn't mind a thousand dollars divided round among 'em either,
if they couldn't do me justice without.”

“But yesterday you said you would forgive her—you said you would take her
back if she would come,” pleaded Neria, gently.

“Yes, but that was before I knew she was actually living with another man—
Mrs. Smith, indeed!—and before I knew this fellow who writes the letter knew
about it. He'll tell every one he knows, you see; there's where's the rub.”

“Perhaps not. He seems to wish well to you by writing at all, and he
surely would see that the way to serve you is to keep the matter as quiet as possible.”

“If I only knew who it was I'd let him set his own price to keep it quiet,
and pay it down, too,” mused Mr. Livingstone, unable, more than the wily Walpole,
to conceive of a man without a price.

“But Claudia? will you still forgive and shield her?”

“I don't know. It's worse than I thought. Living with another man, and
she, such a figure of a woman, to fling herself away like that! Poor thing!
where'll she get her velvets and laces now, I wonder. That fellow isn't worth
ten thousand dollars, for all the fine property he got with his wife. That went
like water as soon as she was dead. Poor Claudia; but it serves her right, it
serves her right.”

Neria looked at him in perplexity, uncertain whether to pity or to turn from
him; but the struggle was a brief one. “Let us go and find her, and on the
way we will speak of what we shall say to her,” said she, with the angelic voice
and look no one yet had ever resisted. And Mr. Livingstone, softened and
refined in spite of himself, yielded to her gentle bidding.

Arrived at their destination Mr. Livingstone left Neria at the little inn while
he made cautious inquiries as to the whereabout of Mr. Brown's farm-house and
the character and appearance of his boarders. He returned after an absence of
several hours quite excited.

“I have found her,” exclaimed he, coming close to Neria, and speaking in a
hoarse, quick tone.

“It is a lonely sort of place, no other house in sight, and I looked round
among the trees and bushes until I saw her standing at a window. She looked
pale and downcast, and as if shed be glad to be off her bargain if she could.
Poor girl! I can't but pity her, and if she's humble and sorry, and we can keep
the matter hushed up, I will hold to my word and take her home again. She's
a splendid creature at the head of my table, or receiving company, and if I separate
from her there'll be a scandal at any rate.”

“I do not doubt she repents already—it must be that she does,” said Neria,
eagerly. “And by forgiving her you may save a soul otherwise lost.”

“I'll forgive her if she feels as she ought,” replied Mr. Livingstone, stoutly;
“I've said it and I'll do it. Of course, I shall make my conditions; she can't
be quite as free with her check-book for a while, and I shall expect her to stay
at home this winter. Washington isn't a good place for a woman like her,
especially without a husband.”

“It cannot be that she will wish to go,” suggested Neria, considerably
shocked at the nature of the conditious apparently considered satisfactory by
the injured husband.

“I don't know that,” returned he, shaking his head; “Claudia can hardly live
without society and admiration, and she's always been where there was the
most of it to be found. She won't like stopping in one place; but she's got to,
if she comes back to me. I shan't trust her further than I can see her.”

“And yet you will call her wife?” broke involuntarily from Neria's lips.

“Under conditions, yes. Why, she's no worse now than a dozen women I
could name who stand as fair with the world as Claudia did last week, or does
to-day, for that matter. Society's a queer sort of affair after all, Mrs. Vaughn.”

“And shall we go at once to Claudia?” asked Neria, escaping from the discussion.

“Yes, they're harnessing a horse—here he comes now. Are you ready?”

“In one moment;” and as Neria possessed the rare feminine virtue of counting
but sixty seconds to a minute, she was ready nearly as soon as her companion.

“Now, my plan is this,” began Mr. Livingstone, as he drove down the bowery
country road; “I'll show you the house and let you go in and get over the first
with the poor girl alone. She might not feel quite so shamefaced with you as
with me, and she'd be more likely to come round to do as she'd ought to. With
me, like enough, she'd sort of straighten up and think I'd come to exult over
her and all that, when goodness knows it's the last thought in my head. But
she's a proud piece, and there's no such thing as driving her. She's got to be
coaxed and no one can come near her half so quick as you, Neria.”

“I'll do my best; but what shall I say from you, what offers or promises shall
I make?” asked Neria.

“Why, say I know she's done what she hadn't ought to, but I forgive her if
she's as sorry as she should be. Tell her I'm lonesome without her, and she's
too handsome and too stylish a woman to go the way she's set out, and though
it's a hard pill for me to swallow, still I love her well enough to overlook what

she's done—and—you fix out the rest yourself. You know what a man had
ought to say, and you can say it for me better than I can for myself.”

“But if I meet Dr. Luttrell?” faltered Neria, as she left the carriage.

“Tell him, if he's wise, to keep out of my sight,” growled Livingstone. “I
won't take the law of him as I'd laid out to, but if I get hold of him I'll be my
own judge and jury; yes, and executioner, too, may be. Flesh and blood won't
stand everything, and though I'm a man of peace I'd shoot that fellow as quick
as I would a dog.”

With these instructions Neria walked slowly down the shady road, and
stood presently at the door of an old red farm-house, nestling picturesquely
among its lilacs and syringas. Her knock brought the blithe-faced housewife to
the door, and as she nodded inquiringly at the visitor, a sudden perplexity arose
in Neria's mind. How should she inquire for Claudia? She would not use the
assumed name of Smith; she dared not speak the one sullied by Claudia's sin.

“Won't you walk in, ma'am?” asked the farmer's wife, finding that her visitor
did not speak.

“Thank you. I wish to see the lady who is staying with you.”

“O, Miss Smith. Yes, she's right in the parlor here. Come in.” She
threw open the door as she spoke, and Neria, entering, closed it behind her, for
already she had caught the wild glance of Claudia's eyes, and shielded her from
observation and scrutiny, while still she might.

“Claudia!” said she, softly approaching her, as cowering away, she hid her
face in her hands.

“Claudia!” and the gentle hand upon that bowed head fell like a benediction.
But the guilty woman shrank from that pure touch as sinners from the
sunlight.

“What do you want with me?” asked she, sullenly.

“I want to call you back before it is too late,” and Neria sank upon her
knees beside her.

“Too late! It is too late already—too late for anything but to go on as I
have begun—” exclaimed Claudia, half angrily, half piteously, but suffering Neria
to take one of her cold hands in hers.

“Ah, no, dear Claudia, it never is too late for us to repent and amend; never
too late for God to forgive.”

“Us!” laughed the other, mockingly. “You do well, Neria, to put your
name with mine. `You who never since your birth had need of repentance or
amendment, how will you judge for me?”

Neria's white lips quivered with the sharp pang at her heart, but she answered
bravely—

“You cannot know it, but my sin is hardly less than yours. My whole life
is a repenting; and, less happy than you, God does not offer me the opportunity
of amendment.”

“O, yes, you talk, you good women talk, but you know not what you say,”
exclaimed Claudia, writhing nervously away from Neria's arms. “Your sin is
some fancied peccadillo, some trifle magnified by your own conscience, but it is
not like this. And forgiveness, do you say? I do not know much of these matters,
but do you think, Neria, it could ever be forgotten—I mean when I am
dead?” She spoke softly, and woman though she was, seemed half ashamed
of caring for what had always been her scoff.

“Better than forgotten—it shall be forgiven and washed away in the blood
of the Redeemer. `Though thy sins be as scarlet, they shall become white as
wool,”' said Neria, solemnly.

“Does it say that in the Bible? I havn't been happy for many weeks. I
ran away partly because I couldn't keep up a smiling face and easy manner any
tonger, but it is worse to be alone, and—” she stopped and looked about her—
“worst of all to try and talk with him. But you, Neria, I can trust to you.
You always were so true and good; there is something soothing about your very
presence. I have longed for you so; but I thought you would not look at me.
O, Neria, may I?”

She turned and laid her head upon Neria's bosom, clinging about her neck
with a pitiful dependence, while she, her pale face and beautiful eyes irradiated
with the joy of an angel, who leads back to the fold a soul almost lost forever,
bowed her cheek upon that regal head, and whispered such words of promise
and pardon and love, as God gave her to speak.

“But will he, will my husband—O, no, he cannot forgive, or shelter me from
the world,” moaned Claudia, at last. “It is too much. I must go away somewhere
by myself and live out my life solitary and forlorn. If I might come to
you, Neria; but no, they would not let me—I must not contaminate you. But I
shall be so desolate!”

“Claudia, I would not tell you till now; but it is he that has sent me. It is
that generous and forgiving husband who has bid me come and say to you that,
if you so repent and amend that God forgives and receives you back, he will not
refuse to do likewise. Can you hesitate in face of such clemency?”

“But can he forget? If he should taunt and reproach me!”

“I do not think it of him; but even if he should would not such humbling
of your pride be a light penance in comparison to what you might suffer?” asked
Neria, with some severity.

“True, true; I ought to be humble, and I will try; but you know, Neria,
how ungoverned I have been,” said Claudia, sadly. “He is generous and good
to offer to pass it over, and so shows himself above me now; but you know it
has always been I who have looked down upon him.”

“Perhaps, dear Claudia, if you had done more justice to the really fine qualities
of his disposition you would have developed others, and learned to love them
so well that this could never have been,” suggested Neria

“Perhaps; but now it is too late,” said Claudia, wearily. “He may pity and
forgive, and even receive me back; but if he is a man and human, he never will
allow me the place I held before.”

“Do you deserve it?” asked the clear voice, severely, yet so pitifully that the
guilty woman did not shrink away as she answered, “No.”

“Then, dear, should you not take as an unmerited alms such forgiveness
as he tenders you,; and if reproach is mingled with it, take that, too; silently
if not gratefully. Has he not a right to chide when he passes by his right to
punish, as he might? And if he, being but human and a man, should mingle
his pardon with the bitter draught of reproof and reminder, remember, Claudia,
that He who is all love holds out a free and unqualified forgiveness to all who
will seek it. He will forgive you, Claudia, and love you none the worse, so soon
as you shall ask Him.”

“It is you who must ask; I dare not,” whispered Claudia.

“We will ask together,” said Neria; and with the simple words of the petition
went up to the Mercy Seat an offering of the scalding tears of a true repentance—the
pure, bright drops of a holy sympathy, an angelic pity.

“Sit there, Neria; let me put my head in your lap and cry; it will do me
good,” moaned Claudia; and Neria did not resist the impulse of humility so

significant in the haughty sinner. A half hour passed thus; and when the sobs
had died away in sighs, and Claudia, pushing back the purple-black masses of
hair from her face, smiled wanly up in Neria's face, she said:

“And now I shall call your husband to hear you say what I know you will
wish to say to him.”

“He—is he here?” asked Claudia quickly, while a deep blush burned over
the face but now so pale.

“Yes; and he has waited all this time to hear whether he ought to see you.”

“Then you would not have called him if—”

“If you had been hard and impenitent, no,” said Neria, quietly. Claudia
looked curiously at her.

“How is it you are so quiet and so resolute, so sweet and so severe, all in
one?” asked she; but Neria, with a little smile and a shake of the head, waived
the question, and hastened from the house.

Never in his prosperous life had Mr. Livingstone passed so anxious and
miserable an hour as that since Neria had left him, and he now came to meet
her with a trepidation of manner very unlike his usual placid self-satisfaction.

“Well?” asked he, briefly.

“She is waiting for you. You will be generous and gentle with her, I am
sure,” replied Neria, pointing toward the house.

“Aren't you coming with me?” asked he, nervously.

“No, you had better see her alone. I will wait here for you.”

“Is Luttrell there?”

“No, he has gone away for some days.”

“Well for him, and me, too, perhaps. Wait here in the shade of these trees,
if you won't come. I shan't be long.”

“Don't think of me, but go at once, and do not hurry back,” replied Neria,
pitying his agitation; and Mr. Livingstone with a fervent pressure of the hand,
silently followed her advice.

Left alone Neria sat for a while in the shady nook selected for her by Mr.
Livingstone, and then attracted by the tender gloom brooding in the recesses
of a wood, bordering on the road, she wandered into it, satisfied that she should
see or hear her companion whenever he might return. But absorbed in her own
thoughts she soon lost sight of the road, and striking into a woodland path
strolled slowly along it, pausing now and again to smile a recognition to some
familiar flower, or to listen to the song of some forest bird, lovingly as to the
voice of a friend. To pluck the flower no more occurred to Neria's mind than
to kill the bird, or to wound the friend.

But at its height the harmony of this pastorale was broken by the baying of a
hound, rapidly approaching, and while Neria startled, if not frightened, stood
pale and still, he broke through the underbrush and sprang toward her. Timid,
like most women, Neria's timidity took often the form of a blind courage, and
she now advanced toward the fierce brute with the “good dog! poor fellow!” and
similar expressions best suited to the canine perception. The hound, evidently
surprised at this course of treatment, instead of the panic and flight on which he
had counted, paused to consider of it, and like the woman who deliberates was
lost, for Neria's little hand upon his head, her eyes meeting his, reduced him in
one moment from her fierce antagonist to the humblest of her slaves, fawning at
her feet, smiling up into her face, and lavishing such caresses as she would permit
upon hands and cheeks.

A sharp whistle was heard from the wood. The hound paused, hesitated and

listened. The whistle was repeated, and with an apologetic kiss bestowed upon
Neria's hand, he bounded away, but was met at the turn of the road by a man
with a gun upon his shoulder, who called him sharply by name and ordered him
to follow more closely. Neria, already walking away, heard this voice, and caught
her breath sharply. It did not need the hasty look she involuntarily cast behind
to assure her that the gunner was Doctor Luttrell, the man of all others whom
she most wished to avoid. He had recognized her also, and with a few strides
was at her side, his tawny eyes glittering, his thin lips curling with malice.

“An unexpected pleasure, Mrs. Vaughn. May I hope that it is mutual?”

“It is no pleasure to me to see you, Dr. Luttrell, as you must be well aware,”
said Neria, coldly.

“No? Je suis desolée; but Mrs. Vaughn was ever cruel—to me. I believe
Mr. Murray is more fortunate in gaining her favorable regards.” The insulting
tone pointed the words, and Neria suddenly stopped and looked at him.

“It was you, then, who wrote an anonymous letter to Colonel Vaughn,” said
she, contemptuously.

“Your sagacity is equal to your amiability, madam,” replied Doctor Luttrell,
coolly. “I thought it as well, since I had married into the family, to have an
eye to the preservation of its character. You will remember, my dear, that I
am your brother by marriage, and in that capacity found it a disagreeable duty to
inform Colonel Vaughn of the use you were making of his absence. I did it
anonymously to avoid disagreeable explanations when he should return home.”

“Did you not know him to be dead you would not dare acknowledge such infamy,”
exclaimed Neria, indignantly.

“It is true, then, that you are a widow. Might I hope that in time I could
conquer the repugnance with which you have ever repaid the admiration I have
never concealed—” began Luttrell, mockingly, but Neria interrupted him.

“I have nothing more to say to you now or ever,” said she, coldly; “except
to give you a warning. Mr. Livingstone is with his wife, and intends to take her
home with him. Her eyes are open to the sin and shame of the course to which
you have tempted her, and she only desires to escape another interview. You
will do well to avoid the presence of either.”

Luttrell's lips grew white, and his eyes sparkled with rage as he fixed them
upon Neria's. “Again!” said he, in a low voice. “You have dared cross my
path again, dared grasp at another secret so nearly concerning my life and
honor?”

“I dare anything for the right, even to meddling with Doctor Luttrell's honor,”
said Neria, roused to an impulse of bitterness.

“It is not safe. Believe me, Neria, it is not safe. I have a foolish admiration
for your beauty and your character, or you never would have carried the
secrets that you did from my wife's death-chamber. I tried to ruin your character
in self-defence, fearing the harm you might some day do to me. But you
had best not tempt me too far.”

“I am not afraid of you, Doctor Luttrell,” said Neria, quietly. “And you do
not speak the truth. The reason you did not murder me, as well as my sister,
was because guilt is always cowardly, and you knew that I had found you out.
I spared you the ignominy of exposure, because the forfeit of your life could not
give back hers, and you may yet repent and amend as Claudia already does.”

“Nonsense. The reason you did not give your suspicions—for they were no
more—to the world was, that you could not prove them; and if you could, would
not have wished to introduce a gallows into the family history.”

Neria looked at him a moment, and silently turned away. He overtook and
detained her. “Stop; I have something more to say. You know or suspect
too much of me to be allowed to go at large as my enemy. Be my friend, Neria.
Keep my counsels and I will repay you amply—you do not know in how
many ways. Speak your heart's desire, and you shall have it, were it even to
summon the dead from his grave.”

“Were you able to perform even that impious promise I would make no
compact with you,” exclaimed Neria, indignantly. “Any benefit you could ever
render were insufficient to bind me for an instant as friend to my sister's murderer;
my own slanderer; Claudia's seducer. Go; and if God gives you time,
repent; but never think to be other than an object of pity and abhorrence to
me.”

She moved decidedly away, and Luttrell, gasping with passion and sudden
hate, bounded after and grasped her brutally by the arm, but as he did so the
imprecation upon his lips changed to a cry of pain and withdrawing his hand he
clenched and shook it as in agony.

“What is this!” cried he, turning suddenly pale, and staggering to a seat
upon a fallen tree.

His cry was echoed from Neria's lips, and as she wrenched her arm from his
grasp the golden serpent bracelet fell from within her sleeve and lay coiling
among the dewy grass, its diamond eyes and ruby crest sparkling with a malicious
joy. The deadly purpose of Fiemma Vascetti had been fulfilled, and she
in her century-old grave rejoiced at the vengeance wrought upon the enemy of
her house.

“The bracelet! the poisoned bracelet!” cried Neria, pale with horror.

“Poisoned! Sorceress and murderess, you have wiled me to my death!”
gasped Luttrell, sliding from his seat to the ground, where he lay writhing and
moaning, his face livid, a light foam gathering upon his lips, his rolling eyes
blazing with agony and rage.

The hound, trembling all over, crept to his master's side, licked his cheek and
hand, and then, with a piteous howl, darted away into the forest. Neria threw
herself upon her knees beside the dying man, her eyes dilated with horror but
shining with a holy purpose. “It is not I who have killed you,” said she,
solemnly; “It is the hand of God! O, repent, repent, before it is too late! Beg
for His almighty pardon and He will give it you even now. Humble yourself
before Him, quickly, before the agony of death seizes you. We forgive you—
my sister, Claudia, I, we all forgive you—but it is nothing unless you gain His
pardon. Say that you repent!”

“Why should I mock at God if there is a God?” gasped Luttrell, mastering,
by a terrible effort, the convulsions trembling through his limbs. “If repentance
could avail, it should have come sooner. Say no more of that, but listen; I did
not mean to kill your sister. She was the victim of science. I had a splendid
theory of a new mode of treatment. I experimented upon her. She could not
have lived many years, at any rate. She had an incurable complaint. I never
loved her, and I did love science. Claudia would have been none the worse for
me if her own nature had not led her astray. I have done you no harm.
Vaughn lives—I have seen him. Now go—I can no longer master this agony.
O, my God, my God! The pains of hell have seized me before the time! Go,
woman, go! I will not have you watch me! Go, I say!”

“Say that you repent. Ask God's forgiveness. One word, but one word,
before it is too late!” persisted Neria, her whole frame quivering with horror

as she knelt beside him, one hand pressed convulsively upon her heart, the other
raised to heaven.

“Leave me, leave me! You shall not see me die like a dog. It is too late, I
tell you—too late!” gasped the dying man, his face already grey with the awful
pallor of death.

“Too late for human aid—never too late for God's mercy! I will not go, I
will not watch you, but pray beside you till the last,” said Neria; and with that
guilty soul went to God such petitions for its pardon and peace as Neria could
never have uttered had he for whom she prayed less bitterly wronged her and
hers.

The soul was already sped, the prayer was ended, when, through the dim
arches of the wood, hastened toward the scene, a man, conducted by the faithful
hound. At sight of Neria he paused, hesitated, and would have turned, but
was arrested by a warning growl from the dog, who seized him by the coat and
dragged him on.

Neria looked up, too stunned for surprise. “Go for help, James,” said she,
quietly. “He is dead already, and they must carry him home. No, stay here,
and I will go. She must not hear it too suddenly. Come to me afterward without
fail.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said James, with taciturn obedience; and, leaving him standing
with the dog beside the terrible thing so rudely marring the sylvan beauty
of the scene, Neria hurried away, hardly conscious whither she went, hardly
conscious of the joy that, buried deep beneath this weight of horror, began
already to sing in the depths of her heart—“He lives! he lives!”

39. CHAPTER XXXIX.
SUNRISE.

Faithful to every duty, Neria had prepared for that terrible home-coming;
had broken the ghastly tidings to Claudia; had seen that Mr. Livingstone was
able and willing to soothe the agitation into which her passionate excitement had
subsided, and had singly told the story of Luttrell's death to the physician and
magistrate summoned to meet his dead body at the farm-house, before she
allowed herself a word with James, who, with the activity and tact of his class,
had superintended not only the removal of the body from the forest to the house,
but all the subsequent proceedings. Neria, released at length, found him sitting
in a shady porch at the back of the house. She gave him her hand, while her
eager eyes, asked as well before her lips:

“James, where is your master?”

“Up here, ma'am, among the mountains. We are camping in a log shanty
we found there.”

“But how—why—” She would not ask what wifely pride told her she never
should have needed to ask; but her magical eyes spoke for her, and the man
replied:

“I don't know, ma'am, except it was the Colonel's wishes that no one should
know. He was left for dead down there in the Chickahominy; but I found him,
and carried him off. He was sick a long spell; pretty nigh all winter, I might
say; but an old darkey and I took care of him, and finally he pulled through.
He hasn't been so as to enter again, and he never would have me write a line or
send a message to anyone. This summer we came up here, and have been gunning

and fishing for a living pretty much. I happened to find out about Dr.
Luttrell and—and the lady, and so I thought it no more than my duty to let
Mr. Livingstone hear where she was. I didn't say anything to the Colonel
about it, because I thought he might be disturbed at the chance of some of the
family coming this way, and think it best to remove.”

Neria smiled slightly; for, indeed, the solemn twinkle of James's eye, and
the elaborate innocence of his tone, in thus revealing his little plot for a return
to civilization and identity, were too funny to be resisted. “I will go with you to
him,” said she, after a moment of thought.

“It's a long and rough way, ma'am. Can't I take a message or a note to the
Colonel, asking him to come to you?”

“No; he might not—it is better I should go myself. Wait until I speak to
Mrs. Livingstone,” said Neria; and James submissively answered:

“Yes, ma'am;” while in his shrewd heart he thought—“She's afraid he'd be
off and never come.”

To Claudia, Neria simply said she must leave her for a few hours; and to Mr.
Livingstone that she needed no other escort upon her errand than that of James,
whose appearance in this place she did not attempt to explain. Absorbed in
their own emotions, neither husband nor wife questioned or watched her, and
just as the sun touched the tops of the tallest forest trees Neria passed under
their shadows, and with a heart strangely vibrating between joy and fear followed
her taciturn conductor toward the secluded hut where Vaughn had sought to
bury his broken life, his despairing love. The path led by the scene of the
morning's tragedy, and when James would have turned aside to avoid coming
within sight of it, Neria checked him. “Let us go straight on,” said she, quietly;
and as they reached the place she paused and gazed unshrinkingly at the spot
where the corpse had lain, while in her inmost heart she once more offered full
and free pardon to the guilty soul thence sped, and prayed that even so might
he be pardoned of God.

“Here is the bracelet, ma'am,” interposed James, thinking that must be the
object of her search. “I picked it up this morning, and would have given it to
you before, but the Justice wanted to see it.”

“Thank you, James; we will go on now,” said Neria, taking the bauble in a
reluctant hand, and hastily putting it out of sight, while its wicked eyes, catching
a ray of the setting sun, shot out a green and crimson light.

“It's a very odd thing, ma'am, that the p'ison should have laid on that little
spear so long and never got shot out before,” pursued James, with respectful curiosity.

“It is very old, and no one understood its construction. I supposed it harmless
or I should not have worn it,” replied his mistress.

“Certainly, ma'am; and even now I can't make out how to start it, or how
to hinder it. I tried it all sorts of ways, and so did the doctor and the squire;
and finally the doctor said he didn't believe it was that killed him, or that he was
p'isoned at all. He says he shall call it apoplexy in the report he's going to
write out.”

“I am glad if it is so,” said Neria, quietly; and James, suspecting the subject
a disagreeable one, said no more upon it.

The sun had set, and the moon—the moon that a few days before had shone
upon Neria through the riven walls of Cragness—now shed silver light upon her
head as she stood just within the edge of a clearing, half way up the mountain-side,
and looked at the picture to which her guide had silently pointed before he
left her.

It was a sylvan lodge, such as hunters build of saplings, boughs, and bark; and
upon the flat stone at its door sat a worn and haggard man, his chin resting upon
his hand, his elbow on his knee, as he looked wearily across the sea of foliage
beneath him to the mountain peaks beyond, gleaming white and strange in the
full moonlight. A lonely and a stricken man, said every line of his figure, said
his attitude, and his mournful eyes, and yet a stately and a gallant figure withal.

But to Neria the picturesque side of the scene could not present itself. She
saw before her the object of the love that since his reported death had risen to
a vital passion; the husband, whom, as she devoutly believed, God had given
back to her incessant prayers, if not from the grave, at least from a living death.
Heart and soul clamored for the joy and rest of his embrace, his kiss, his full,
free pardon and love, and yet a nameless doubt, a womanly diffidence, a Nerean
shyness held her back, would not let her run to fall at his feet as she would have
done; held her trembling and wavering there, a sweet statue of some wood-nymph
smitten with love and awe at her first sight of humanity.

So, like the spirit of the night, the genius of the wood, she stood as Vaughn
turned of a sudden and looked toward her, looked long and silently, and whispered,
half aloud,

“It is her spirit—she is dead.” Then, with bated breath and measured step,
as one who treads a holy place, he came toward her, and she, blind and sick with
the great joy swirling through her heart, stood mute and still awaiting him. A
few feet off he stopped, and whispering, “Neria!” held out his arms, imploringly
yet hopelessly, as one holds them toward the heavens.

Then, with a great sob, the fountains of her heart broke up, and throwing
herself into that longed-for embrace, she cried out, “My husband; O, my love,
my lord, my all!”

“Not dead! My Neria, mine at last, my very wife?” incoherently questioned
Vaughn, putting her away to look into the earnest, tearful face, all flushed with
love and excitement, that so bashfully, yet earnestly, returned his gaze, and then
straining her close, close and closer to the sad heart that had so longed to feel
her there. But Neria, struggling from his arms, slid to her knees,

“Say, say that you forgive me for all I have made you suffer,” murmured she.
“I did not know it then, but since I have learned to love I have learned to feel.”

“What! You will kneel to me? Nay, then; will you now give me the first
offence you have ever offered? Here, here in my arms, and so near my heart that
you may feel it beat the echo of my words, hear me say, sweet wife, that this one
moment repays the past tenfold; that I would not, if I might, abate one moment
of that past if so I must abate one instant of this hour. It was right that I
should wait and serve for you, my rich reward. It could not have been but that
you must learn earth by slow degrees, my pure angel. I only feared that you
should pine away in longing for your heavenly home, and so leave me desolate;
or that love, when he came, should point not toward me, but to another—”

“Stop, Sieur!” and in the bright eyes, whence the moonbeams flashed back
into his, Vaughn read for the first time the sweet imperiousness born of a conscious
love. He smiled, and would have kissed the clear, bright eyes, but Neria
held him back.

“By one thing in all our life you have done me wrong,” said she. “You have
fancied that I, being your wife, could love another man! O, Sieur, that grieved
me much.”

“That, and all the wrongs I have done you, my fairy princess, sprang from an
incapacity upon the part of my grosser nature to comprehend your pure spirituality.

But now, thank God and Neria, the love in my heart has reached to hers,
and across that rosy bridge sympathies and perceptions shall travel so incessantly
from the one heart to the other, that we may never say where the sweet pilgrims
really dwell, the two shall so become one heart. O, darling, is this true, is
it real? Can God have been so good to a sinful man like me? And how dare
I accept such gifts, I who— Neria, here upon this lonely mountain-side, before
we go back together to the world whence you have come to claim me, I
must tell you the errors and mistakes of my early life, and, if it may be, gain
pardon both for the concealment and for what has been concealed.”

“No, Sieur, do not speak a word of what is past. I know all, and I have
forgiven and forgotten all. Chloe, before she died, told me everything; and
Mrs. Rhee—”

“Did she see you?”

“Yes. Hush, Sieur, she is dead, and with her the story of the past. Let
us leave it all behind, and make our home in the future.”

“But did she speak to you of what I afterward wrote?” asked Vaughn, anxiously.
“Did she tell you that I believed—”

“She told me many things which I do not wish to remember or repeat. She
told me that you believed them, and it was as if she had told me the ocean was
dried up and the sun extinguished. I knew you too well even then to believe
that you believed such tales of me.”

“True woman and true wife! You but did me justice then, and yet I blush
to think I could fancy even such innocent faithlessness as I did. But now tell
me, sweet, how you came here, standing like a spirit in the moonlight, and
watching me with your dreamy eyes, until I thought you indeed a thing of air or
water or fire, altogether fashioned of the elements, and inspired with the pure
soul of my pure-hearted Neria.” He drew her toward his cabin as he spoke,
and seating her upon the great stone where she had found him, stretched himself
at her feet, gazing intently up into her face, while she related as briefly as
she might, the strange chain of events that had led her hither.

“And so Master James was weary of our incognito, and laid a little plot to
lead to its discovery,” said Vaughn, gayly. “I may truly say to him, `Well
done, good and faithful servant,' for without his intervention I do not know, my
Neria, how this tangled coil would have been undone. I could never resolve
whether I should arise from the dead, as it were, or allow my name to go down
to posterity among the killed of the battle of Seven Oaks. I think the leading
idea was, to live here in the woods a sort of wild hunter life, until, at last, dying
I should send for Neria to close my eyes, and give me one parting kiss. I
always meant to see you again, at least once.”

Neria looked at him with dim eyes and a quivering mouth.

“O, Sieur! You must have suffered so much before you could come to
that!”

“Suffer? What is suffering? I do not recognize the word with my arm
about Neria's waist, my head upon her knee, her eyes looking love into mine,”
whispered Vaughn, passionately; and then, man-like, he proudly smiled to see
the rose-tint mount her slender throat, flush her soft cheek, and faintly tinge her
brow.

“Neria, say `I love you, Sieur,' ” ordered he; and Neria, blushing yet more
brightly, whispered,

“I love you, Sieur; I love you better than my life,” and as he kissed her
lips she kissed back with the first wife-kiss they had ever formed.

40. CHAPTER XL.
A NO-SAY AND A YES-SAY.

The moon that lighted Neria on her true-love quest had waned and faded,
and a tender crescent hung in the west when Francia Vaughn, creeping from her
father's house like a guilty creature, stole through the shadowy garden and on
to the wood beyond, where lay the mere. But once within its friendly covert,
and shielded from all eyes, even those of the stars just trembling into view, she
paused, and throwing herself upon the ground, gave way to a burst of passionate
grief; grief of which only an ardent temperament, an untried nature, and the
first vigor of youth is capable. Later in life one's tears come more reluctantly,
and from a deeper source, until at last it is its very life that the stricken heart
distils in tears.

A firm, slow step came through the wood, and Francia, starting to her feet,
resolutely composed her face and turned to meet Fergus. He extended his
hand.

“I was looking for you, Francia, to say good-bye. I am going to Australia
on business, and shall sail in a week. I am, of course, much occupied, and could
only run down for to-night.” The awkward sentence ended in a pause as awkward.
Francia's cold fingers dropped lifelessly from Fergus's grasp, and she
stood silent with averted face.

“Shall we walk as far as the lake?” asked he again. “I have not seen it
in a long time.” Francia mutely turned her steps in that direction, and walked
beside him with eyes that, looking straight before her, saw nothing. They stood
upon the border of the little lake watching the shadow of the hills, the duplicate
crescent, the stars that momently showed more closely sown in the heaven below
as in that above. Fergus, the iron Fergus, felt the influence of the hour,
of his approaching departure, of the memories thronging the place and time,
and turning to his cousin took her hand and softly asked, “Not one word of regret
for me, Franc?”

She snatched her hand away, asking in turn, “Do you remember when we
last stood here, Fergus?”

“Yes. You asked me if you should keep or break your engagement with
Rafe Chilton.”

“Yes, and do you remember that, when I, with full heart, brought my sorrow
and my perplexity to you, you threw me off and told me that my affairs were not
yours, and that you would not interfere. Do you suppose that one such rebuff
is not enough?” The grief, so thinly cloaked by indignation, struggled up as
she spoke, and turning to meet his eyes, her own suddenly overflowed.

“That was long ago, Francia. I have changed since then,” said Fergus,
moodily; and turning slightly from her, he bitterly reviewed the months of the
last year.

“Yes, you have found what it was to love unwisely yourself since then,” exclaimed
Francia, hastily.

Fergus faced her, and, with his imperious eyes on hers, asked quietly, “What
do you mean, Francia?”

“Nothing. I did not mean to say that,” replied she, in confusion.

“Yes, but it is said, and now I must know what it means,” said Fergus, with
patient persistence.

“Well, then, I mean that when you thought my father was dead you loved

Neria,” said Francia, softly, and turning from him to pluck the leaves from the
rustling alder at her side.

Fergus was silent for some moments. At last he slowly said, “Some years
ago, while I was gunning among the Berkshire hills, I climbed a crag to reach a
gay tuft of flowers blooming there. As I drew myself up, a rattlesnake, basking
on the rock, gave an alarm, and, before I could retreat, struck his fangs into my
arm. I left the flowers where I had found them, and seating myself at the foot
of the rock, took out my hunting knife, cut away the wounded flesh, and then,
heating the knife at the fire I had just kindled, cauterized the wound. A scar
remains that no time will efface, and it was long before I could forget the pain,
but I was cured.”

He was silent, and Francia, still plucking at the alder leaves, said, bitterly,
“Yes, such a scar must remain through life.”

“Better a life-long scar than a coward's lingering death,” replied Fergus.

“Yes, your will decreed, then, that through torture you should retain your
life; it decrees, now, that through other and finer torture you shall retain your
peace of mind; but the body is forever maimed, the heart forever crushed,” said
Francia, gloomily.

Her cousin turned her face to his. “France,” said he, “why did you escape
through the window just now, when from behind the curtain you heard me tell
my uncle that I was going abroad?”

Francia blushed in spite of herself. “You saw me then?”

“Yes, saw and followed you. I wanted to know why you escaped.”

“To avoid the necessity of saying that I regretted your going,” retorted
Francia, desperate as any timid creature at bay.

“That answer deceives neither you nor me,” said Fergus, coolly. “Francia,
two years ago when I showed you that I loved you, or could love you, if you
had met me frankly and generously, as my love demanded, how much would
have been spared to both. You, too, wear your scars, poor child.”

“Mine is not the scar of an unrequited love,” interposed Francia, sharply.

“No, but of a desperate attempt to love an unworthy object. Tell me, now,
Francia, why did you engage yourself to Chilton?”

“He loved me, and you—you had never said—I thought you cared for Neria.”

“Impatient and jealous,” pronounced Fergus, remorselessly. “Do you know
now that you were wrong? Do you see now that by this course you so wounded
my love—”

“No, your pride,” interrupted Francia.

“Self-respect, I prefer to call it, and in my nature no love can be love that is
at war with this quality. This self-respect, Francia, forbid me then to love you
who had so doubted me, as it now forbids me to love the wife of another man.
This is the knife which has cauterized my moral hurt, and well is it for me that
I had it at hand.”

Francia turned earnestly toward him. “But you have a terrible enemy, Fergus,
in this darling self-reliance of yours. It is this that stands in the way of
pity and generosity, and all the gracious virtues that you lack.”

“After the cautery should come some blessed balm, and as it soothes the
burning pain, the heart finds rest and room for these gracious virtues. They do
not spring in the crisis of suffering and effort. Some such soothing balm as the
love of an affectionate heart, Francia.”

“And you would ask such love with nothing to offer in return but the pleasure
of soothing the scar of an unforgotten passion?” said Francia, with spirit.

“Am I selfish? Remember, I am a man, and it is for you, a woman, to soften
and refine my nature, nor look too curiously at the balance of benefit between
us,” said Fergus, somewhat sadly. “Come, little Francia, let us take what good
is left to us, and be thankful for it. Perhaps we never can go back to the glow
and glory of a first love; perhaps you never will be the woman, or I the man
we once were to each other, but there may be better things in the future for
us than we can now imagine. I need the influence of your warm and loving nature,
your grace and gayety; and you, my wilful cousin, will be none the worse
for a little training in law and order. Will you go with me to Australia, Francia,
as my wife?”

Francia hesitated for a moment, and then facing him, frankly said: “No,
Fergus. I do not like the way you have asked me to marry you, and although
you seem so confident of my consent I will not give it on such terms. You say
I love you, or you imply it. Well, I do not deny that I do, that I have always
loved you, and that my engagement to Rafe Chilton was, as you called it but
now, a movement of impatient jealousy. And yet with all this I value myself
too highly to take the position you would assign me. My love shall never be
used as a balm to heal the wound of another woman's indifference; I will not
accept permission to give you my whole life, taking in return such scraps and
fragments as are left when another has taken all that is best. If you cannot give
me the `glow and glory' of a full and honest love, be it first or be it second, I
will have none. I will never follow you forlornly through the world on the
chance that some indefinite future may reward me.”

“And yet you own that you love me,” said Fergus, somewhat bitterly.

“I love you so well that I would not have you marry a woman whom you
could not respect, and I respect you so much I know you could not really love a
woman who would accept the position you offer me. No, Fergus, I love you,
and I refuse you.”

Looking steadily into her face the young man read there a determination
equal to his own; a dignity and self-respect as firmly based as those forming
the foundation of his own character. Looking deep into the soul standing in
that moment unveiled before him, Fergus saw there, qualities he had never before
acknowledged, and the conviction flashed into his mind that should he lose
the prize a moment before so undervalued and now so tantalizingly withdrawn
from his grasp, the loss would be one that every day passing over his head
should magnify until it became the lasting regret of his life.

“Francia, I am sorry to have hurt you—” began he; and Francia, turning to
retrace her path, said quietly,

“I am sorry you did, but I forgive you Fergus. I am sure you will regret
it.”

She moved away with unaffected decision of manner, and Fergus, standing
discomfited and humiliated, where she left him, watched the lithe figure pass out
of his sight beneath the dewy arches of the wood, and felt, too late, the terrible
mistake which he had made. And Francia, too, despite her proud and resolute
bearing, did she not feel that this victory was almost more cruel than defeat?
Reaching the first flight of steps leading to the terrace, she sank down upon
them, faint and trembling, and, hiding her face in her hands, wished bitterly
that she might never stir again.

Half an hour later somebody descended the steps and stood before her. It
was Fergus, who, returning to the house by the more direct route, had seen her
from the terrace and, after one sharp short struggle between love and pride, had
come to say:

“Francia, I was very wrong, very much mistaken in what I said to you just
now. I do not ask your love without return; I ask it as a great and precious
gift, and I offer in return all the good of which my nature is capable. I love
you more than I myself know; more than I ever have or ever can, as I now believe,
love any other woman. If you will accept this love, and will return it, you
need never fear that I shall forget how much it is for me to ask or you to grant.
Do not judge me by my words, Francia; they are cold and hesitating; but you
are able, as you showed yourself but now, to read the thoughts and feeling below
the words. Read my heart, dear cousin, read it thoroughly, and you will be
content.”

He sat beside her, and the hands clasping hers were cold and tremulous as
her own. In the dim light Francia saw how pale his face had grown, how earnest
his eyes, how tender his mouth, and a great joy stirred at her heart. But
the next instant, with a cry of sudden terror, she snatched away her hands.

“O, Fergus, you do not know!”

“Not know what, Francia? What is it, dear?”

“My story—my mother—”

“Good heaven, what is this! Francia, you alarm me inexpressibly. Speak
out, I pray you.”

Francia wrung her hands despairingly. “You do not know, and I had forgotten
for one moment. I was so proud and glad that you should really love me at
last; and now, good-bye, dear, dear Fergus, it can never, never be—never while
we live.” She would have sprung away like a wounded fawn to hide her mortal
hurt in solitude; but Fergus seized her arm.

“No, Francia, you shall not go until you have explained these strange words.
When you refused me just now, you gave your reason, and a good one. That
reason is removed by what I said just now. You are satisfied on that point, are
you not?”

“Yes, fully satisfied; but this other is a more terrible obstacle, for it can
never be removed. Say good-bye, dear Fergus, and let me go. It must be so.”

“Never, Francia. I demand an explanation; I demand it of your justice
and your honor, and if you are what I think you I shall not appeal to them in
vain,” said Fergus, resolutely.

“Well, then,” cried Francia, desperately, “have it, and be satisfied. Mrs.
Rhee, my father's housekeeper, was an octoroon slave whom he bought at public
auction in Savannah. My mother was her daughter by the master who sold her.
My father married this free daughter of his slave, and I am her child. Now are
you content?”

She struggled in his grasp, and when he would not let her go fell moaning at
his feet in a passion of shame and grief too deep for tears. Fergus, grasping
her wrists with unconscious violence, stood looking down at her in mute astonishment
and dismay. Presently he raised her to her feet, and seating her again
upon the step, asked, quietly:

“Will you promise to remain here until I return?”

“Yes,” whispered the girl, her head falling helplessly upon her breast, her
arms and nerveless fingers hanging straight beside her.

Fergus looked at her a moment; and then, with slow and measured steps,
disappeared in the shadows of the grove. An hour had nearly gone when he
returned, and seating himself beside Francia, who had never moved, put his
arms around her and laid her head upon his breast.

“So let me shelter you so long as we both live,” said he. “I would not

yield to the impulse that bid me say so at first, for I dared not trust an impulse.
I would not risk wronging you by saying what I might repent. But that impulse
came from the inmost chamber of my heart; it is as vital as my conscience.
Francia, darling wife that you shall be if you will, never fancy that I remember
this in the future. You could not but tell me, and yet I would have you forget
that you have told me as soon as may be, lest at some time you may fancy me
so base as to point at it should I treat you less tenderly than I ought.”

“I never should suspect you of a meanness, Fergus. I know you too well.”

“But this secret, Francia, calls for such added consideration and delicacy on
my part, such thoughtful care and honor, that I fear my own harsh, hard nature;
and yet if I understand myself at all, I do not think I can fail to make you feel
how all my life and hopes and chance of becoming other and better than I am
are bound up in you. Francia, will you trust me?”

“With my life, and my soul,” whispered Francia.

41. CHAPTER XLI.
L'ENVOI.

The story is done, and in leaving these our friends and sometime associates
to the chances of the future, we may please ourselves in remembering that each
and all of them have learned at the hands of that stern mentor, Experience, lessons
which rightly applied should insure peace, content and beneficent influences
to the coming years.

Forestalling the secrets of those years, we may fancy Vaughn and Neria, in
harmony at last with each other and with life, the noble, dignified and gracious
heads of a well-ordered household, ruling their children and their dependents
with such loving wisdom, such mild authority, that the law becomes delight, and
obedience is as involuntary as affection.

We see Fergus and Francia, returning after years of exile, happy in themselves
and in each other, the asperities of his character softened, as the weaknesses
of hers are strengthened by the harmonizing influences of time and love,
and we no longer fear lest harshness on the one hand, or levity on the other
should destroy the happiness so long desired, so hardly won.

And Claudia? Yes, let us hope even for Claudia, for under the sin and passion
and weakness that have hurried her to shipwreck, lies a great, strong heart,
a heart whose deepest fountains were stirred while she lay upon her knees at
Neria's feet that day in the lonely farm-house, and heard that the husband she
had wronged would even yet forgive and grant her the opportunity for repentance
that she had counted already lost.

Yes, Claudia, though thy sins were as scarlet, there is a Fountain wherein
they may be washed white. And so, bidding them and you good-bye, O friend,
let me hope that what has been told may have taught some lesson, however
vague; may have won to momentary forgetfulness some aching heart, or solaced
an idle hour for those whose hearts have not yet learned to ache; may have
stirred an aspiration in the forecasting mind of youth, or a tender memory in
that of age; or, failing all else, may have awakened one friendly feeling toward
the narrator who lingeringly and regretfully closes this the happy toil of months.