University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
THE EFFECT.

Not quite one year has passed away since the warm
Spring night when Ben Burt first strolled leisurely up
the long avenue leading to Redstone Hall. It was
April, then, and the early flowers were in bloom, but
now the chill March winds are blowing, and the brown
stocks of the tall rose-tree brush against the window,
from which a single light streams out into the darkness.
It is the window of the little library where we
have seen Frederic before, and where we meet him
once again. He has changed somewhat since we saw
him last, and there is upon his face a sad, thoughtful
expression, as if far down in his heart there were
a haunting memory which would follow him through
all time, and embitter every hour.

Little by little, step by step, he had come to hate
the wealth which had tempted him to sin—to loathe
the beautiful home he once loved so well—and this
had prompted him to leave it and go back to the old
house on the river, where his early boyhood was
passed. There were not so many mournful memories
clustering around that spot, he thought, and if he once
were there, he might perhaps forget the past, and be
happy again. He would open an office in the city, and
if possible earn his own living, so as not to spend more
of Marian's fortune than was necessary. He could not
tell why he wished to save it. He only knew that he
could not bear to use it, and he roused himself at last,
determining to do something for himself. This plan

of moving to the Hudson was opposed by Isabel, who
liked the easy, luxurious life she led at Redstone Hall;
but, for once, Frederic would not listen to her, and he
had made his arrangements to leave Kentucky in May,
at which time his house would be in readiness to receive
him. Isabel would go with him, of course—she
was necessary to him now, though, faithful to the promise
made to little Alice, he had never talked to her
of love. And she was glad that he had not; for, with
the knowledge she possessed, she would not have dared
to listen to his suit, and she often questioned herself
as to what the end would be.

One year or more of the dreary seven was gone, but
the future looked almost hopeless to her, and she was
sometimes tempted to go away and leave the dangerous
game at which she was so hazardously playing.
Still, when she seriously contemplated such a proceeding,
she shrunk from it—for, even though she were
never Frederic's wife, she would rather remain where
she was, and see that no other came to dispute the little
claim she had. All her assurance was gone, and
in her dread lest Frederic should say the words she
must not hear, she assumed toward him a half distant,
half bashful manner, far more attractive than a bolder
course of conduct would have been, and Frederic,
while watching her in this new phase of character,
struggled manfully against the feeling which sometimes
prompted him to break his promise to the blind
girl. She was faulty, he knew—far more so than he
had once imagined—but she was brilliant, beautiful,
accomplished, and he thought that he loved her.

But not of her was he thinking that chill March
night when he sat alone in the library watching the
flickering of the lamp, and listening to the evening
wind, as it shook the bushes beneath his window. It
was Marian's seventeenth birth-day, and he was thinking
of her, wondering what she would have been had
she lived to see this day. She was surely dead,
he thought, or some tidings of her would have come to

him ere this, and when he remembered how gentle,
how pure and self-denying her short life had been, he
said involuntarily, “Poor Marian—she deserved a better
fate, and should she come back to me again I would
prove to her that I am not all unworthy of her love.”

There was a shuffling tread in the hall, and Josh
appeared bringing several letters. One bore the
Louisville post-mark—one was from New Orleans—
one from Lexington, and one from Sarah Green!

“Who writes to me from New York?” was Ferderic's
mental query, and tearing open the wrapper he
drew nearer to him the lamp and read, while there
crept over him a nameless terror as if even while he
was thinking of the lost, the grave had opened at his
feet and shown him where she lay; not in the moaning
river—not in the deep, dark woods, nor on the
western prairies, as he had sometimes feared, but far
away in the great city, where there was no one to pity
—no eye to weep for her save that of the rude woman
who had written him the letter.

There Marian had suffered and died for him. His
Marian—his young girl-wife! He could call her so
now, and he did, saying it softly, reverently, as we
speak always of the departed, while the tears he was
not ashamed to weep, dropped upon the soiled sheet.
He did not think of doubting it. There was no reason
why he should, and his heart went out after the dead
as it had never gone after the living. It seemed to
him so terrible that she should die among strangers, so
far from home; and he wondered much how she ever
chanced to get there. She had remembered him to
the last, “forgiving all his sins,” the woman said, and
knowing how much those few words meant, he said
again, “Poor Marian,” just as the door opened and
Alice came slowly in.

There was a grand party that night at the house of
Lawyer Gibson, and at Isabel's request Alice had come
to ask how long before the carriage would be ready.
Dinah had told her that Frederic was in the library,

but he sat so still she thought he was not there, and she
said inquiringly, “Frederic?”

“Yes, darling,” was his answer in a tone which
startled the sensitive child, for she detected in it a
sound of tears, and hurrying to his side she passed her
hand over his face to assure herself that she heard
aright.

“Has something dreadful happened?” she asked, as
she felt the moisture on his eye-lids.

Taking her on his lap, and laying his burning cheek
against her cool forehead, Frederic said to her very
tenderly and low:

“Alice, poor Marian is dead! Here is the letter
which came to tell us,” and he placed it in her hand.
There was a sudden upward flashing of the brown
eyes, and then their soft light was quenched in tears,
as, burying her face in the young man's bosom, the
blind girl sobbed, “Oh, no, no, Frederic, no.”

For several minutes she wept passionately, while her
little frame shook with strong emotion. Then lifting
up her head and reaching toward the spot where she
knew the letter lay, she said:

“Read it to me, Frederic,” and he did read, pausing
occasionally as he was interrupted by her low moaning
cry.

“Is that all?” she asked, when he had finished.
“Didn't you leave out a word?”

“Not one,” was his reply, and with quivering lips
the heart-broken child continued, “Marian sent no
message for poor blind Alice to remember—she never
thought of me who loved her so much. Why didn't
she, Frederic?” and the sightless eyes looked beseechingly
at him as if he could explain the mystery.

Poor child! Rudolph McVicar did not know how
strong was the affection between those two young
girls, or he would surely have sent a message to one
who seemed almost a part of Marian herself, and it
was this very omission which finally led the close reasoning
child to doubt the truth of the letter. But she

did not doubt it now. Marian was really dead to her,
and for a long time she sat with Frederic, saying nothing,
but by her silence manifesting to him how great
was her grief at this sudden bereavement.

At last remembering her errand, she told him why
she had come, and asked what she should say to
Isabel.

“Tell her I shall not go,” he said, “but she need
not remain at home for that. The carriage can be
ready at any time, and Alice will tell her the rest?
You'll do it better than I.”

Alice would rather that some one else should carry
to Isabel tidings which she felt intuitively would be
received with more pleasure than pain, but if Frederic
requested it of her she would do it, and she started to
return. To her the night and the day were the same,
and ordinarily it mattered not whether there were
lamps in the hall or not, but now, as she passed from
the library into the adjoining room, there came over
her a feeling of such utter loneliness and desolation
that she turned back and said to Frederic:

“Will you go with me up the stairs, for now that
Marian is dead, the night is darker than it ever was
before.”

He appreciated her feelings, and taking her by the
hand, led her to the door of Isabel's room. Very impatiently
Isabel had waited for her, wishing to know
what hour Frederic intended starting, and if there
would be time for Luce, her waiting maid, to curl her
long, black hair. Accidentally she had overheard a
gentleman say that if she wore curls she would be the
most beautiful woman in Kentucky, and as he was to
be present at the party she determined to prove his
assertion.

“I hope that young one stays well,” she said, angrily,
as the moments went by, and at last, as Alice did not
come, she bade Luce put the iron in the fire, and commence
her operations.

The negress accordingly obeyed the orders, and six

long curls were streaming down the lady's back, while
a seventh was wound around the hissing iron in close
proximity to her ear, when Alice came in, and hurrying
up to her side, began:

“Oh, Miss Huntington, poor, dear Marian wasn't
dead all the time they thought she was. She was in
New York, with Mrs. —”

She did not finish the sentence; for, feeling certain
that her treachery was about to be disclosed, the guilty
Isabel jumped so suddenly as to bring the hot iron
directly across her ear and a portion of her forehead.
Maddened with the pain, and a dread of impending
disgrace, she struck the innocent girl a blow which
sent her reeling across the floor.

“Oh, Lordy!” exclaimed Luce, untwisting the hair
so rapidly that a portion of it was torn from the head
—“oh, Lordy! Miss Isabel, Alice never tached you;”
and, throwing the iron upon the hearth, she hurried to
the prostrate child, who had thrown herself upon the
lounge and was sobbing so loud and hysterically that
Isabel herself was alarmed, and while bathing her
blistered ear, tried to stammer out some apology for
what she had done.

“I supposed you carelessly ran against me,” she
said; “and it hurt me so I didn't know what I was
doing. Pray, don't cry that way. You'll raise the
house;” and she took hold of Alice's shoulder.

“I wish she would,” muttered Luce; and, stooping
down, she whispered: “Screech louder, so as to fotch
Marster Frederic, and tell him jest how she done
sarved you!”

But nothing could be further from Alice's mind than
crying for effect. It was not so much the indignity
she had suffered, nor yet the pain of the blow which
made her weep so bitterly. It was rather the utter
sense of desolation, the feeling that her last hope had
drifted away with the certainty of Marian's death, and
for a time she wept on passionately; while Isabel, with
a hurricane in her bosom, walked the floor, wondering

if her perfidy would ever be discovered, and feeling
that she cared but little now whether it were, or not.
Suspense was terrible, and when the violence of Alice's
sobs had subsided, she said to her:

“Where is Marian, and when is she coming home?”

“Oh, never, never!” answered the child. “She
can't come back, for she's dead now, Marian is;” and
Alice covered her face again with her hands.

“Dead!” exclaimed Isabel, in a far different voice
from that in which she had spoken before. “What do
you mean?” and passing her arm very caressingly
around the little figure lying on the lounge, she continued:
“I am sorry I struck you, Alice. I didn't
know what I was doing, and you must forgive me, will
you, darling? There, dry your eyes, and tell me all
about poor Marian. When did she die, and where?”

As well as she could for her tears, Alice told what
she knew, and satisfied that she was in no way implicated,
Isabel became still more amiable, even speaking
pleasantly to Luce and telling her she might do what
she pleased the remainder of the evening.

“Of course I shouldn't think of attending the party
now, even if I were not so dreadfully burned. Poor
Frederic! how badly he must feel!”

“He does,” said Alice, “and he cried, too.”

Isabel curled her proud lip contemptuously, and dipping
her handkerchief again in the water, she applied
it to her blistered ear, thinking to herself that he
would probably be easily consoled. It would be proper,
too, for her to commence the consoling process at
once, by expressing her sympathy; and leaving Alice
alone she went to the library where Frederic still was
sitting, so absorbed in his own sad reflections that he
did not observe her approach until she said, “Alice
tells me you have heard from Marian,” then he started
suddenly, and turning toward her, answered, “Yes,
you can read what is written here if you like,” and he
passed her McVicar's letter.

It did seem to Isabel that there was something familiar

about the writing, particularly in the formation
of the capitals, but she suspected no fraud, and accepted
the whole as coming from Sarah Green.

“This is some new acquaintance Marian picked
up,” she thought. “The woman speaks of having
known her but a short time. Probably she left Mrs.
Daniel Burt and stumbled upon Sarah Green,” and
with an exultant smile upon her beautiful face, she put
the letter down, and laying her hand very lightly on
Frederic's shoulder, said, “I am sorry for you, Frederic,
though it is better, of course, to know just what
did become of the poor girl.”

Frederic could not tell why it was that Isabel's
words of sympathy grated harshly on his ear. He only
knew that they did, and he was glad when she left him
alone, telling him she should not, of course, attend the
party, and saying in reply to his question as to what
ailed her ear, that Luce, who was curling her hair,
carelessly burned it.

“By the way,” she continued, “when I felt the hot
iron, I jumped and throwing out my hand accidentally
hit Alice on her head, and, if you'll believe me, the
sensitive child thinks I intended it, and has almost
cried herself sick.”

This falsehood she deemed necessary, in case the
truth of the matter should ever reach Frederic through
another channel, and feeling confident that she was
safe in every respect, and that the prize she so much
coveted was nearly won, she left him and sought her
mother's chamber.

In the kitchen the news of Marian's certain death
was received with noisy demonstrations—old Dinah
and Hetty trying hard to outdo each other, and see
which should shed the most and the biggest tears.
The woollen aprons of both were brought into constant
requisition, while Hetty rang so many changes upon
the virtues of the departed that Uncle Phil became
disgusted, and said “for his part he'd hearn enough
'bout dead folks. He liked Miss Marian as well as

anybody, but he did up his mournin' them times that
he wet hisself to the skin a tryin' to fish her out of the
river. He thought his heart would bust then, though
he knew all the time she wasn't thar, and he told 'em
so, too. He knew she'd run away to New York, and
he allus s'posed they'd hear she died summers at the
South. He wan't disappointed. He could tell by his
feelin's when anything was gwine to happen, and for
more'n a week back he'd had it on his mind that Miss
Marian was dead—they couldn't fool him!” and satisfied
that he had impressed his audience with a sense
of his foreknowledge, Uncle Phil pulled off his boots
and started for bed, leaving Dinah and Hetty to discuss
the matter at their leisure and speculate upon the
probable result.

“I can tell you,” said Dinah, “it won't be no time
at all afore Marster'll be settin' to that Isabel, and if
he does, I 'clar for't I'll run away, or hire out, see if I
don't. I ain't a goin' to be sassed by none of yer low
flung truck and hev 'em carryin' the keys. She may
jest go back whar she come from, and I'll tell her so,
too. I'll gin her a piece of my mind.”

“She is gwine back,” suggested Hetty, who, faithful
to the memory of Miss Beatrice, admired Isabel on account
of a fancied resemblance between the two.
“Don't you mind how Marster is a gwine to move up
to somewhar?”

“That's nothin',” returned Dinah. “They'll come
back in the Fall, but I shan't be here. I'll hire myself
out, and you kin be the head a spell.”

This prospect was not an unpleasant one to Hetty,
who looked with a jealous eye upon Dinah's rather
superior position, and as a sure means of attaining the
object of her ambition and becoming in turn the favorite,
she warmly espoused the cause of Isabel, and
waged many a battle of words with Dinah, who took
no pains to conceal her dislike. Thus two or three
weeks went by, and as nothing occurred to cause
Dinah immediate alarm, her fears gradually subsided,

until at last she forgot them altogether, while even
Marian ceased to be a daily subject of conversation.

To Frederic reality was more endurable than suspense,
for he could look the future in the face and
think what he would do. He was free to marry Isabel,
he believed; but, as was quite natural, he cared
less about it now than when there was an obstacle in
his way. There was no danger of losing her, he was
sure, and he could wait as long as he pleased! Once
he thought of going to New York to make some
inquiries, and if possible find Marian's grave, but when
he reflected that Sarah Green was on the ocean, even
before her letter reached Kentucky, he decided to defer
the matter until their removal to Yonkers, which
was to take place about the middle of May. Isabel,
too, had her own views upon the subject. There no
longer existed a reason why Frederic should not address
her, and in her estimation nothing could be more
proper than to christen the new home with a bride.
So she bent all her energies to the task, smiling her
sweetest smile, saying her softest words, and playing
the amiable lady to perfection. But it availed her
nothing, and she determined at last upon a bolder
movement.

Finding Frederic alone in the parlor, one day, she
said:

“I suppose it will not affect you materially if
mother and I leave when you remove to Yonkers.
Agnes Gibson, you know, is soon to be married, and
she has invited me to go with her to Florida, where,
she says, I can procure a good situation as music-teacher,
and mother wishes to go back to New Haven.”

The announcement, and the coolness with which it
was made, startled Frederic, and he replied, rather
anxiously:

“I have never contemplated a separation. I shall
need your mother there more than I do here, for I
shall not have Dinah.”

“Perhaps you can persuade her to stay, but I think
it best for me to go,” returned Isabel, delighted with
her success.

Frederic Raymond did not wish Isabel to leave
him, and, after a moment, he said:

“Why must you go, Isabel? Do you wish for a
larger salary? Are you tired of us—of me?” And
the last words were spoken hesitatingly, as if he
doubted the propriety of his saying them.

“Oh, Frederic!” and in the soft, black eyes raised
for an instant to his face, and then modestly withdrawn,
there was certainly a tear! “Oh, Frederic!” was all
she said, and Frederic felt constrained to answer:
“What is it, Isabel? Why do you wish to go?”

“I don't—I don't,” she answered, passionately;
“but respect for myself demands it. People are
already talking about my living here with you; and
now poor Marian is dead and you are a widower, it
will be tenfold worse. I wish they would let us alone,
for I have been so happy here and am so much
attached to Alice. It will almost break my heart to
leave her!”

Isabel Huntington was wondrously beautiful then,
and Frederic Raymond was sorely tempted to bid her
stay, not as Alice's governess, nor yet as the daughter
of his housekeeper, but as his wife and mistress of his
house. Several times he tried to speak, and at last,
crossing over to where she sat, he began—“Isabel, I
have never heard that people were talking of you;
there is no reason why they should, but if they are I
can devise a method of stopping it and still keeping
you with us. I have never spoken to you of—” love,
he was going to say, and the graceful head was already
bent to catch the sound, when a little voice chimed in,
“Please, Frederic, I am here,” and looking up they
saw before them Alice.

She had entered unobserved and was standing just
within the door, where she heard what Frederic said.
Intuitively she felt what would follow next, and

scarcely knowing what she did, she had apprised them
of her presence.

“The brat!” was Isabel's mental comment, while
Frederic was sensible of a feeling of relief, as if he had
suddenly wakened from a spell, or been saved from
some great peril. For several moments Isabel sat,
hoping Alice would leave the room, but she did not,
and in no very amiable mood the lady was herself constrained
to go, by a call from her mother, who wished
to see her on some trivial matter.

When she was gone, Alice groped her way to the
sofa, and climbing upon it said to Frederic, “Won't
you read me that letter again which Mrs. Green wrote
to you?”

He complied with her request, and when he had finished,
the child continued, “If Marian had really died,
wouldn't she have sent some message to me, and
wouldn't that woman have told us how she happened
to be way off there, and all about it?”

“If Marian really died!” repeated Frederic. “Do
you doubt it?”

“Yes,” returned the child, “Marian loved me most
as well as she did you, and she surely would have
talked of me and sent me some word; then, too, is
there much difference between scarlet fever and canker-rash?
Don't some folks call it by both names?”

“I believe they do,” said Frederic, wondering to what
all this was tending.

“Marian had the scarlet fever, and I, too, just after
I came here,” was Alice's next remark. “You were
at college, but I remember it, and so does Dinah, for I
asked her a little while ago. Can folks have it twice?”
and the blind eyes looked up at Frederic, as if sure
that this last argument at least were proof conclusive
of Marian's existence.

“Sometimes, but not often,” answered Frederic, the
shadow of a doubt creeping into his own mind.

“And if they do,” persisted Alice, who had been
consulting with Dinah—“if they do, they seldom have

it hard enough to die, so Dinah says; and I don't believe
that was a good, true letter. Somebody wrote it,
to be wicked. Marian is alive, I almost know.”

“Must you see her dead body, to be convinced?”
asked Frederic, a little impatiently; and Alice rejoined:

“No, no; but somehow it don't seem right for you
to—to—oh, Frederic!” and, bursting into tears, she
came at once to the root of the whole matter.

She had thought a great deal about the letter, wondering
why Marian had failed to speak of her, and at
last rejecting it as an impossibility. Suddenly, too,
she remembered that once, when she and Marian were
sick, she heard some of the neighbors speak of their
disease as scarlet fever, while others called it the canker-rash;
and all united in saying they could have it
but once. This had led to inquiries of Dinah, and had
finally resulted in her conviction that Marian might
possibly be living. Full of this new idea, she had hastened
to Frederic, and accidentally overheard what he
was saying to Isabel. She comprehended it, too, and
knew that but for her unexpected presence he would,
perhaps, have asked the lady to be his wife, and she
felt again as if Marian were there urging her to stand
once more between Frederic and temptation. All this
she told to him, and the proud, haughty man, who
would have spurned a like interference from any other
source, listened patiently to the pleadings of the childish
voice, which said to him so earnestly:

“Don't let Isabel be your wife!”

“What objection have you to her?” he asked; and
when she replied, “She isn't good,” he questioned her
further as to the cause of her dislike—“was there
really a reason, or was it mere prejudice?”

“I try to like her,” said Alice, “and sometimes I do
real well, but she don't act alone with me like she does
when you are round. She'll be just as cross as fury,
and if you come in, she'll smooth my hair and call me
`little pet.”'

“Does she ever strike you?” asked Frederic, feeling
a desire to hear Alice's version of that story.

Instantly tears came in Alice's eyes, and she replied,
“Only once—and she said she didn't mean that—but,
Frederic, she did,” and in her own way Alice told the
story, which sounded to Mr. Raymond more like the
truth than the one he had heard from Isabel. Gradually
the conviction was forcing itself upon him that
Isabel was not exactly what she seemed. Still he
could not suddenly shake off the chain which bound
him, and when Alice said to him in her odd, straightforward
way, “Don't finish what you were saying to
Isabel until you've been to New York and found if the
letter is true,” he answered, “Fie, Alice, you are unreasonable
to ask such a thing of me. Marian is dead.
I have no doubt of it, and I am free from the promise
made to you more than a year since.”

“May be she isn't,” was Alice's reply, “and if she
is, we shall both feel better, if you go and see. Go,
Frederic, do. It won't take long, and if you find she
is really dead, I'll never speak another naughty word
of Isabel, but try to love her just as I want to love
your wife. Will you go, Frederic? I heard you say
you ought to see the house before we moved, and
Yonkers is close to New York, isn't it?”

This last argument was more convincing than any
which Alice had offered, for Frederic had left the entire
management of repairs to one whom he knew
understood such matters better than himself, consequently
he had not been there at all, and he had
several times spoken of going up to see that all was
right. Particularly would he wish to do this if he
took thither a bride in May, and to Alice's suggestion
he replied, “I might, perhaps, do that for the sake of
gratifying you.”

“Oh, if you only would!” answered Alice. “You'll
find her somewhere—I know you will—and then you'll
be so glad you went.”

Frederic was not quite so sure of that, but it was

safe to go, and while Isabel had been communicating
to her mother what he had been saying to her, and
asking if it were not almost a proposal, he was deciding
to start for New York immediately. Alice's reasons
for doubting the authenticity of the letter seemed more
and more plausible the longer he thought of them,
and at supper that night he astonished both Mrs.
Huntington and daughter by saying that he was going
North in a few days, and he wished the former to see
that his wardrobe was in a proper condition for traveling.
Isabel's face grew dark as night, and the wrathful
expression of her eyes was noticable even to him.
“There is a good deal of temper there,” was his mental
comment, while Isabel feigned some trivial excuse and
left the room to hide the anger she knew was visible
upon her face. He had commenced proposing to her,
she was sure, and he should not leave Redstone Hall
until he explained himself more fully. Still it would
not be proper for her to broach the subject—her
mother must do that. It was a parent's duty to see
that her daughter's feelings were not trifled with, and
by dint of cajolery, entreaties and threats, she induced
the old lady to have a talk with Frederic, and ask him
what his intentions were.

Mrs. Huntington was not very lucid in her remarks,
and without exactly knowing what she meant, Frederic
replied at random that he was in earnest in all he had
said to Isabel about her remaining there, that he did
not wish her to go away for she seemed one of the
family, and that he would speak with her further upon
the subject when he came back. This was not very
definite, but Mrs. Huntington brushed it up a little ere
repeating it to Isabel, who readily accepted it as an intimation
that after his return, he intended asking her
directly to be his wife. Accordingly she told Agnes
Gibson confidentially what her expectations were, and
Agnes told it confidentially to several others, who had
each a confidential friend, and so in course of a few
days it was generally understood that Redstone Hall

was to have another mistress. Agnes in particular was
very busy disseminating news, hoping by this means
to turn the public gossip from herself and the white-haired
man, or rather the plantation in Florida, which
she was soon to marry. In spite of her protestations
to the contrary people would say that money and not
love actuated her choice, and she was glad of anything
which would give her a little rest. So she repeated
Isabel's story again and again, charging each and every
one never to mention it and consulting between-times
with her bosom friend as to what her arrangements
were, and suggesting that they be married on the same
day and so make the same tour. On the subject of
bridal presents Agnes had a kind of mania, and knowing
this, some of her friends, who lived at a distance
and could not be present at the ceremony, sent their's
in advance—several of them as a matter of course deciding
upon the same thing, so that in Agnes' private
drawer there were now deposited three fish knives and
forks, all of which were the young lady's particular
aversion. She would dispose of one of them at all
hazards, she thought, and receive more than an equivalent
in return, so she began to pave the way for a
costly bridal present from the future Mrs. Frederic
Raymond, by hinting of an elegant fish knife and fork,
which in its satin-lined box would look handsomely
upon the table, and Isabel, though detesting the article
and thinking she should prefer almost anything else,
said she was delighted, and when her friend came
home from the south, she should invite her to dinner
certainly once a week.

This arrangement wae generally understood, as were
many others of a similar nature, until at last even the
bridal dress was selected, and people said it was making
in Lexington, where Frederic was well known,
and where the story of his supposed engagement circulated
rapidly, reaching to the second-rate hotel where
Rudolph McVicar was a boarder. Exultingly his
wild eyes flashed, and when he heard, as he did, that

the wedding was fixed for the 20th of May, which he
knew was Isabel's birthday, he counted the hours
which must elapse ere the moment of his triumph
came. And while he waited thus, and rumor, with
her lying tongue, told each day some fresh falsehood
of “that marriage in high life,” Frederic Raymond
went on his way, and with each milestone passed, drew
nearer and nearer to the lost one—the Marian who
would stand between him and Isabel.