University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
THE OWNER OF RIVERSIDE.

All the day long the September rain had fallen, and
when the night closed in it showed no sign of weariness,
but with the same monotonous patter dropped upon the
roof, or beat against the windows of the pleasantly lighted
room where a young man sat gazing at the glowing grate,
and listening apparently to the noise of the storm without.
But neither the winds, nor yet the rain, had a part
of that young man's thoughts, for they were with the
past, and the chain which linked them to that past was
the open letter which lay on the table beside him. For
that letter he had waited long and anxiously, wondering
what it would contain, and if his overtures for reconciliation
with one who had erred far more than himself, would
be accepted. It had come at last, and with a gathering
coldness at his heart he had read the decision,—“she
would not be reconciled,” and she bade him “go his way
alone and leave her to herself.”

“It is well,” he said; “I shall never trouble her again,”
—and with a feeling of relief, as if a heavy load, a dread
of coming evil, had been taken from his mind, he threw
the letter upon the table, and leaning back in his cushioned
chair, tried to fancy that the last few years of his
life were blotted out.

“Could it be so, Ralph Browning would be a different
man,” he said aloud; then, as he glanced round the richly
furnished room, he continued—“People call me happy,
and so perhaps I might be, but for this haunting memory.
Why was it suffered to be, and must I make a life-long
atonement for that early sin?”

In his excitement he arose, and crushing the letter for
a moment in his hand, hurled it into the fire; then, going
to his private drawer, he took out and opened a neatly
folded package, containing a long tress of jet black hair.
Shudderingly he wound it around his fingers, laid it over
the back of his hand, held it up to the light, and then
with a hard, dark look upon his face, threw it, too, upon
the grate, saying aloud, “Thus perisheth every memento
of the past, and I am free again—free as air!”

He walked to the window, and pressing his burning
forehead against the cool, damp pane, looked out upon
the night. He could not see through the darkness, but
had it been day, his eye would have rested on broad acres
all his own; for Ralph Browning was a wealthy man, and
the house in which he lived was his by right of inheritance
from a bachelor uncle for whom he had been named,
and who, two years before our story opens, had died,
leaving to his nephew the grand old place, called Riverside,
from its nearness to the river. It was a most beautiful
spot; and when its new master first took possession

of it, the maids and matrons of Granby, who had mourned
for the elder Browning as people mourn for a good man,
felt themselves somewhat consoled from the fact that his
successor was young and handsome, and would doubtless
prove an invaluable acquisition to their fireside circles,
and furnish a theme for gossip, without which no village
can well exist. But in the first of their expectations they
were mistaken, for Mr. Browning shunned rather than
sought society, and spent the most of his leisure hours in
the seclusion of his library, where, as Mrs. Peters, his
housekeeper, said, he did nothing but mope over books
and walk the floor. “He was melancholy,” she said;
“there was something workin' on his mind, and what it
was she didn't know more'n the dead—though she knew
as well as she wanted to, that he had been crossed in love,
for what else would make so many of his hairs gray, and
he not yet twenty-five!”

That there was a mystery connected with him, was conceded
by most of the villagers, and many a curious gaze
they bent upon the grave, dignified young man, who seldom
joined in their pastime or intruded himself upon
their company. Much sympathy was expressed for him
in his loneliness, by the people of Granby, and more than
one young girl would gladly have imposed upon herself
the task of cheering that loneliness; but he seemed perfectly
invulnerable to maiden charms; and when Mrs. Peters,
as she often did, urged him “to take a wife and be
somebody,” he answered quietly, “I am content to follow
the example of my uncle. I shall probably never marry.”

Still he was lonely in his great house—so lonely that,
though it hurt his pride to do it, he wrote the letter, the
answer to which excited him so terribly, and awoke within

his mind a train of thought so absorbing and intense,
that he did not hear the summons to supper until Mrs.
Peters put her head into the room, asking “if he were
deaf or what.”

Mrs. Peters had been in the elder Browning's household
for years, and when the new owner came, she still
continued at her post, and exercised over her young
master a kind of motherly care, which he permitted because
he knew her real worth, and that without her his
home would be uncomfortable indeed. On the occasion
of which we write, Mrs. Peters was unusually attentive,
and to a person at all skilled in female tactics, it was evident
that she was about to ask a favor, and had made
preparations accordingly. His favorite waffles had been
buttered exactly right—the peaches and cream were delicious—the
fragrant black tea was neither too strong nor
too weak—the fire blazed brightly in the grate—the light
from the chandelier fell softly upon the massive silver service
and damask cloth;—and with all these creature comforts
around him, it is not strange that he forgot the letter
and the tress of hair which so lately had blackened on the
coals. The moment was propitious, and by the time he
had finished his second cup, Mrs. Peters said, “I have
some thing to propose.”

Leaning back in his chair, he looked inquiringly at her,
and she continued: “You remember Mrs. Leyton, the
poor woman who had seen better days, and lived in East
Granby?”

“Yes.”

“You know she has been sick, and you gave me leave
to carry her any thing I chose?”

“Yes.”

“Well, she's dead, poor thing, and what is worse, she
hain't no connection, nor never had, and her little daughter
Rosamond hain't a place to lay her head.”

“Let her come and sleep with you, then,” said Mr.
Browning, rattling his spoon upon the edge of his cup.

“Yes, and what'll she do days?” continued Mrs. Peters.
“She can't run the streets, that's so; now, I don't believe
no great in children, and you certainly don't b'lieve in 'em
at all, nor your poor uncle before you; but Rosamond aint
a child; she's thirteen—most a woman—and if you don't
mind the expense, I shan't mind the trouble, and she can
live here till she finds a place. Her mother, you know,
took up millinering to get a living.”

“Certainly, let her come,” answered Mr. Browning, who
was noted for his benevolence.

This matter being thus satisfactorily settled, Mrs. Peters
arose from the table, while Mr. Browning went back to
the olden memories which had haunted him so much that
day, and with which there was not mingled a single thought
of the little Rosamond, who was to exert so strong an influence
upon his future life.