University of Virginia Library

THE LIFE
OF A MAN OF THE WORLD

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF.

12. CHAPTER XII.

[Note—“The Life of a Man of the World!” To
show how the warm and earnest hope of youth is
chilled, by circumstance and bitter experience, into
the cold, calculating spirit of middle-age—something
like this is the object of the present narrative.
Like the history of “The Midnight Queen,” this is
also an autobiography, and its hero, like the heroine
of the former narrative, is named Frank; but
Frank, the Man of the World, is an altogether different
character from Frank, the pure, and impassioned,
and betrayed woman. But let the Man of
the World tell his story for himself, in his own
way.]

My family was one of the oldest in
the State of New-York; one of those
indeed which, dating from the days of
Dutch ascendency, pride themselves more
upon blood than money. I was just
twenty-one, when, having completed my
collegiate course at Harvard, I returned
home, my heart filled with the brightest
anticipations. My father was wealthy,
my cousin Eva beautiful, and she loved
me—thus ran my thoughts—and as soon
as I get home I will marry Eva. Night
had fallen, as, landing at the Battery, I
took my way along Broadway toward
my father's mansion, one of those lordly
palaces of the upper regions of New-York.
As I picked my way, by the
flaring gas-lights, what a world of fancies
rushed upon me, and, amid them all,
Eva's face, with its clear hazel eyes and
auburn hair!

Arrived at home, I found my father
sitting alone in the front parlor; he was
reading by the light of a shaded lamp.
He greeted me warmly, and shading his
eyes with his hand, contemplated me
long and attentively.

“Why, my boy, you have grown quite
handsome! A student and handsome—
quite odd, I declare!”

At this time I was about the medium
height, my frame broad in the shoulders
and slender in the waist, my step elastic,
and as to my face, it partook of the
mingled Dutch and Spanish lineage of
our family—clear complexion, dark hair
and brows, aquiline features, and eyes
of deep brown.

My father, of course, being near sixty,
was a man of altogether different appearance.
In former years he had been
famed for his manly beauty, but age and
habits of epicurean ease, had rendered
him portly, almost obese. His features
were full and florid, his hair white as
snow. As he leaned back in his chair,
crossing his foot over a second chair,
lifting his eye-glass with one hand, while
the other held the newspaper, he looked
the very picture of a good-natured, self-complacent
man of the world.

“You have grown quite handsome,”
said he; “and now, my dear Frank,
having graduated with all the honors,
and so forth, let me know what you intend
to do?”

I at once, seated familiarly by his side,
opened my plans to him; spoke of his
wealth; of my determination to marry
my cousin, and then to pursue the study
of the law. He listened with one eye
half closed, one finger laid gently on his
nose, giving no sign of his sentiments
further than an occasional “hum!”

“You are wealthy, father. Eva's
family are wealthy; we are suited to
each other; and once married to Eva I
can pursue my profession, and gain distinction
at the bar.” Thus I remarked,
when my father interrupted me.

“This is all very well reasoned, and
looks bright, but we will talk of it to-morrow.
By the bye, Frank, do me a
favor. You are tired, I know, but I am
sure you will not deny me. On this
card is written the address of a tenant,
whose rent is long in arrears. I wish
you would take a carriage at once, proceed
to the house, see the party, and ascertain

definitely about the probable
time when the money will be paid.”

This was a singular request. “Why
not entrust the matter to your regular
agent?” I began, when my father interrupted
me with an impetuous wave of
his hand, and the words, “Not a word
more, Frank. Do me the favor,” and
took up his paper.

Without a word, I put the card in my
pocket, wrapped my cloak around me, (it
was a clear, cold winter night,) and left
the room and the house. I soon secured
a hack, and directed the driver to proceed
as fast as possible to the house
whose number was on the card—it was
some two miles from the head of Broadway,
being out in the half inhabited regions
of the Sixth avenue. As the carriage
rolled on its way, I gave myself up
to all sorts of waking dreams, Eva's face
prominent among all. At last the carriage
stopped, and I found myself in front
of a row of three-story brick houses,
which stood alone on a street newly laid
out, near the avenue. Dismounting from
the carriage, I cast a glance around the
gloomy region, which, by the light of a
cloudy winter night, presented only an
indistinct view of unfinished buildings,
varying the surface of a large plain, terminated
by the Hudson river, and then
ascended the step of the house designated
on the card. I rang the bell—soon
a tall female with a handkerchief tied
about her head appeared.

“Is the lady or gentlemen of the
house,” I did'nt know which to name,
“within?”

“Yer business, sur,” was the response.

“I wish to see the person of the
house,” said I, firmly.

“Then walk this way, Sur,” was the
reply, and I was led into an entry, and
from thence into a small parlor, neatly
furnished, and lighted only by a coal fire
burning in the grate. Seating myself on
the sofa, I occupied myself in wondering
about the occupant of the house, as to
who he or she might be; and this train
of thought exhausted, I busied myself in
picturing Eva's beautiful face, amid the
embers of the coal fire. My reverie was
abruptly broken.

A light suddenly mingled with the
rays of the fire, and on the threshold of
the door that led into the next room,
stood a beautiful girl, not more than
eighteen years old, dressed in a garment
of white muslin, her hair unbound, and
her uplifted hand holding a candle above
her head. Certainly she was very beautiful.
Below the medium height, her
bosom prominent, her waist lithe and
pliant, her shape full in its outlines, her
hands and feet exquisitely small. She
was one of those women, whose rich
complexion, moist red lips, and deep blue
gray eyes, speak at once of the purity of
the maiden—the passion of the matured
woman.

“Whom did you wish to see?” she
asked, lifting the candlestick with one
hand, and shading her eyes with the
other.

“Eva!” I cried, bounding from the
sofa and folding her in my arms. She
uttered a faint cry, and sunk half fainting
on my breast. The candlestick had
fallen to the floor, and I could only see
her blushing face by the light of the coal
fire. I bore her to the sofa, seated her
by my side, and cradled her head on my
breast; there was a moment of voiceless
passion. I kissed her on the lips, the
cheeks, the brow—nay, kissed the waves
of her glossy brown hair. Then raising
her head from my breast, even as her
arms clung convulsively about my neck,
I suffered my gaze to devour her young
and glowing countenance.

“Eva, darling, you were always beautiful,
but now you are an angel!” Her
eyes were downcast, she did not meet
my gaze, but, unwinding her arms
from my neck, crossed her hands on
her lap, and sat silent and trembling by
my side. This sudden change of manner
confounded me.

I overwhelmed her with questions:
“Do you not love me, Eva? What has
happened to wound you? Why do I
find you here, in this lonely house?”

She at length raised her eyes; they
were filled with tears. “O Frank,” she
said, “O Frank, has not your father told
you all?”

“Told me all?” I echoed in vague wonder.

And then in a voice broken by sobs
with eyes now downcast, and now raised
in imploring entreaty to my face, while
her hands alternately clasped her unbraided
hair, and pulled at the ruffles of
her robe, she told me the cause of her
agitation.

“A week ago father died—died insolvent.
The day after his death the creditors
took possession of our house. Mother
and I sought the advice of your father,
he was rich, he would protect us
until your return—so we thought. And
your father —”

“And my father, —”

“And your father informed us that he
was on the brink of insolvency. All his
future was gone—the very house in which
he lived `hopelessly mortgaged.' `My
dear Eva,' said he, `rich as I seem to be.
I am something worse than a beggar.'”

She paused—I need not say that this
news fell on me like the stroke of a thunderbolt.
But nervously anxious to hear
the sequel of the story, I could only beg
her to proceed.

“And then, expatiating on the hopeless
poverty which had suddenly fallen
on both of our families, he begged me,
without delay—” she stopped, and gasped
for breath—“to repair our fallen fortunes
by a marriage. A Wall-street
merchant, twice my age, and very rich,
had spoken to him about me—was willing,
at once, to marry me. This merchant
was one of your father's largest creditors
—once married to me, he would not
press his claim. And, Frank—oh! I
shall sink into the floor—I cannot go
on!”

She buried her face on her bosom, and
burst into tears. As for me, my heart
grew like ice.

“And you consented to marry him?”
I faltered.

Her voice was death-like, as she replied:

“Yes. To save your father from ruin,
to save you and myself from the calamity
of a marriage which would condemn
you to hopeless poverty, I consented.
This morning we were married in Trinity
Church, and to-night—yes, within an
hour—my husband will come, to bear
me from this house (where, with mother,
I have lived since father's death) to his
own splendid mansion.”

She could say no more; she flung herself
upon the arm of the sofa, and gave
full vent to her agony. As for me, I was
paralyzed.

“Eva married to another, who will
come within an hour to bear her to his
mansion, there to gather to his embrace
the woman whom he has bought.” It
was this thought which seemed written
in letters of fire upon my brain. Suddenly
the bell rang; Eva started up, pale
and shuddering.

“O Frank, it is he—Mr. Walmer—my
husband! What shall we do? He must
not see you—he must not see you!”

Conscious that I was pale as death, I
rose from the sofa. My resolution was
taken.

“Eva, I will answer the bell,” I said,
and grasped her wrist,—“nay, not a
word, I am resolved.” And forcing her
to a seat upon the sofa, I left the room
and hurried along the entry to the front
door. “Mr. Walmer—and so it is that
red-faced bon-vivant, who has purchased
Eva!” the thought ran through my mind.
“Well, Mr. Walmer! You shall never
cross this threshold!”

Firmly resolved to lay him dead at
my feet, ere he crossed the threshold, I
opened the door.

“Does Mrs. Walmer live here?” said
a voice—it was not the voice of the portly
Mr. Walmer, but of a thick-set servant
in livery.

“Yes.”

“Here is a note for her, from Mr.
Walmer. It does not require an answer,”
and before I had time to say a
word, the thick-set servant went down
the steps and disappeared.

I closed the door, reentered the parlor,
and gave the note to Eva; she was
pale as death, as, bending toward the
fire, she opened it, and perused its contents.
And then, with a faint cry, she
fell insensible to the floor.

It may be guessed that I grasped the
note from her fingers, and madly devoured
its contents. Judge of my surprise
when I read:—

13. CHAPTER XIII.

Here was indeed food for thought!

The sensuality of the bon-vivant had,
for a time, yielded to his avarice. Eva
was respited for at least four weeks—
respited from a fate worse than death.
I was almost mad with joy. Raising her
gently from the floor, I bore her to the
sofa, and cradled her in my arms, as
though she had been a child, and awoke
her back to life by my passionate and
burning kisses.

“O Frank, is it not all a dream—the
letter, the letter!” were the first words
which she said. I placed the letter in
her hand; she read it again, and then
raised a face to me all radiant and joyous.
Her bosom heaved over the folds
of her robe—her eyes shone with deep
light.

“And you will go and reside in his
splendid mansion?” I whispered.

“No,” she answered softly, with downcast
eyes, “I will remain in this house—
this house, which mother and I purchased
and rented with money derived
from the wreck of father's estate. Mother
is sick in bed, up-stairs, prostrated
by a nervous attack, and needs all my
care.”

While thus speaking, she had gently
disengaged herself from my arms, and
took her seat, at a short distance from
me, on the sofa. She was very beautiful,
and the light of the fire cast a soft
glow over her face, her dark hair, and
dress, spotless as snow. For a few moments,
silence prevailed—a silence painful
and embarrassing to both of us. I
was afraid to speak—even afraid to decrease
the slight distance which separated
us.

At last, I said to her in a low voice,
as we sat alone in that quiet parlor—
“Eva, what is marriage?” I saw her
bosom heave and her color come and
go. “Is it a ceremony performed in
Trinity Church, between a purchaser and
his purchase, by a priest who acts as auctioneer?
Or is it the consummation of
a holy vow, made in childhood, by two
young hearts, whom God has destined
for each other?”

I paused—threading her hands in an
absent manner, through the waves of
her unbound hair, she remained silent—
but for a moment only. She rose, radiant
as much with her virgin purity, as
with her passionate loveliness of look
and shape—she rose, and came gently
to me, laying one hand on each of my
shoulders, and bending down until her
bosom beat against my cheek.

“You are my husband,—you only,”—
and she pressed her lips to mine. * *
The intense delight, the holy passion of
that hour, I shall never forget. And the
hours glided away, unperceived, while
we lost ourselves in one of those waking
dreams, which never happen to the same
person twice in a lifetime.

“Father!”—it was thus I soliloquized,
as, passing from the home of Eva, after
midnight, I re-entered the carriage—
“Father! you are a man of the world,
and a worldly-wise man; so is your
friend Walmer,—both cunning men.
Eva and I are but children, but somehow
I think we are ahead of you, this time.”

I did not meet my father until next
morning at breakfast. The table was
spread for two, and we sat alone, facing
each other, in the elegant breakfast room,
where the rays of the morning sun were
tempered by closely drawn curtains.
How calm and self-possessed he looked
in his snow-white ruffles and embroidered
dressing-gown, as, cracking an egg in
the glass, he regarded me curiously, one
eye half closed!

“Well, Frank, did you see the tenant?”
he said quietly.

“I did, father,” and, imitating his nonchalance,
slowly sipped my coffee.

He evidently expected a burst of rage
from me; but my mother's blood predominated
in my veins, and I met his
Dutch phlegm with the cautiousness of
the Spaniard. A long pause ensued.
“Zounds! why don't you talk?” he cried
at last, setting his cup on the table, with
a sort of china-ware emphasis—a kind
of crockery “damn.” “Do you blame
me for having married Eva, and married
her well, rich, and so-forth, thus saving
both you and her from a poor marriage
and its consequences?”

“No doubt you acted for the best,
father,” I answered quietly.

“By this time, Frank, you are aware
that I am something worse than a beggar.
As for her father, he died insolvent.
It becomes us to look around us.
Eva's marriage secures her, and will give
us, for some time longer, possession of
this house, for Walmer holds the mortgage.
And as for you, Frank, you have
a fine person—quite an air, education,

and so-forth—you musn't think of the
law. A rich marriage is the thing for
you. It will set us all up, my boy.”

“Do you think so?” I exclaimed.

My father broke another egg in his
cup: “Now, I know a West Indian lady
—Mrs. De Wolf—a trifle older than
you—her husband is dead, and she is a
widow, immensely rich. Rich enough
to buy the park for a pleasure garden, or
have a full-grown nigger for breakfast,
every morning, if she chooses. I have
transacted some business for her, and
know that she is anxious for a husband;
a young one, one who has style. In fact,
I have spoken to her of you, and —”

He was interrupted by the entrance of
a person who bounced into the room
very much like a bombshell. It was a
very short lady, broad in the shoulders,
very ample in the form, with a dark complexion,
somewhat spotted, a hooked
nose, and very dark hair, which, like her
white teeth, evidently belonged to some
person long since deceased. She was
richly dressed in black, and ornamented
all over with diamonds. As if unconscious
that fifty years had robbed her
bosom of its virgin outline and alabaster
hues, she dressed in such a manner that
it was half exposed, and there it was
heaving, like a half-stagnant wave, with a
heavy diamond necklace glittering over
it. At college we were wont to compare
anything peculiarly indescribable to the
“Devil before Day,” and I certainly
thought that, at last, I beheld that personage
in the female before me.

“How d'ye do, my dear Van Warner?
Up late last night at the opera, but
thought I'd make an early call! How
well you are looking! Bless me, is this
your son? quite handsome, I vow! Introduce
me, Van Warner!” thus rattling
on, in pretty good English, marked by a
Spanish accent, she lifted her eye-glass,
and surveyed me as coolly as though I
had been a blood horse: “Elegant form,
dark hair and whiskers, and quite the
chivalresque cast of face. I vow, Frank,
I'm in love with you already!”

She spent the day with my father,
conversing about matters connected with
her estates in Jamaica and Cuba.

14. CHAPTER XIV.

And before the day had passed I had
made up my mind as to my future,—remember,
I am not writing a novel, but
the plain, may be, humiliating story of a
real life. I had resolved to marry the
Hon. Mrs. De. Wolf. Without money I
could not protect Eva; my father was
bankrupt, and the thought of the manner
in which Eva had been sold, had destroyed
not only the freshness of my principles,
but also of my nice sense of honor.
I found myself compelled to look at the
world, as a game, as a battle whose first
word and whose last was “MONEY!”

I consented to marry the widow. My
prominent object, to possess Eva at all
hazards, and keep her as my true wife,
sacred, secret, and apart from the world;
I married the widow, in order to obtain
possession of her fortune. This was
base, it will be said; but look at the examples
which I had around me, in high
life; look at my father, deliberately selling
my betrothed wife into the arms of
avarice and lust!

I wish to spare myself, as far as possible,
a recital of the details of the disgusting
mockery of my marriage. It took
place in the mansion of Mrs. De Wolf;
an aristocratic structure, furnished in
oriental splendor. There was a marriage
party and throngs of guests—the rich,
the fashionable of New-York. How I
was envied! The husband of the rich
widow, that is, the absolute possessor of
half a million dollars! And then the
bridal chamber, carpeted with the product
of oriental looms, and lined with
hangings of light crimson satin,—everything
in it spoke of the immense wealth
of my wife! The bridal bed with satin
coverlet and a canopy whose folds resembled
clouds of floating mist, seemed
worthy of the holiest nuptials. Across
the threshold of this chamber, as the
sound of music and dancing was heard
in the hall below, I led the trembling
widow,—fair as the witch of Endor,
modest as Messalina. Hag! Would
that I had strangled her on the threshhold!

For two or three days after our marriage,
her mansion, (now mine,) resounded
with the echoes of one continued
orgie, in which the light of day or the
flaring gas, shone upon the faces of our
guests, as they sat at dinner, or joined in

the dance, or drank deep of the rich
wines from our cellar. What a page of
“the high life” in New-York was opened
to me! Wealth, and beauty and fashion,
were around me—this was the surface
only—looking beneath the tinsel veil of
the gay world, I beheld unmarried damsels
of great beauty and wealth, who
were virgins, in the same sense as the
poor wretch of the side-walk; married
women, of wealth and beauty, too, who
had made a science of adultery; husbands,
who saw their own dishonor and winked
at it; and libertines, who, clad with wealth,
came from the brothel to haunts of “topmost
fashion” to gratify their appetites.
A very glittering and very loathsome
world.

The fourth day after our marriage,
having managed to escape from the loathsome
caresses of my “lady-wife,” I was
sitting alone in a distant room of our
mansion, which had been fitted up as a
library. My hands were in my pockets,
my feet on the fender, my eyes centered
on the fire—I was in a brown study.
My father entered; it was the first time
I had met him alone since the marriage.

Dressed in the extreme of fashion, he
seated himself by me, and slapped me on
the shoulder; “happy dog!” said he,—
“married, settled in life, a capital of half
a million—interest, $30,000 per year.”

“Happy dog!” I echoed.

“By the bye, Frank, I forgot to ask
you the particulars of your visit to that
tenant, on the night of your arrival. I
wished to cure you of your passion for
little Eva. And knowing that the dear
little girl had besought Walmer to permit
her to spend the latter part of the
wedding-day, and the first hours of the
bridal evening, at her mother's house,
I dispatched you there, so as you might
see her, before Walmer came to take her
home. Did you see her?”

“I saw Eva.”

“Didn't you encounter Walmer?”

“I did not. While sitting alone with
Eva, a note came from Mr. Walmer,
stating that he had been obliged, by important
business, to leave for Havana
that very afternoon.”

“The devil!” cried my father. “This
is indeed odd!”

“He will be back in four or five weeks.”

“And Eva, meanwhile, takes possession
of his mansion, eh? of course.”

“Eva remains with her mother” I replied
calmly, still keeping my feet on the
fender.

“But, why not go at once to her husband's
mansion?” said my father. For
the first time in this interview, I turned
and looked my father in the face. Certainly,
with his portly form, elegant
blue coat with metal buttons, spotless
ruffles, florid face, and white hair, he was
a well-preserved `old man of the world.'
As he looked at me with his eye-glass
raised, I steadily returned his glance,
and said calmly:

“Best of fathers! In everything
hitherto you have had your own way.
You married Eva to money, and you
have married your own son also to money.
You have had your own way hitherto;
allow me now to have mine. Eva
has not gone to Mr. Walmer's mansion,
because she never intends to go there.
Eva is to all purposes my wife, my only
wife. And the wealth which I have
gained by my bargain with the madam,
I will devote to the comfort of Eva, and
especially to keeping her out of the reach
of Mr. Walmer. And, best of fathers!
make up your mind, at once, that you
had better put your head among the
live coals in that grate, than to attempt
to cross me.” So saying, I took a cigar
from the mantel and lighted it.

My father did not grow pale, but his
face became spotted. He was speechless.

“But,” said he at last, choking with
rage, “suppose I inform your wife, the
late Mrs. De Wolf, of all this?”

“As you please, father,” said I, smoking
away. “Only remember, that such
information will be considered by me in
the light of a declaration of war.”

My father seized his hat and rushed
from the room.

As for me, dressing myself in a plain
drab overcoat, and pulling a cap over
my brows, I went stealthily from my
big mansion, called a hack, and ordered
the hackman to drive to the house near
the avenue. I arrived there after dark.
The place was lonely, and the sky, covered
with leaden clouds, gave an uncertain
light to the surrounding space. I
rang the bell. It was Eva herself who
answered it; Eva, dressed in the same
dress of plain white, with her rich brown
hair, disposed in thick masses about her

face. Without a word she took my hand,
and led me into the back parlor. It had
been a week since I saw her last.

She raised her beaming eyes and radiant
face to me. “O Frank, I am so glad
to see you!” she said, and placed her
head against my breast. Certainly, I
loved with that mingling of the intensely
pure and the intensely passionate, which
makes up the affection with which we
regard an adored and yet respected wife.
I took her on my knee, laid her cheek
to mine, threaded my fingers through
her hair—in short, committed all those
follies which are only follies when written
or told again. Supremely happy in
her presence, in the light of her eyes, I
forgot the world—my dear father and
hag-wife included.

“And your mother, Eva?”

“She has never been well since the
day of father's death, and has not slept
for many nights. An hour ago, she sank
into the first sleep which she has had
for days and nights.”

Hardly had the words passed from her
lips when a cry, short and piercing, resounded
through the house. To follow
Eva from the room, to ascend the narrow
stairs, to pass with her into the sick
chamber, was all the work of a few instants.
Never shall I forget that scene!
The sick woman, clad in her nightclothes,
sat up in her couch, her eyes
flaming with delirium. Her cheeks
were hollowed; her black hair, streaked
with gray, fell over her bared shoulders.
At a glance, I saw that she was struggling
in the last agony.

“Eva! Frank!” she cried. We darted
forward,—she looked at us long and
anxiously—and then, joining our hands,
seemed about to speak, when her face
changed and her eyes became fixed and
glassy. She was dead even as she sat
up in the couch. Her last act had been
to join our hands; her last look was
cast upon our faces. * * I remained
with Eva until after midnight, and then,
consigning her to the care of the servant
(a rough but kind-hearted Irish-woman),
I returned home.

Said my “lady-wife” as we sat next
morning at breakfast—“You were not
at the opera last night, dearest?”

To which I replied, simply, “Dearest,
I was not.” My lady-wife's eyes shot
fire.

As soon as possible I sought my father,
and took him to my private room,
and informed him of the decease of Eva's
mother.

“Will you attend the funeral?” I
asked.

“Not in my way, Frank, not in my way.
Leave it all to you. And, look you, do
what you please, I wont cross you. Only
secure me an allowance from your estate;
and,” he put his mouth to my ear, “between
Walmer and your wife, you have
a hard card to play. Keep shady! For
Walmer on his return will pick up a lawsuit,
and as for your wife, she may make
your coffee too strong, gad! quite too
strong!” Having given this advice, with
a wink and a chuckle, he promised to
apologize to my wife for my absence
during the day.

Towards evening that day, a hearse,
followed by a single carriage, took its
way toward our family cemetery, some
ten miles from New-York, in a sheltered
nook near the Hudson. In the drear
winter twilight, Eva and I joined hands
above her mother's grave. As a simple-hearted
clergyman read the service, the
words sighed mournfully among the
withered branches; and through the intervals
of the trees came a glimpse of
the broad Hudson, rolling in long waves,
each wave tinted with the last glow of
the departing day. * * I accompanied
Eva home. “Frank, you are all I have
in the world,” she said, falling on my
breast, as soon as we entered the house.
O how the memory of that hour comes
over me, as I write these words!

Returning to my big house—I cannot
say my home—toward midnight, I avoided
the presence of my wife (I can scarcely
call her) and slept on the sofa, in the
library. The next morning, at breakfast,
she manifested her usual fondness
for me, but there was a cold devilish
gleam of suspicion in her eyes. But that
day I redoubled my attentions, rode with
her along Broadway in our grand carriage,
went with her at night to the
opera, and then to a fashionable party.
I had an object in this, which manifested
itself at the breakfast table next morning.

“Dearest, urgent business calls me
away from you for a week or ten days.
I must—nay, do not look angry—I must
visit Boston, on business of my father.
And I must go to-day.”

“Fact, you must go, Frank.” said my
father, who had just entered, dressed in
his usual gay style—“Don't like to ask
it of you, but positively my business will
suffer if you don't go.”

After much persuasion my “lady-wife”
consented, and I went to Boston that
day—that is to say, figuratively. As a
matter of fact, I bent my steps to the
house near the avenue, where Eva welcomed
me, her eyes full of tears, but her
heart swelling with joy.

How shall I picture those days which
I passed with Eva, in the house near
the avenue! They were the days of my
life. We were hidden from the world.
No one knew, save my father, of my
presence in New-York. And, secluded
from the world, in the lonely house, we
forgot the world in each other's company.
Eva was mistress, wife, idol, to
me. She was one of those rare women
so hard to describe, whose organizations
combine the very extremes of the spiritual
and the passionate—whose minds
mingle the simplicity of the child with
the intuitions of mature woman. The
thorough purity of her nature threw
over our mutual passion a chastened
and holy light. And while we were
wrapped in this delicious dream, days
and weeks passed away. One stormy
evening, when the snow lay deep
upon the desolate region about our
house, an incident took place which had
an important bearing upon our fate. We
sat alone in the little front parlor; a
comfortable fire was burning in the grate,
and an astral lamp upon the table threw
around a softened and mellow light. Eva,
dressed in white, was sitting on the sofa,
and I was seated upon a stool at her feet.
My clasped hands rested on her knees,
and her little hand was placed gently on
my head. As I looked up into her clear
tranquil eyes, and caught the magnetism
of her gaze, at the same time that I perused
the bloom of her lips and cheeks,
and the purity of her calm white brow,
it seemed to me, that she was the most
wondrously beautiful woman in all the
world. We sat thus for a long time silent,
enjoying the delight of each other's
presence, and absorbed in one reverie.

She at length broke the silence,—
“Frank, I wish we could die now!” she
said. Her bosom heaved gently and
tears came to her eyes.

“Why, Eva?”

“We will never again be so happy as
now,” she said,—“we never can be happier
than we are now. And it seems to
me good that we should die now, when
our happiness is at the full.”

'Twas a strange thought, and I had no
word in reply, but felt in my soul a response
to it. Then we again relapsed
into our reverie, reverie so deep and so
prolonged, that we did not hear the ringing
of the door-bell, nor the sound of
footsteps in the entry, nor the opening
of the parlor door. But, startling like
those who are suddenly awakened from
a dream, we looked up and beheld our
Irish servant in the doorway, and two
persons, a lady and a gentleman standing
near us, their garments covered with
snow.

15. CHAPTER XV.

One of these persons was a fat, elderly
gentleman, with a bald head and florid
face, small eyes, and a pug nose. He
was dressed in a drab-colored overcoat
or sack, and carried in one hand a gold-headed
cane. The other was a short,
broad lady, with a prominent hooked
nose; she was richly attired in a velvet
cloak. I confess, as I looked at them
over my shoulder, I heard bells and all
sorts of noises in my ears.

“My lady-wife!” I ejaculated.

As for Eva, she uttered a short quick
scream: “Mr. Walmer!” she cried, and
fainted on the sofa. It was, in a word,
Mr. Walmer, who, by some devil's
chance, had returned a week sooner than
he had announced, and the late Mrs. De
Wolf, my wife, whom some similar devil's
chance had brought into contact with
Mr. Walmer. And there we were, Eva
fainting, Walmer red and choked with
rage, my lady-wife looking altogether
like a fiend. It was embarrassing.

“And this is Boston, is it, sir?” said
the short, broad, West Indian madam.

“And what in the devil are you doing
here with my wife?” remarked the portly
man of Wall-street. Now, (I put it
to the candor of everybody,) was not my
position embarrassing? I felt it was,
decidedly. I rose from the stool, passed
my hand over my forehead, thought, and
then, my course decided upon, confronted
the pair.

“To what am I indebted for the honor
of this visit?” I said, quite politely, at
the same time winking at the servant
woman, and making a quick, rapid gesture
towards Eva. “Scoundrel!” cried
Mr. Walmer, “I return home, and find
you alone with my wife!” “Villain!”
said my lady-wife, “I think you are in
Boston, and all the time you are here,
consoling yourself with your mistress!”

I quietly pulled out my watch. “You
have both used certain words which are
strikingly absurd. You speak of home,
sir,—do you call this house your home?
And you, madam, speak of mistress,—
dare you apply that word to my cousin?”
I advanced a step. “I command you,
madam, to return home at once; and as
for you, sir”—I darted forward and twisted
my hand in his collar, and in an instant
had him fixed against the wall,—
“I give you just half a second by the
watch, to leave my house.”

Decidedly I had hit upon a coup d'était.
For, as I sprang forward, the Irish servant
took the opportunity to seize Eva,
and bear her from the room and up stairs
to her own chamber, and my West Indian
madam stood perfectly paralyzed
by my audacity.

“Villain! you are choking me,—you
shall pay for this,—you—” cried Mr.
Walmer, as he was helpless in my grasp.

“Will you leave the house?” I responded,
tightening my grasp.

“Yes,—y-e-s,” he gasped.

I took my hand away; he put on his
hat and left the room; I followed him to
the front door. Arrived there, he swore
awfully, threatening suits at law and
search warrants, without number. I
heard him without reply, and waited
quietly on the threshold until he entered
his carriage. Then returning to the
parlor I confronted madam. She was
livid with suppressed rage.

“It is your turn now, my dear,” I said,
pointing to the door. She fairly shook
her fist in my face.

“You shall pay for this—you shall
pay for this,” she screamed.

“No doubt, love,—no doubt,—everything
in the world has to be paid for.
Good-night!” And I bowed her to the
door, and out of the house, and watched
her until she entered the carriage. She
shook her clenched hand from the window,
and the carriage rolled away. I
closed the door, and went sadly up stairs
to Eva's chamber. I found the poor
child sobbing in the arms of the stout
Irish servant, who was comforting her,
and also swearing fervently at the “ould
gentleman wid de bald head” and “the
squat ould leddy wid a high head-dress,”
—meaning Mr. Walmer and my Madam.

“O Frank, Frank! do not let them take
me from you,” cried Eva, and fell sobbing
on my breast. * * Next morning
early, I was at home in my grand
city mansion. I directed the servant to
inform the madam, that I would do myself
the honor of breakfasting with her.
Then dressing myself with some care, I
retired to the library to await the hour
of breakfast. “This morning,” I soliloquized,
“Mr. Walmer will visit the house
near the avenue with a search-warrant,”
—and I laughed to myself.

It was near eleven o'clock when the
servant came to announce that breakfast
was ready in the lilac room. As I descended
to the breakfast room, I prepared
myself to face my terrible wife.—
“Now, for a grand explosion!”

But judge of my surprise when, entering
the lilac room—a neat little apartment,
the walls covered with blue-colored
paper, warmed by a wood fire, and lighted
by a window opening to the west—
my lady-wife greeted me with a cordial
“good-morning, dear Frank.” Clad in a
sumptuous wrapper, or robe of light blue
cloth, with flowing sleeves, she was seated
at the breakfast table, her back to the
curtained window. I took my seat opposite.

Motioning to the solitary servant, to
retire to the window, beyond hearing
distance, the madam filled my cup with
coffee and handed it to me with one of
her most gracious smiles, at the same
time, leaning confidentially over the
table, “Frank, do you know I made a
great fool of myself last night? You
see this old fool of a Walmer called here
last night, and inflamed with a story
about you secreting yourself with his
young wife, and all that. He persuaded
me to accompany him; you know what
happened at the house, and how angry I
was. Well! coming home in the carriage
with Walmer, I discovered that this
pretty little girl was your cousin indeed;
that she was Walmer's wife only in
name; and that he had no proof whatever

of improper relations between you. In
fact, my dear Frank, I discovered that
this Walmer had made me his dupe. But
you'll forgive me, this once, dear Frank,
wont you?”

So bland was her manner, so cordial
her accent, that I forgot her wicked little
eyes and hooked nose. I almost thought
the madam charming.

“Your poor little orphan cousin, must
come and see me. I can judge your feelings
to each other. You are quite brother
and sister, I vow. Take another cup,
Frank!”

I could not help thanking the madam
for her kind construction of my conduct,
and handed her my cup. She filled it
once more with the fragrant coffee, looking
at me earnestly and keeping me engaged
in conversation all the while.

“I know I shall adore that dear little
cousin of yours,” she said, as she handed
me the cup, and watched me as I raised
it to my lips, her small black eyes glittering
like points of flame.

At my lip, however, I held the cup
but did not drink it. I called to the solitary
servant, who stood by the window.

“Come here, Marie,” I said. This servant
was an especial favorite with her
mistress. Marie was a slender quadroon
girl, with an elegant shape, brown complexion,
jet black hair, and large, melancholy
black eyes. She was an exceedingly
interesting and beautiful girl; and, as
has been said, was an especial favorite
with her mistress. Had Marie been her
own daughter, she could not have treated
her more kindly—indeed, there was
a story, which had made its way from
the West Indies to New-York, that the
pretty quadroon was the daughter of
the rich madam.

“Come here, Marie,” I said. And the
brown girl came, and stood by the table,
and looked at me with her sad beautiful
eyes.

“It is a cold morning, my child, and
you look chilled,” said I. “Here is some
excellent coffee, prepared by my wife.
Drink it, Marie, it will do you good.”

With a wondering look the girl took
the cup and raised it to her lips, and,
with a bound like a tigress, and with a
scream like the cry of some other wild
beast, the madam sprung from her chair
and dashed the cup to the floor. The fragments
were scattered over the carpet.
And then panting, gasping, livid, the
Madam sank back into her seat, and
trembled, half fainting there, her white
lips moving as though she wished to
speak, but could not.

“What all dis 'bout?” said Marie,
making big eyes.

“Go from the room,” I said. She obeyed.
I rose, locked the door, and put the
key in my pocket.

“It is between you and me, madam,”
said I, approaching the speechless woman.
“I will thank you for that little
phial which you so adroitly conceal in
the folds of your right sleeve, and from
which you poured a few drops into my
coffee.”

“I have no phial,” she gasped, clasping
her hands, and crouching in her chair.
I made no more ado, but seizing her
wrists with a firm grip, I drew from her
right sleeve a small silver phial or flagon,
which (as I afterwards discovered) contained
a subtle and deadly poison.

“Miserable woman! Worn out by
long years of sensual excess, you purchased
me in marriage, so that I might
be the instrument of your appetites, or
the cloak of your numerous amours.
Was this not enough? Are you not
satisfied with having degraded me into
what I am? Why make me drink from the
same phial as Mr. De Wolf, your second,
and Mr. Cardenas, your first husband!
You would murder me, would you, because
I am guilty of preferring, to your
loathsome caresses, the love of a pure
and stainless girl?”

Hoarse with rage I stood over her—
she crouching, trembling, and abject in
her chair.

“Now, mark me! I will place this phial,
together with a sealed affidavit of the
facts of your attempt to poison me, in
the possession of an eminent lawyer, with
directions to break the seal, in case of
my death. I will so surround you with
proofs of your guilt, that in case of my
sudden death, you certainly will be tried
for murdering me. Meanwhile, I will
control your fortune—appear in public
as your affectionate husband—wink at
your amours, so long as they are not too
shameless—but I will not eat at the same
table, nor share the same bed with you.
Do you understand me, or shall I repeat
my words?”

“Her livid lips moved, but she could

not frame a word. I unlocked the door;
Marie, the quadroon, had evidently been
listening, for she stood, pale and trembling,
on the outside.

“Come in, child,” said I, leading her
by the hand. “Your poor mother is not
well. Go to her.”

And I left them together.

From that time, the madam was as submissive
and cowed as a tigress in a cage;
not but that there was, at times, a lighting
up of her eyes, as though the tigress
would like to make a spring.

And, in the mean time, where was
Eva? Precisely the question which Mr.
Walmer asked when, on going to the
house near the avenue, with an officer
and a search-warrant, he found that the
bird had flown. His lawyer asked the
same question, in a portentous letter,
well-flavored with threats of a suit for
abduction, and so forth, to which I replied
by a polite note, in which I blandly
assured him that I knew nothing of the
matter, but, at the same time, I advised
him to go ahead, if he thought proper;
and then his son, a huge youth of twenty-five,
with knock-knees and goggle
eyes, came to see me at my city mansion,
and demanded satisfaction.

“Satisfaction for what?” I asked.

“For abducting my father's wife,”
said he.

“Who will, allow me to ask, inherit
your father's estate?”

“I will, of course—sole heir,” was
the prompt reply.

“But will you be sole heir, in case
your parent is blessed with children by
a second wife?”

The young man had never thought of
that before; called me a good fellow,
shook my hand, and went his way; and I
saw no more of him.

But where was Eva? For months,
Mr. Walmer surrounded me with spies,
tracked my footsteps every where, (so
he thought,) and discovered—nothing.

“Where have you got her?” said that
venerable man of the world, my father,
with a wink and a chuckle. “Didn't
think that a young fellow, just from college,
knew so much of the world. Where
have you got her?”

To which I replied, in the most innocent
manner, yet with dignity, “Pardon
me, Mr. Warner, but really, I do not
know to whom you refer.”

Whereat the gay old man made mouths
and incredulous faces.

And where was Eva?

16. CHAPTER XVI.

In a garden, near the Hudson River,
stands a very pretty frame-house, two
stories high, with four rooms on a floor.
Around the house is a grove of grand
old trees, whose branches (it is early
spring) mingle over the roof, and behind
it is an abrupt cliff, backed by a thick
wood. A more pretty or retired place
cannot be imagined. Not ten miles from
New-York, difficult of access by land,
(for only a narrow footpath leading
through the wood, connects it with the
main road,) and located on the borders
of the glorious Hudson, in sight of the
magnificent Palisades, this cottage seems
the very place for a quiet student, who
wishes to avoid the world. And now,
in spring time, when the leaves are budding,
and the peach-tree in the garden is
clad in blossoms, rich as a marriage
vestment, and the gray old rocks begin
to hide their grim faces behind flowering
vines, why, certainly, the cottage looks
very much like a stray piece of Eden. It
is, indeed, the very place for a quiet student
who wishes to avoid the world,—
and, in fact, it is the resort or retreat of
a quiet student, who, dressed in black
(single-breasted frock coat), and looking
very much like a young Jesuit, comes
here, sometimes by day, but oftener by
night. Strange to say, he does not often
approach the cottage by the narrow path
leading through the wood to the high
road, but comes across the river in an
oar-boat from the Jersey shore, as
though he very much desired to avoid
the observation of an inquisitive world.

It is an evening in spring; the sun has
set; the moon is up in the cloudless
sky, looking at her face in the mirror of
the broad Hudson; the air is full of the
breath of blossoms. The sound of oars
is heard, and then the boat, bearing the
solitary student, comes near the shore;
you can see his form, clad in sombre
black, and a glimpse of his face, by the
light of the moon. Arrived at the shore,
he lands, fastens the boat, and passes
through the garden toward the cottage,
his gaze all the while fixed upon an upper
room, from which a light is shining.

At the door he pauses, and listens—and
the door is presently opened by—a
pretty girl? No. But by a hard featured,
strong-limbed Irish servant-woman,
who takes charge of the cottage in
the student's absence, and thinks the
world of him, for he has been kind to
her, and given her money to pay the
passage of her two children from Ireland
to the New World.

“Well, Peggy!” says the student.

“And is it you, masther dear?” replies
Peggy, handing him a silver candlestick,
which contains a lighted wax candle.
The student takes the candle, and
softly goes up stairs, and enters the upper
chamber on the right, facing the
river. A neat room altogether—the
walls white as snow—the floor covered
with white matting—shelves filled with
books in one corner, and a white curtain
over the window looking to the river.
A picture of the Virgin Mary smiles
from the wall, over the table covered
with books and papers. The student
places his candle on the table, sinks into
an armchair, and resting his elbow on
the arm of the chair, and his cheek in
his hand, falls into a reverie—his eyes
grow fixed and dreamy. The Jesuit
coat falls open, and you discover traces
of gayer attire underneath—a blue
coat, white vest, faultless shirt-bosom,
and a diamond pin. So! He is not a
young Jesuit after all? As he sits there,
you would not think his face altogether
unhandsome, with its clear complexion,
dark hair and brows, aquiline features,
and eyes of deep brown—eyes now brimful
of happiness. And so he sits there,
in a waking dream, and does not hear
the opening of the door which leads
into the next room, and does not see the
white form on the threshold,—does not,
indeed, awake from his reverie, until the
white form is bending over him, and the
pressure of pure young lips is upon his
cheek. Then he starts, looks up, and
beholds that young face, warm, voluptuous,
and yet holy in its loveliness, as it
looks down upon him and breathes upon
his face.

“Eva!”

“Frank!”

And the young girl is cradled on his
knee, her head laid upon his breast, and
his hand upon the rich masses of her
auburn hair. And thus all alone with
each other, shut out from the world,
living only in the joy of each other's
presence, the student and the young girl
are happy in the upper room of the cottage
by the Hudson shore.

Let the veil be lifted gently from these
pure and happy days!

Thus Eva and I were happy together
in the cottage by the Hudson shore,
while spring and summer passed away;
happy in the heaven of our own creation.
Summer passed; the peach-tree in the
garden was heavy with fruit; autumn
came, and no change had come over our
love.

“Do not be long away, dear Frank,”
she said to me one fall morning as she
clung to my neck. “You know”—she
stopped and blushed, not with shame,
but from the very fulness of happiness.
“You know, I might die in your absence.”

She was about to become a mother,
and a causeless indefinable presentiment
of sudden death hung over her. I did
my best to chase away the gloomy feeling,
bade her good-bye, and promised to
return before night. As I crossed the
Hudson river in my boat, she waved her
'kerchief from the upper window—I can
see her now! Arrived on the Jersey
shore, I ascended the Palisades by a
winding road, found my horse at a lonely
farm-house, where I had been in the
habit of leaving him; and mounting, rode
to Hoboken and crossed to New-York.
This I had done all spring and summer,
to prevent my footsteps from being
tracked. At my large city mansion I
met my madam—my rich wife.

“Will you not go with me, dearest
Frank, to Mrs. Belblab's party to-night?”
said she, with great cordiality. I respectfully
excused myself. “Have another
engagement, my dear,” said I, “an
engagement which I can't put off.”

From my mansion I hastened to the
office of a celebrated doctor, and secured
his services for the anticipated event. I
gave him minute directions as to the locality
of the cottage, and he promised to
go out there in the afternoon and spend
the night with us. To the doctor, in my
half-Jesuit disguise, I represented myself
as Mr. Morton, a student of divinity.
About an hour after I had left the doctor's
office, and when I had changed my
attire for something more fashionable

than the single-breasted coat of an ecclesiastic.
I met that good man, my father,
in Broadway. “Where do you keep
her?” said he, shutting one eye and poking
me in the ribs. “Now, there's no
use in denying it. I know you've got
her somewhere, but the question is,
where?”

It was night, when, crossing the Hudson
after, I sprang upon the shore, and
with a beating heart approached the
cottage door. The night was dark and
gloomy, the moon obscured by masses
of leaden clouds. All was silent within
and around the cottage. No light, this
time, shone from an upper window, nor
did the rough-featured Irish servant appear
at the door to greet me with her
ready welcome. Is it a wonder that all
this filled me with a gloomy presentiment?
Trembling in every nerve, I
opened the door. I hurried along the
dark entry, and up the dark stairway.
At the door of Eva's chamber I hesitated,
with my hand upon the latch,
afraid to enter, and find my dark presentiment
realized. At last I opened the
door and entered. A taper placed in the
fireplace gave but a faint light to the
room barely disclosing the outlines of
the bed, with its white coverlet, glimmering
dimly in the mirror, and flinging
uncouth shadows over the floor.

All was still—silent as the grave.
Agitated beyond measure, I went on tiptoe
over the carpet to the bed, where,
by the folds of the coverlet, I could faintly
distinguish the outlines of a human
form—“Eva is dead!” I gasped.

A shadow rose from a chair beside the
bed—in the dim light I could distinguish
the slender frame and kindly looks of
the good doctor.

“Hush!” he whispered, and pressed
my hand. “Look there!” He pointed
to the face upon the pillow—the face of
Eva, rosy with sleep, while her dark hair
escaped in rich masses from beneath her
white cap. Not dead, but sleeping. I
could have shouted for joy.

“Come here,” said the doctor, and led
me to the fireplace, where, in the shadows,
I distinguished Peggy, sitting in a
chair, and holding something in her arms.

“Shure, Maisther, and it's a boy!”
said Peggy, with a smile upon her face.
I could have hugged the stout servant in
my joy

“You are a father, and your wife is
doing well,” said the doctor, “but she
must, for a while, be kept quiet, away
from the light and from all noise. I will
remain here until the nurse whom I have
engaged arrives. I expect her every
moment.

I thanked the good doctor, by a hearty
pressure of the hand, and then took
my place silently near the head of the
bed, watching the beautiful countenance
of my sleeping wife—my real wife—and
listening to her even and gentle respiration.
In about an hour, she stirred in
her sleep and unclosed her eyes, and
gently spoke my name. Oh, the pure
rapture of that moment, when, pressing
my kiss upon her forehead, I called her
my dear, my only wife, and she replied,
her eyes swimming in joy and tears,
“You will love me always, will you not,
dear husband?”

In a little while the nurse arrived. As
she entered the faintly-lighted room, she
seemed to me like an immense bonnet
and cap, to which was incidentally appended
the figure of a woman. The doctor
gave her some instructions in a low
voice, and then said to me:

“You will not need me again to-night.
The nurse here will take all proper care
of your wife; and, as for yourself, you had
better retire to rest, as your presence
may agitate our patient, and deprive her
of needful repose.”

He departed, after having reiterated
his instructions to the nurse, who had
divested herself of her bonnet, and now
appeared in a cap, whose dimensions were
supernatural.

“Good-night, Eva,” I whispered, kissing
the rosy cheek of the young mother.
“Don't you see, dearest, that all our presentiments
have proved false?”

Then, leaving her to the care of Peggy
and of the nurse with the phantom cap, I
went, not to bed, but into the next
room, in which the face of the Virgin
Mary smiled from the wall. Seating myself
in the arm-chair, in the dark, I gave
myself up to the silent enjoyment of my
happiness. I forget the world—forgot
how wicked and base I had been in marrying
the rich West Indian woman for
her money. “Eva is my true wife! Eva
is a mother!” was the thought which
filled my soul. And thus I sat, silent
and happy, while the night wore on, and

the moonlight, broken by flitting clouds,
came fitfully through the window curtains.

“I will leave this rich wife of mine—
leave her and her gold,” was my thought,
“and, with Eva and our child, seek a
home, however lowly, in the distant
West.”

And, thus musing, I fell asleep in the
chair. From that sleep I was startled by
a frightful dream—a dream whose details
I couldn't remember, but which still
left upon me an impression of incredible
horror. It seemed to me that it was accompanied
by a low, gurgling cry, like
the last sound uttered by a drowning
man. I started up and found that
the morning had dawned. Its first rays
were stealing through the window-curtains.
Anxious to erase the impression
of the dream from my mind, I gently
entered Eva's chamber. The rays of
the morning shone into it brightly, and
from the east. Peggy was near the fireplace,
asleep in her chair, the babe upon
her knees. I approached the bed, upon
which the first light of morning softly
shone.

Here I would willingly drop the pen,
but the story must be told.

17. CHAPTER XVII.

The head of Eva was thrown back
upon the pillow, her throat and shoulders
were bare, her face was distorted by
agony, her lips apart, and her eyes glassy.
And upon her white throat there were
livid marks, like the print of fingers.
She was dead; her cheek was scarcely
cold—but she was dead. She had been
choked to death. The spasm of her last
agony was still upon her face. It was
her cry—that low gurgling sound—which
I had heard in my dream. Maddened
by that sight—the young mother dead
upon her pillow—I still had presence of
mind to pass to the fireplace and awake
the servant from her slumber. As she
opened her eyes and looked around with
a sleepy stare, a new horror confronted
me. The babe upon her knee was dead
—the livid print of fingers was on its
throat.

“The nurse,” I gasped, “where is she?
Woman! my wife and child have been
murdered, and yet you sleep.” I did
not wait for further words, but hurried
from the room, and through every room
in the house, in search of the nurse.
She was no where to be found. Then
sick at heart, I staggered into the open
air, and examined the garden. The
wicket-gate of the path leading to the
wood was open, and upon the soft earth
I traced the print of a footstep—the
mark of a woman's shoe, turned from
the house. While I stood gazing upon
this footstep, a hand was laid upon my
shoulder. Looking up, I beheld the
slender frame and benevolent visage of
the doctor.

“I have come out thus early to rectify
a queer mistake, which, somehow or
other, was made last night. Yesterday,
I succeeded in getting a nurse for your
wife—a Mrs. Moulton, recommended to
me by a brother physician. When I
left my office yesterday afternoon, I told
my student to send this Mrs. Moulton
out here, as soon as she called. The
nurse came, as you know, while I was
here last night; and I took her, of
course, to be Mrs. Moulton, whom, personally,
I had never seen. Judge of my
surprise, when, on returning to my office,
last night, I found the real Mrs. Moulton
waiting for me there. It appears the
one who first called at the office, and
whom my student sent to this place,
was a sham Mrs. Moulton. And I have
come out at this early hour to clear up
this mystery. For I don't like a patient
of mine to be entrusted to the care of a
person whose qualifications I do not
fully know. Bless me, how pale you
look!”

I silently motioned him to follow me,
and led him into the house, and up the
stairs, and into Eva's chamber.

“There, doctor,” said I, pointing to
the corpse of poor Eva, “behold the consequences
of your mistake.” And as he
sank back, perfectly appalled, I fell groaning
and raving upon the form of my dead
wife.

It was at least three hours before I
could recover sufficient fortitude to converse,
even with the appearance of calmness,
with the doctor. We came to the
same conclusion. Eva had been murdered
by the nurse, who, taking the name of
Mrs. Moulton, had obtained admittance
in the chamber of my real wife.

“And now, doctor,” said I, with a
husky voice and livid face, “as this has

been the consequence, in some measure,
of your negligence, I demand of you that
there shall be no coroner's inquest.
Make out what certificate you please of
the causes of Eva's death, but let her be
buried quietly and in peace. We must
avoid all publicity.

The doctor was troubled; he had
never done such a thing; but I was imperative.

“By pursuing such a course we will be
enabled to discover the murderess,” said
I, “and when she is discovered, you may
make the matter public.”

At length the doctor consented; and
with a face stamped with grief and horror,
and a leaden step, left the house,
promising to return on the morrow.

“Peggy, you have heard what I
said to the doctor;” I said to the rough-featured
Irish woman, who wept incessantly.
“Do you, also, promise to be
silent, in order that I may discover the
murderess of your mistress?”

The good woman, half choked as she
was by grief, swore it on the cross.

“And now,” said I, turning to the bed
where Eva lay, her limbs composed, the
death spasm gone from her face, and her
dead babe in her arms—“Good-bye! thou
dearest and truest of all the creatures of
God. Good-bye! mother and child. You
both have left me. With you, all that is
good within me is dead. And if I live,
it is not to enjoy life, or to love again,
but it is —.” I could say no more,
but bowed my head over the face of my
dead wife, and wept my tears upon her
face. And the poor Irish woman knelt
by the bed, and in her rough voice spoke
out a prayer of her church, for the souls
of the mother and child. When I again
raised my head, my attention was attracted
by something bright which glittered
on the pillow—it was a diamond ring,
not mine, nor Eva's, but had evidently
fallen from the hand of the murderess.
I regarded it for a long time, and then
secured it in my pocket-book.

“Watch by the dead, to-night,” I said
to the Irish woman, “early to-morrow I
will return.” Then, dressing myself in
fashionable attire, I left the cottage, passed
through the wood, and gained the high
road.

It was a cloudy autumnal day; the sky
leaden; the wind howling mournfully,
and whirling the withered leaves high in
air. As I walked rapidly along the high
road to the city, you may be sure that
all the agony a man can feel, and yet
live, was tearing at my heart-strings.
Had it not been for the hope of vengeance,
I verily believe I would have gone
mad. Night had fallen, when, entering
the city, I directed my steps to my lofty
mansion. As I ascended the steps, and
traversed the lofty hall, how different
were my feelings from yesterday.

“The madam is out!” one of the servants
informed me: “Out in the carriage
on Broadway.”

I hurried to the library, and on the
way encountered the pretty quadroon
girl, Marie. She had always regarded
me with a singular mixture of fear and
affection, since the morning of “the
phial” scene.

“Come here, Marie,” and I led her
into the library, and lighted a candle.
“Do you know this ring?”

“Dat 'long to missus,” said the brown
girl, looking at me with her big eyes.
“Name inside.”

Holding the ring to the light, I discovered
that the initials of the madam, the
initials of the name which she had borne
in her first marriage, were indeed engraven
on the inside.

“I only asked, Marie, because I wish
to present your mistress with a much
handsomer ring. Now, go down stairs,
and tell them to have supper ready by
the time madam comes home.” The
girl left the library, and I sat down to—
think. A servant soon came to announce
that the madam had returned, and that
supper was waiting for us. I looked in
the glass, and arranged my attire. I
was startled by the ghastly pallor of my
face.

“This will not do; the part which I
have to play demands a face all gaiety and
smiles.”

I drew a decanter from the closet, and
drank a half tumbler of Madeira, and felt
it flush my face in an instant, although it
did not produce the least sensation of
intoxication. Descending to the supper
room, I found an elegant repast in waiting
by the light of wax candles; and the
madam was there, richly dressed, her
wig as black, her false teeth as white, as
usual. Her little black eyes, it seemed
to me, shone with feverish lustre, and
her cheeks were spread with an additional

thickness of rouge. She greeted me
warmly, and I her with ease and gaiety.
And we sat down to supper. How we
talked! Of the opera, the last party, the
newest scandal—who was to marry such
a belle, and who such an exquisite would
honor with his hand—how we talked!
Of anything and everything save the
subject which was deepest in both our
hearts. And all the while, behind my
richly-dressed, bejewelled madam, I saw
the vision of a young mother, dead upon
her bed, with her dead baby on her
breast. After supper came wine; and
we drank each other's health, and talked
and laughed, until Maria, who waited by
the table, watching us with her big eyes,
could not help joining loudly in our merriment.
At length, in perfect good humor
with herself, the madam retired to
ber chamber, and I went into the library.
There I sat for a long time in silent
thought.

It was after midnight, when, candle in
hand, I stole softly into the luxurious
chamber of the madam. Locking the
door, I drew a small table to the bedside,
and placed upon its dark surface three
objects—the lighted candle, a glass filled
with Madeira, and the ring.

I surveyed the madam as she slept,
under her silver canopy. She was wrapped
in a night robe, fringed with lace; a
cap had taken the place of her wig, her
false teeth lay upon the bureau. A more
luxuriously attired or uglier woman I
had never seen.

I laid my hand upon her shoulder:
“Get up, madam,” I said in her ear.

She started up, opened her eyes in
sleepy wonder, as she clutched her night
robe over her shoulders.

“Frank! what's the matter?” she
cried, her voice (from the absence of her
teeth) hardly intelligible. And the sleepy
wonder on her face began to be succeeded
by a look of vague terror.

“The matter is, madam, that to-morrow
morning I will consign you to the
hands of justice, as the murderess of my
real and only wife. And I have come to
inform you of it, so that you may prepare
yourself to be dragged through the streets,
like the felon that you are, with the mob
hooting at your heels. O madam! do you
know this ring?”

Never shall I forget the dead, blank
look, which, at my words, came over her
face. She clutched her hands nervously,
but had not a word in reply.

“This ring I found on Eva's pillow,
dearest,” I continued. “And you can
now prepare yourself for the morrow! I
did not think of offering you a glass of
wine, or of soothing you with a few drops
from the silver phial, but—” I tossed the
contents of the wineglass upon the carpet,
and regarded her with a look which
she understood,—“but I believe you are
in the habit of stilling your nerves with
morphine. Try some morphine to-night,
love. It will make you sleep
well.”

And taking up the ring, I rose as if to
leave the room. Then, clad in her nightclothes,
she sprang from the bed, and
clutched me by the knees, offering me
her fortune, everything, if I would only
spare her life.

“I don't threaten your life, madam,”
I replied, shaking her grasp from my
knees, “I only speak of to-morrow, and
advice morphine.” And taking up the
ring, I left the room. But at the very
door she again fell at my feet, clutched
my knees, and held me back.

“Take my fortune, take all,” she
shrieked, “only spare my life. Spare
my life! my life!” Her night-dress fell
from her shoulders, and her own hair—
black streaked with gray—streamed
down her livid cheeks. Never have I
seen so terrible a picture of fright. I was
touched,—I relented,—but a power over
which I had no control suddenly possessed
me.

“Woman! I do not take your life. I
do not condemn you. It is your first
and your second husband; it is Eva and
her child who condemn you. Address
your prayers to them, not to me.”

And again I flung her from me. I left
the room and closed the door; and
watched without in the dark. I heard
her pace up and down, heard her
sobs and groans, and ejaculations; and
thus, perchance, two hours passed away.
At length all was still within her chamber.
Not a sound broke the dead quiet.
I went slowly to the library room, and
sat before the fire, in a sort of half stupor,
awaiting the approach of dawn.
Dawn came at last, and there was a loud
outcry and the sound of footsteps hurrying
to and fro throughout the mansion

Marie rushed into the library and

flung herself at my feet. “O Master!
O Master!” was all she could say—
“Come! Come!” And clutching me by
the hands, she led me from the room and
down stairs, into the bed-chamber of her
mistress. The morning light shone gaily
through the embroidered curtains, and a
bird in a cage near the window was
gaily singing, and—a corpse was suspended
from the canopy by a silken cord,
the blackened face and startling eyeballs
turned full to the light.

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

The madam had preferred the rope to
morphine, and she was dead.

The second day from this event there
were two funerals in New-York. The
one, a gorgeous affair, went with a long
procession of carriages to Greenwood;
myself chief mourner. It was in the afternoon
that I stood in front of the vault,
surrounded by the crowd of funeral
guests, and hid my face in my handkerchief,
as the parson read the service, and
the coffin, with the huge silver plate glittering
in the sunshine, was slowly lowered
out of sight. The madam had
“committed suicide in a fit of temporary
insanity,”—such was the verdict of the
coroner's jury; so said the papers; and
the parson, alluding to the fact, dwelt
long and touchingly upon the holy life
and pure conscience of the deceased. At
this everybody observed me shake with
emotion as I covered my face with the
handkerchief.

The other funeral took place at night,
or in the dusk of the evening. The Irish
servant woman, the good doctor, and myself,
were the only persons who stood
around the lonely grave, by the Hudson
River, in the still twilight. We buried
Eva—and her child beside her mother.
And as the coffin, containing the young
mother and her child, sank slowly out of
sight, the Irish woman and the doctor
wept like children. As for myself, I
could not weep. Gazing round the lonely
graveyard, and upon the Hudson,
rippling gently in the twilight, and upon
the western sky, mellow and golden with
the last kiss of day, I remembered,—O
how vividly!—the last time that Eva and
I had stood side by side in this place.

“Do you think,” whispered the doc
tor, “that the murderess of this poor
child will ever be discovered?”

“Doctor!” I answered, “the murderess
has already gone to her account.
She was buried in Greenwood to-day.”

Returning to my mansion in the city,
I found my good father waiting for me
in the library, dressed and perfumed as
usual.

“Quite an afflicting dispensation,
Frank,” he said, trying his best to look
grave. “How hard you took it in Greenwood
to-day! Everybody remarked it!
And now I suppose you are a disconsolate
widower, worth some half a million
dollars! And,”—he glanced around the
room and lowered his voice,—“And she
didn't make your coffee too strong for
you, after all, did she, boy?” Good old
man.

The history of the next few months
may be written in a few words. I spent
a great part of the time at the cottage,
musing, like one in a waking dream, upon
the irrevocable past. For hours without
changing my position, I would sit silently
gazing upon the bed in which Eva had
slept, upon the dress which she had
worn, upon the books which she had
read, upon her vacant chair.

I was sitting one morning, late
in winter, in the library-room of my
great town mansion—my feet upon the
fender—my hands folded on my knees,
my eyes fixed vaguely on the fire—when
the servant entered and announced that
a Mr. Stebbins wished to see me.

“Show him up,” said I, and wondered
who the deuce was Mr. Stebbins, and
what he wanted with me? “Can it be
another lawyer from Walmer, or any
thing about my West India wife?” Mr.
Stebbins entered—a spare little man,
with sharp features, thin gray whiskers,
and gold spectacles. He dropped into a
chair, holding his hat in both hands, as
though it had been a dish.

“I am,” said he, without further preface,
“I am one of the tellers of such and
such a bank.” It was a bank in which
I had deposited a large amount of money.

“Well, Mr. Stebbins, I am glad to see
you. I have not overdrawn my account,
I hope?”

Mr. Stebbins gave a kind of wintry
smile. “O no! sir. By no means, sir,”
and he drew from his overcoat a large
pocket-book. “Be so kind as to look at

that.” He placed a check in my hands.
It was a check for a hundred dollars,
signed by my name, the signature so
well done, that I hesitated ere I could
satisfy myself that it was a forgery.

“Allow me to ask, Mr. Warner, is
that your signature?”

“And allow me to ask by whom was
this check presented, and have you paid
the money on it?”

“We have paid the money on it, and
it was presented this morning by a middle-sized,
elderly man, in green spectacles
and long gray hair. We paid the money,
and the man left the bank, and it was
not until then, that some informality in
the manner in which the check is drawn,
caused us to doubt its genuineness. Is
that your signature, sir?”

For a moment I was buried in thought.
It was not my signature—but I did not
feel inclined to let loose the hounds of
law at once upon the unknown poor
devil who had forged my name. So I
replied—“Really, Mr. Stebbins, I cannot
at once decide. You perceive the check
is not from my check-book—it is written,
not printed. This is suspicious; but I
may at some time have given this check,
while absent from home. It is dated
some weeks back.” And I desired Mr.
Stebbins to call at five o'clock in the
evening, when I hoped to be able to
speak definitely on the matter.

With that white-heat malignity in his
eyes which the mere mention of a forgery
always calls up to the eyes of an officer
of a bank, Mr. Stebbins sat his hat
square upon his head and departed.

And I took my hat and cloak, and
strolled out upon Broadway, in order to
keep an appointment with a young artist
of fine genius, who was painting my portrait.
This artist, whom I will call Carlton—Louis
Carlton—interested me deeply.

Scarcely twenty-four, with long hair,
eyes full of fire, and a Raphael-like face,
he had already displayed proofs of the
highest genius. Some of his portraits
were worthy of the first artist in the
country; and he was engaged upon an
historical picture, which was stamped
with extraordinary invention and power.
Louis had made me his confidant. He
was poor—was in love with an orphan
girl, whom he described as possessing the
rarest beauty. It was his ambition to
visit Italy, study there for a year or two
and then return home to marry, and to
achieve fame and fortune.

And, occupied as I was by the inevitable
past of my own life, I could not help
feeling interested in the future of the
young artist. In a few minutes after I
left my own house, I found myself in the
studio of the young artist—a small
room, lighted by a window which opened
to the west, and crowded with the
evidences of his craft. The sun shone
brightly upon an unfinished portrait on
the easel, but the place was deserted.

Louis was not there. Flinging myself
upon the sofa, I soon found my attention
chained by a picture which stood upon
the wall—was it a portrait, or a fancy
sketch? The face of a young girl, with
sunny complexion, deep blue eyes, masses
of golden hair, and a neck and half-revealed
bosom worthy of Eve—was it a
portrait or a fancy sketch? I was asking
this question, when my ear was arrested
by the sound of voices in an adjoining
room, separated from the studio
by a door which was slightly opened;
the sound of voices—a man's voice and
a woman's mingling in earnest conversation.
And my own name pronounced
more than once, in tones tremulous with
emotion, struck my ear.

I rose, crept near the slightly opened
door, and concealed myself in a corner,
behind a faded screen. Thus placed, I
could distinctly hear the conversation in
the next room.

“Oh! Louis, Louis! how could you
do it!” It was a woman's voice, earnest
and full of agony, yet very musical,
which spoke these words.

“I know not, Eveline, I know not!”
returned the voice of Louis. “I must
have been mad! Here I was, with all
my labor, over head and ears in debt—
my things seized by the landlord—every
prospect closed against me; and, added
to this, the thought of you toiling like a
slave at your needle, for bare bread—and
—and—I must have been mad! To
forge a check; to put to it the name of
one who has been my best friend; to
disguise myself and present it at the
bank; to write felon on my forehead,
and expose myself to a convict's doom!
Oh! Eveline! Eveline! I must have been
mad!”

His voice grew husky with agony. I

could hear him sob, and could also hear
the low voice of Eveline comforting him.

“Louis, you were mad. You couldn't
have been yourself. But all may yet be
well.”

“Well!” he echoed, in frantic tones,
“am I not a villain? Am I not certain
to be discovered and put to shame? No,
Eveline, no! All will not be well! My
life is blasted forever!”

“But, Louis!” I heard her low and
gentle voice, “why not see Mr. Warner
himself, and state the case to him, and
throw yourself upon his generosity?
When his portrait is finished he will owe
you at least a hundred dollars.”

“There it is! there it is!” broke in
the voice of the artist, “I was too proud
to ask him to advance me the money,
but not too proud to forge his name.”
And again his voice died away in sobs.

“But, go to him, Louis; go to him at
at once, and all may yet be well!”

Presently, I heard his footstep, and
saw him from my hiding-place, as he
came from the front room into the studio.
He was deathly pale, and his eyes were
red with weeping.

“Wait, Eveline, wait until I return.”
He pulled his cap low over his brows,
and, rushing by the screen which concealed
me, left the room.

Gliding gently from my hiding-place,
I went into the front room. Eveline
was seated upon the sofa, weeping. In
her face I at once saw the original of the
portrait. She was above the medium
height, and her form, nobly and richly
moulded, was clad to the throat in a
plain black dress, which contrasted
strongly with her clear complexion and
golden hair. If her glowing cheek and
expansive bust showed a voluptuous organization,
her lip indicated pride, and
her forehead intellect. She rose, blushing,
and yet with a stately air, as I entered.

“Mr. Warner!” she ejaculated. She
knew me by the half-finished portrait in
the studio.

“The same, miss,” I replied. Allow
me the honor of a few minutes, conversation.
To make matters brief, I will
at once inform you that I overheard all
that passed between Louis and you a
few moments ago.”

“And you will save him!” she cried,
with great flashing eyes and a glowing
cheek. As I gazed upon this beautiful
creature, a feeling of cynicism altogether
infernal possessed me. Perchance, the
events of the last two or three months
had warped my nature. At all events,
as I saw the lovely girl blushing and
tearful before me, I felt impelled to make
her suffer all that was in my power to
inflict.

“Miss Eveline, the fate of Louis is in
your hands.”

“In my hands?”

“It rests with you to decide whether,
to-night, freed from the charge of forgery,
and with ample means to defray his expenses,
he shall be on his way to Italy,
or whether he shall, to-night, sleep in
the Tombs.”

“It rests with me!” she slowly said,
dropping her eyes.

“With you!” and I whispered a few
words, which brought burning blushes to
her cheeks.

“O shame! O shame! You cannot
mean this; you are too generous—you—”

“I am not generous. I am rich. I
hold Louis in my power. You are exceedingly
beautiful. You can save him.
Will you? To-night, Louis will be on
his way to Italy, and you will be —
“I whispered the rest in her ear. “Or,
if you decline to save him, Louis, to-night,
will sleep in the Tombs.” She
gave me a look. If looks could kill, that
one would have struck me like lightning.

19. CHAPTER XIX.

And then again shame and anger filled
her bosom, her cheeks and eyes.

“Decide! the footstep of Louis is on
the stairs! in a moment it will be too
late! Quick, Miss Eveline, Italy or the
Tombs!”

What a look she gave me, as, half rising,
with a face pale as death, she gasped
“Italy!” and then sank back fainting
upon the sofa. And the next instant
Louis entered. He saw me, and without
a word sank on a chair, and covered his
face with his hands.

“Not a word, Louis! I know all, and
will save you!”

“O sir—”

“No time is to be lost; not a moment.
This afternoon at five I am to decide
whether that check is genuine or a forgery;
and at four the steamer sails for

Liverpool. You must be on board of
that steamer, prepared for your journey
to Italy. I will not only save you from
the consequences of the forgery, but will
advance you means to support you for
two years abroad.”

O generous man! How can I ever repay
you!”

“Not a word, but pack up, pack up!
and in your absence I will be as a guardian
to your bride—that is, your betrothed.”

At this moment Eveline revived from
her fainting fit and heard my closing
words.

“All is arranged,” I cried, turning to
her; “Louis consents! Italy is the
word!” Again that look!

But I remained with her and Louis
until his trunks were packed, the needful
money in his pocket, and everything
ready for his departure. They had not a
chance to exchange a word alone. It
was three o'clock; the carriage which
was to bear him to the steamer waited
below; the moment of farewell had arrived.

Louis flung himself into her arms:
“Be true, Eveline—be true to me till
death,” he cried.

She echoed his words—“True to you
till death!” and looked over his shoulder
into my face with that peculiar look. I
stood with folded arms surveying the
scene.

“To your care, patron and benefactor!
do I commit her,” cried Louis. There
was another frantic embrace; and, tearing
her arms from his neck, he hurried
from the room. From the window I
saw him enter the carriage, and saw the
carriage drive away. He was gone. I
was alone with the proud and beautiful
Eveline, who sat on the sofa, now blushing,
and now pale as death.

“Now, my dear ward!” said I, bringing
her bonnet and cloak, “you will go
home with your guardian.” She did
not say a word, but put on her bonnet
and cloak, and took my arm. I felt her
arm tremble, as we left the studio, descended
the stairs, and pursued our way
along Broadway. She dropped her veil
over her face; I could not trace the emotions
there, but I felt her shudder at
every step.

At length we reached my house. “I
have sent to your boarding-house for
your things. This house, in future, shall
be your home.” We entered the mansion;
I called the brown girl Marie:
“This lady, Marie, is your future mistress,”
I said; and then, turning to Eveline,
who, veiled and shuddering, stood
in the centre of the large and gloomy
parlor, I whispered,—“Do you still adhere
to your promise, without equivocation
or thought of escape?”

“I do,” was the answer in a broken
voice.

“Marie, conduct Miss Eveline to her
room. At five, miss, I will be pleased
to see you in this parlor, as the man
with the check will call at that time.”

Eveline went slowly from the parlor;
and I was alone. What strange thoughts
possessed me! Here was a noble and
beautiful girl, willing to sacrifice herself
to save her lover from a felon's cell.

“Wealth is power,” I said, and laughed
to myself; and I employed the next
hour in sending certain of my servants,
in various directions, upon business of
some moment connected with my plans.

Five o'clock came, and with it Mr.
Stebbins, whose thin face glowed with
positive delight as he seated himself in a
chair near the table, upon which stood a
wax candle, and at once unrolled the portentous
pocket-book.

“Ah! on the track of the villain—on
the track of the villain! To-morrow
we'll have him, sure,—eh?”

He stopped abruptly, as, for the first
time, he perceived Eveline, who was
seated upon the sofa in the shadows of
the parlor.

“This young lady is my ward, Mr.
Stebbins. You can speak freely in her
presence.

And, as he ran glibly on, I, leaning
against the mantel, could mark the agitation
of Eveline, which every moment
threatened to break forth in words.

“And so you are on the track of the
villain, are you?”

“On his track, on his track! You see
we've discovered the store at which he
bought the wig which he wore. He is
described as a young, genteel man; and
one of the notes—a $20 bill—which he
received for the check, has been traced
to the hands of the person to whom
he paid it away. To-morrow, Mr. Warner—”

Here Eveline bent forward, clasped

her hands, and uttered a low groan; she
evidently suffered deeply.

“To-morrow, Mr. Stebbins, you will
say nothing of this affair,” thus I interrupted
him. “The check was mine.
You will pass it to my account. As to
this story of the wig, that may or may
not be true; but the simple fact is this,
the check was genuine. I applaud your
vigilance, Mr. Stebbins, but this time you
have been grossly deceived. Good-evening,
Mr. Stebbins.”

These words struck Mr. Stebbins with
amazement. It was after a moment of
dumb surprise, that he rolled up the
pocket-book, bade me good-evening, and
departed. I was alone with Eveline. I
drew near to her: “Louis is safe and on
his way to Italy!” I whispered, regarding
her earnestly; she met my gaze, and
trembled from head to foot. And yet,
despite her pallor and her agitation, she
was proudly beautiful.

“Have you no word of thanks?” I resumed,
after a moment's pause.

She raised her eyes; they were filled
with tears. “Oh! have you no mercy?”
she cried, and slid from the sofa on her
knees, and bowed her head upon her
heaving bosom.

“Is this your gratitude? is this your
fulfilment of your promise?” I cried indignantly;
“I saved your lover from a
felon's cell upon one condition; and now
you wish to evade that condition. You
promised to be mine, and—without marriage.
I hold you to the fulfilment of
your promise.”

“O sir, I have loved Louis, loved him
for years; alone in the world, we were
all in all to each other. All his plans
for the future were linked with my happiness;
the very crime which he committed
was done for my sake. And now,
that you have so generously rescued him
from ruin,—can you, Oh! can you, sink
his betrothed wife to eternal infamy?”

“Once for all, Eveline, let me tell you
that such talk is vain.” I raised her
from the floor. “Awake from your
world of romance into the real, practical
world—a world in which everything has
its price, and in which nothing is given
away. You speak of my generosity.
And how came it in my power to be generous?
Do you know, woman? By
selling myself, in a manner, a thousand
fold more infamous than that in which
you are about to sacrifice yourself to
serve your lover.” I must have looked
like a devil, while uttering these words,
for she shrank away from my gaze, covering
her face with her hands.

“Come, Eveline—” I took her by the
hand and led her from the room and up
the stairs into a richly furnished chamber,
where a single light was burning before
a mirror. That mirror reflected our
faces—mine, flushed with mad excitement—hers,
framed in its golden hair,
crimson and snow by turns, and startlingly
beautiful. She clung to my wrist
with both hands, and, for the last time,
regarded me with a look of overwhelming
entreaty. “Mercy!” she whispered.

I pointed to a door which opened into
an adjoining chamber! “Our bridal
room, my love!” and led her toward the
door. Her eyes roved wildly round the
room. An object on the table in front
of the mirror caught her gaze; she seized
it and raised it glittering in the air. It
was a poignard which I had left upon the
table by chance or by design.

“I will keep my promise,” she said, in
a low voice, but with a deathly resolution
in her eyes. “I will sacrifice myself
to you, but you shall not possess me
living;” and she placed the point of the
dagger to her bosom.

20. CHAPTER XX.

It was a critical moment. I made no
reply, but, stepping backward, light in
hand, opened the door which led into
the next room. At the same moment I
extinguished the light. Eveline, from
where she stood, could see clearly into
the next chamber, which was brilliantly
lighted. She looked. The dagger dropped
upon the floor, and she came forward
and took me gently by the hand.
And I led her into the next room, where
two persons were waiting by a table,
upon which was placed an open Bible.
One of these persons was dressed in a
gown and surplice—a fat, robust, easy-looking
gentleman; and the other was a
young man, with a face like Raphael, and
the eye of a poet. “Doctor,” I said to
the clergyman, “I thank you for your
punctuality,” and, bowing to the young
man, “Louis, behold your bride!”

And the artist and maiden joined
hands. While the ceremony was said,

his eyes turned deep with passion; her
face looked wild and startled, as though
she thought herself in a dream. The rubicund
clergyman pronounced them man
and wife.

“Louis, after you left for the steamer
to-day, I discovered that it would not
sail until to-morrow. I therefore sent a
servant to you, directing you to follow
him to this room, where I could meet
you. Well! we have met. Are you
satisfied. And you, Madam Carlton, are
you satisfied?”

Louis was too full to speak; but, as
for his young and beautiful wife, she
dropped his hand, and came to me, and
put her arms about my neck, and
kissed me on the cheeks and forehead,—
“God bless you, generous man!” and
turned again to her husband weeping.

There was a long pause, in which not
a word was said.

At length, I led the way into another
room, where an elegant supper was
spread. We all sat down; Louis and
Eveline too happy to do justice to the
repast, while I slowly drank my wine,
and the portly clergyman ate and drank
as though there was a wager in the case.
And the good gentleman and I sat over
our wine, long after the bride and bridegroom
had retired to their chamber, and
talked of everything—politics, Puseyism,
“popery,” the authorship of Junius,
whether Napoleon was a greater man
than Cromwell, et cetera, et cetera.

At last, being joyous with wine, the
good man went home in my carriage,
and I retired to the library, and—took a
segar.

“Frank, my boy!” I said, as I watched
the smoke curling to the ceiling, “you
have done one good deed in your life. A
dev'lish odd way you took of doing it,
but still it was a good deed.”

And the next morning I saw the happy
couple on board the steamer, Louis
looking like a poet, and Eveline like an
empress; and, having received the last
adieu, returned to my home, wandered
sadly up to the library, and felt myself
the loneliest man in the world.

Soon after this my father died; cause,
too much terrapin, at an aldermanic repast,
and I was alone in the world.
Anxious to escape from my thoughts, I
plunged into society. I bought me fast-trotting
horses. I had my box at the
opera. I put my name among those who
got up big dinners to distinguished strangers,
managed mock funerals at the death
of great men, and patronized rich churches,
art-unions, and the various societies
for the promotion of humbug all over
the world. I gave big dinners at my
city palace. I lent money to needy
fashionables. I gambled. In a word, I
did everything that a man with half a
million dollars can do, who is anxious to
escape thinking. But it would not do.
The ugly thought of my hag-wife, hanging
by the silken cord, followed me
everywhere; and poor Eva, with her
dead baby on her breast, was always before
my eyes.

“What you might have been, Frank,
if you had not sold yourself for money,
or if your father had not sold Eva to
the rich broker!”

'Twas an ugly thought; but I could
not shake it off. And thus, one, two,
three years wagged away.

And while the years wagged on, spite
of all my attempts to banish thought, a
complete and all-overshadowing gloom
took possession of me.

The following words will but faintly
give an idea of the state of my mind at
this period:

There is something terrible in that
hour which brings to the heart a fullness
of despair—an utter listlessness in
all the affairs of life—a conviction that
there is no use to struggle and suffer
longer—a sense of the utter futility of
any and all kinds of effort—a settled
disposition to brood upon the past, to
hope not in the future, and thus to wear
the last elements of life away.

Loud-voiced suffering there is in the
world that relieves itself in wild utterance,
in alternate spasms of hope and despair,
and in tears. But there is a suffering
which is hard to bear. Quiet in its
action, always with you, crowding upon
you unbidden when you try to rouse
yourself to effort—coming to you in
dreams, and in dreams that call back
everything of the past, and print their
images even upon your waking hours—
this kind of suffering is hard to bear,
and it wears, and wears the very life
away.

Oh! the bitter, bitter hour when, satisfied
of the ingratitude and misapprehension
of your fellow-beings—when,

hopeless of he future, and certain only
that you are utterly isolated and alone—
alone—all, all alone—you throw down
your arms and give up the game of life,
as a game that has gone against you, and
—irrevocably.

Then your existence itself becomes a
sort of perpetual dream; you wander
about the places and the memories of
the past, and all the while feel that the
chords of life are snapping one by one
within you. And the hours you spend
alone with yourself no human hand can
paint, no human heart can sympathize
with.

You feel that you are an incarnate isolation,
an incarnate despair—something
that the lightnings have not killed but
blasted; you feel all the time the force of
the ever-recurring question, “What business
have I here in this weary, weary
life?”

And thus wear on the hours and days
slowly, awfully, with leaden steps and
memories that end all their lessons with an
early death and a quiet grave. So broken
down and wrecked by calamity upon calamity,
you sometimes feel a kind of horrible
joy in the thought that you have endured
all that can be endured, and that
another blow will break the last chord of
endurance and of life.

Oh! in this perpetual though quiet
agony, now anything that reminds you
of a happy home—the face, the voice of
a pure woman, or a sinless child—how it
merely increases your despair, and how
you know that, though these have once
been yours—these, all the sacred images
of home—yet never can they be again!

And you can creep away to your lonely
room, and measure the depths of your
loneliness by contrasting the present
with the past.

From thoughts like these; from the
dead apathy of despair which came with
them, I was aroused by a personage
whose history became suddenly and
strangely connected with my own. Eugenia!
And who was Eugenia, and how
came her life to mingle with my own?
Let me tell the story.

21. CHAPTER XXI.

Let me tell how I first met Eugenia.

One night I was sitting alone in one of
the largest parlors of my grand city man
sion. The servants had long ago retired,
and the house was still as a tomb. A
wax candle, which stood on the table before
me, shed its light for a few paces
around the table, but left the other parts
of the room veiled in uncertain twilight.
The huge mirrors glittered faintly in the
light, and the pictures on the wall—scriptural
subjects from the hands of old
masters—appeared in vague, almost distorted
outlines. It was a night in early
spring, and a wood fire smoldered on the
hearth.

Seated in a chair by the table, my
hands placed together, and my head
sunken on my breast, I gazed vacantly
and dreamily at the light, and was thinking.
My life came up to me in a sort of
grotesque and nightmare panorama. The
wild life I had lately led; the scenes of
mad dissipation through which I had
passed, in my effort to kill time and banish
thought; the images of the race-course,
the ball-room, the opera, and the
gambling hell; these were in the foreground
of the picture which rose to my
mind. And in the background was the
sweet, holy face of Eva, and the livid, distorted
face of my hag-wife. I found myself
thinking aloud.

“Frank, my boy! this will not do.
You are getting old before your time.
Your cheeks are sallow, and there is an
ugly hollow underneath each eye. The
owner of half a million dollars, you ought
to be happy! And yet you are not happy.
The excitement of the gambling-table
does not please you. The music
and the stir of the ball-room only bores
you. Even fast-trotting horses have failed
to charm. As to the opera, and the
routine of fashionable society, they are
just better than being in jail, and that is
all. Frank, my boy! you must occupy
yourself in something—in something, no
matter what—or this delicate centre of
nerves called the brain will begin to be
affected. What shall that something be?
Shall you dabble in literature, speculate
in building lots, or—get married? Get
married!”

A miniature of Eva, placed near the
candle met my eye.

“No—I don't think we'll get married.
Where is the woman who can fill the
place of Eva?”

As thus I sat alone, thinking aloud, the
hours began to approach morning; and,

whether from causes purely physical, or
from long-continued mental excitement,
a nameless horror imperceptibly overshadowed
me.

I started in my chair, as though I had
suddenly awoke from a dream. Suddenly,
I felt myself terribly alone; I was
afraid; afraid of I knew not what. Shuddering
and cold, I saw the face of my hag-wife,
distorted by the throe of death, pass
between me and the light—saw it visibly,
palpably, and yet knew it to be nothing
but a vision.

And after this hideous face, there passed
slowly between me and the candle the
face of Eva, her eyes fixed upon me with
an indescribable look of sadness and reproach.
These faces passed and were
gone, and came again. I rose slowly
from my chair, and covered my eyes with
my hands. The nameless horror paralyzed
me from head to foot. There was
a moment in which the agonies of ages
seemed crowded into a focus—a moment
in which the most awful fear that can afflict
a living man—the fear of Insanity
—took full possession of me.

When I drew my hands away from my
eyes, they were wet with the moisture
which had suddenly bathed my forehead.
And afraid to gaze upon the light, lest I
should again behold those faces, I cast
my eyes upon the mirror beyond it.

Was this a new vision? In the mirror,
behind my own face, near my shoulder,
I beheld, distinctly drawn, another
face—a face with its low forehead covered
with thick shaggy black hair, and its
small dark eyes glittering like points of
flame. Was this also a vision like the
others?

As I asked myself the question, I saw
a hand rise above my face in the mirror,
and that hand grasped a pistol, knife, or
club—some weapon whose form I could
not precisely determine. Quick as lightning
I turned—turned in time to receive
a blow upon my left wrist, and the next
instant had the intruder by the throat.

There was a violent but brief struggle,
in which the whole room seemed to whirl
around me, and when I saw clearly, I
found myself with one knee planted upon
the chest of the intruder, and one hand
fixed upon his throat. Panting for
breath, even as he grasped in my clutch,
I took a glance at the unknown.

A young man, or boy of eighteen or
nineteen years, about the middle height,
with a lithe, sinewy form, clad in a gray
overcoat, set with huge horn buttons; a
swarthy face, with small nervous features,
little fiery eyes, and a low forehead, rendered
almost imperceptible by masses of
black hair, thick and matted; such was
the sight which met my gaze.

“Well! you're pretty, whoever you
are,” I said, as soon as I could draw
breath. “Young for a jail-bird. But
you look the character.”

I took the pistol from his hand, and
(without relaxing my grasp) placed it
quietly on the chair behind me.

“What have you to say for yourself?
To what am I indebted for the honor of
your company?”

The youth replied with some difficulty,
for my hand was at his throat: “Jest
let me up; come now, you needn't strike
a feller when he is down,” and some
other words of a deprecatory character.

With the aid of a kerchief which I
took from the breast pocket of his overcoat,
I secured the young man's arms by
the wrists, and then, rising from his
chest, told him to get up and help himself
to a chair.

He rose, shook himself, looked anxiously
toward the door, and then dropped
into a chair, his countenance manifesting
much sullen ferocity.

A more perfect realization of the abstract
idea conveyed in the word “scamp”
I never beheld.

“Let us have a little private conversation.
If you attempt to rise from your
chair, I shall be forced to hurt you.
Keep perfectly still, and let me know,
first of all, who you are; and, secondly,
what was your errand here.”

“The youth replied in a pointed way:
“As to my name, it don't make any difference—it
don't. As to what I came
here for, you know as well as I do;” he
pointed with his pinioned hands to the
side-board; “gold plate there, and
money in the house, so I heard. That's
what I come for.”

“And how did you get in?”

“False keys,” replied the young man,
with refreshing brevity.

“And did you intend to murder me, in
order to get at my gold plate?”

“Can't say as I did; only to make you
a little sleepy, or something o' that sort.”

There was an amount of frankness

about the young man which was quite
endearing.

“Now, have not you a good opinion of
yourself? A young gentleman of your
fine personal appearance, calculated to
adorn any walk of city life, to plan a
midnight robbery and murder.”

“Gas!” was the succinct reply of the
youth. “Gas! What's the use of talkin'!
I tried it, and you were too many
for me. That's all.”

And he sank his head doggedly on his
breast, and refused to utter another
word. In vain I plied him with questions;
he sat as motionless as though he
were a piece of the chair, or a part of the
furniture of the room. I asked him as
to his parentage, his condition in life, his
motives for the commission of the robbery;
but not a word could I wring
from his lips. At last, I rose and secured
his wrists by an additional kerchief,
and then tied his ankles together.
He made no resistance.

“Remain here for a moment, my young
friend!” said I, “and I will endeavor to
procure you more entertaining company.”
Still, he made no reply.

I left the room and the house, and, in
less than fifteen minutes, returned with
a policeman—a stout individual, much
enveloped in great coats, with a weatherbeaten
face, a rich voice for crying oysters,
and a very elaborate brass star. Entering
the parlor, I found the young gentleman
seated in the chair in the same
attitude in which I had left him.

“Take charge of this young person; I
will appear and make complaint against
him to-morrow.” The policeman stooped
and united the ankles of the prisoner.
“Young gallus, I guess we'll travel!”
was his only remark, as he seized the
youth by the shoulder.

To which the youth replied by thrusting
his tongue into one cheek, closing
one eye in an indescribable manner, and
repeating, emphatically the monosyllable,
“Gas!”

He was evidently a hopeless scamp.
I saw them depart together, and bade
the policeman good-night; after which I
went up to the library room, and sat
down to meditate upon the events of the
night.

One good thing had resulted from the
unexpected visit of the hopeful youth;
it had completely banished the waking
vision which, in terrible distinctness, had
passed between me and the candle. * *

In due time, the young man was tried
in the proper court, by the name, (evidently
not his own,) of John Smith. He
appeared to have neither relations nor
friends in the wide world. The same
demeanor which he had observed in my
parlor he wore in court, making various
faces—all of an uncouth and ungraceful
character—while I gave my testimony—
asking the foreman of the jury, as he announced
the verdict of “guilty!” for a
small portion of chewing tobacco, and
interrupting the judge, in the midst of
a moral lesson, with an inquiry by no
means pertinent, whether he had ever
ascertained the name of the individual
who inflicted personal violence upon one
William Patterson.

In a word, he was a precocious and
hopeless scamp, and did not seem to care
half as much for the three years in the
State Prison—inevitably before him—
as a city alderman would for the loss of
one hour's refreshment in the tea-room.

I left him in court, his matted hair
drawn low over his forehead, and his
small eyes shining with more than usual
lustre. He was to be sentenced at some
future day. Returning home, I soon forgot
all about the matter. John Smith,
his matted hair and villanous eyes, his
attempt at burglary and murder, and his
three years in the State Prison, all faded
from my memory, or were banished rather
by the sad memories of my own
life. One evening, I was seated in the
parlor reading, or attempting to read, by
the light of a single candle, when the
servant entered and announced that a
person wished to see me.

“She will not give her name—”

“It is a lady, then?”

“Yes, sir—deeply veiled—can't say
whether she is old or young—quite a
mysterious person—desires to see you
alone—laid quite an emphasis on the
word alone!”

My curiosity was somewhat excited.
I directed the liveried servant to show
the lady into the parlor; and, after he
retired, awaited her appearance in great
suspense. A few minutes elapsed, and
the lady entered, and took a seat near
me, without a word. “You wish to see
me, madam! or—or—miss?” (I did not
know which to say.) “My name is Van

Warner.” The lady made no reply. She
did not lift her veil from her face. I confess
I felt considerably embarrassed. She
was darkly clad, about the medium
height, and the black shawl which fell
aside from her shoulders disclosed a bust
which could not belong to any one but
a young and beautiful woman. Her
gloved hands, one of which grasped her
veil, were exquisitely small. In a word,
although her dress wore the appearance
of respectable poverty, and her face was
closely veiled, I was impressed that the
woman who sat before me was not more
than eighteen, and exceedingly beautiful.
Again I broke the dead stillness: “You
wish to see me miss, or—or—madam?”
For the first time she spoke. Oh! the
rare music of her voice! And as she
spoke she slowly lifted her veil. The
impression made upon me by that face
disclosed by the slowly lifted veil, is
upon me now, even as it was then, fresh
and vivid, in all its wild fascination.

“Oh! sir,” were the first words which
she said, “I beseech you save him, save
my brother!”

22. CHAPTER XXII.

“Your brother!” I echoed; and, in
the silence which ensued, rapidly perused
the beautiful face before me. Would
that the pen could do the office of the
pencil! Her complexion was clear brown,
with lips and cheeks of vivid red—the
very blossom and bloom of spotless and
virginal loveliness. Her nose was slightly
aquiline, her brows arched, her eyes
large and oval-shaped, and of a color that
trembled between the calm blue of noonday
and the brilliant darkness of midnight.
As for her hair, it was swept
aside from her forehead in rich masses
of jetty blackness. There was intellect
in that face, and pride and passion, and
a something which words cannot define,
and which, until a later day, I was never
able to analyze. The first effect of that
face was like enchantment; it seized the
eye and soul at once.

“Your brother?”

“My brother! Now in a—a—felon's
cell, with the prospect of hopeless imprisonment
before him,” she said, reaching
her hands toward me and fixing her
eyes full on my face. And at that moment,
the reality struck me that the
face of the boy-burglar was but a caricature
of the beautiful countenance on
which I gazed—one of those caricatures,
of which the world has many examples,
in which the face of an ugly brother
bears a vivid resemblance to the countenance
of a beautiful sister.

After she spoke, a pause of at least a
minute ensued. Absorbed by the sight
of her face, bewildered by the fascination
of her loveliness, which seemed to encircle
her like a presence and a veil of light,
I knew not what to say.

“Your brother,” I faltered at last,
“has been convicted of burglary—will
be sentenced in a few days—how can I
save him?”

“Oh! sir—bad example, hardship, corrupt
associations, have brought him to
his present condition. He is not bad at
heart. He may yet be redeemed from
all his evil habits. But, in any case,
save him from a fate worse than death—
from the hopeless moral death of the
State Prison.”

In her intensity she clasped her hands,
and bent forward in her chair, her eyes
centered upon my face.

“Would to heaven you had only applied
to me sooner!” I answered, in unfeigned
distress. “Something might
have been done. But I knew not that
he had a friend in the world, much less
a sister.”

These was a calm bitterness in her accent
as she interrupted me. “You knew
that he had not a friend in the world?
Alas! it is the way of the world! Had
he been surrounded with friends you
would have been merciful to him. But,
reflect, sir, thus friendless and alone, he
needed your forgiveness all the more.”

“But, why did you not appear before?”
I asked, somewhat hurt by the
calm bitterness of her tone. “I did not
see your face in court. You were not
present in the hour of his trial!”

She grew red and pale by turns, and I
saw the veins of her white throat swell as
with suppressed agitation: “Alas, alas!
I could not be there, it was out of my
power—utterly out of my power.”

And with evident signs of distress she
shaded her eyes with her hand.

“But how can I save your brother
now?” I said.

“You have influence,” she answered,
without removing her gloved hand from

her eyes; “you have rich connections;
you have wealth—and—” suddenly lifting
her head, she flung the full brightness
of her gaze upon me,—“what is there
that cannot be done by the aid of—
wealth?”

Her nether lip trembled with a perceptible
tremor, and she beat the carpet
with her foot. For a moment I sat silent
and bewildered, scarcely knowing whether
the woman before me was a reality or
the creation of a dream.

At last I said, in a firm and measured
tone,—“Your brother is to be sentenced
the day after to-morrow. To-morrow I
will do all I can for him. At all events,
I will induce the judge to join with me
in procuring your brother's pardon from
the governor.”

The words had scarcely fallen from
me, ere she bounded from her chair,
seized my hand and pressed it to her
lips. “God bless you! God bless you!”
she cried, and then sank back in her chair,
covering her face with her hands and
weeping. I could not help sharing her
agitation.

“Where shall I see you to-morrow to
communicate to you the result of my
exertions?” I asked, anxious to remove
the embarrassment of the moment.
“Shall I wait upon you at your home?”

“No—no—no!” she responded quickly,
and with an accent of indescribable bitterness.
“Not there—not there!” She
rose from her seat and gathered her
shawl over her bust. “To-morrow night,
at this hour, I will wait upon you here.”

She drew her veil over her face, and,
without a sign or word of adieu, hurried
from the room. She was gone ere I was
aware of her intention to depart.

Gone! leaving me absorbed and bewildered
by the vivid impression of her
presence.

For a few moments I sat silent and
wondering, and then, seizing my cap and
cloak, hurried from the parlor and from
the house, anxious to carry out an idea
which had suddenly flashed upon my
brain.

A strange, wild idea, which came upon
me like an inspiration, and which urged
me far from my mansion, resolved upon
its immediate execution.

I was absent from my house for hours.
When I returned, it was late at night,
and the candle in the parlor had burned
to the last gleam. Seating myself by
the fireplace, where the coals among the
ashes emitted an uncertain light, I gave
myself up to the silent contemplation of
the scenes I had beheld, the words I had
heard since my departure from the mansion
some hours before. And the contemplation
harrowed me to the soul.

“Can it be that the scenes I have just
witnessed are real? that the words which
I have heard are anything but idle sounds
heard in a dream? Can such things exist,
under the glittering mantle of New-York
wealth and New-York luxury?”
Thus I found myself murmuring my
thoughts aloud, by the dim fire-light.
Alas! alas! too well I knew that all I
had witnessed that evening was sad
reality.

I had heard, I had seen. Did not the
bitter truths of my own life render possible
the darkest and apparently the most
improbable tragedies of every-day life?
Still, what I had heard and seen (during
my absence of a few hours) made me
shudder at the very recollection. That
night I slept but little.

Next day was full of work, of hurry
and incident for me. In the morning, I
busied myself with the case of the boy-burglar,
and in the afternoon went to a
private dinner-party, given by a jovial
merchant—a fat round man of fifty, as
fond of his bottle as of a rise in stocks,
with a shining bald head, set off by a
few veteran gray hairs—to some eight
or nine select guests.

Fancy a snug little room, the curtains
drawn, the champagne and hoc in ice,
the fire burning cheerily in the grate,
and (although the hour was early) some
seven or eight wax candles, disposed
along the white cloth of a well-loaded
board. It was altogether a bachelor's
dinner; and, after the cloth was removed,
we disposed ourselves comfortably in
our cushioned armchairs and began upon
the wine; that is all, save me. For myself,
I had important reasons for keeping
my head clear.

Among the guests there were two who
especially attracted my interest.

One was a man of the world, who, for
twenty years, had been a prominent actor
in New-York life, Burley Hayne,
sometimes called Captain Hayne, whose
tall form and broad shoulders were severely
clad in black, with a heavy gold

chain across the dark satin waistcoat.
Burley had been handsome, but now
there were wrinkles about his protuberant
eyes, and deeper and uglier wrinkles
near the corners of his large mouth. His
teeth were still good, and only a few stray
gray hairs (thanks, perchance, to Goureaud)
appeared on his bushy dark whiskers
and thickly-curling black hair.

Burley was a man of the world of a
certain sort. He read nothing save a
sporting paper. He was familiar with
the niceties of faro. He loved to eat
good dinners—at the house of a wealthy
friend. He liked good wine, and liked
it best when it came from other people's
cellars. He was a duellist, too, and had
killed his man on more occasions than
one. Fashionable tailors looked up to
him, and rarely asked him for pay.

To complete his character, he was a
bachelor, and looked upon women with
not the most remote taint of platonic or
sentimental nonsense. Whether he had a
sister, I know not, but certainly he had
long forgotten that he ever had a mother.

Such was Burley Hayne, who, easy
and well-preserved, sat opposite me,
making the table roar with a few pages
from the manifold adventures of his life
—adventures which no one would think
of telling within the golden covers of a
New-Year's annual.

I may remark that the gallant captain
was deeply in my debt for borrowed
money.

Beside Burley, listening to his jokes,
and laughing at them in a shrill voice,
was an older man of the world, very tall
and lean, with a narrow forehead, haggard
face, and big bloodshotten and feverish
eyes.

Dressed with much nicety, with high
shirt collar, black stock and ruffled bosom,
this gentleman, who may have been
about fifty—he looked sixty—bore every
appearance of a man of the world pretty
thoroughly used up, and still with
the feverish memories of past enjoyments
burning in his bloodshot eyes. There
was something pitiful in the way in
which this antediluvian man of the
world, called Col. Elephalet Cloud, hung
upon every accent of the fresher and
more modern Captain Burley Hayne.

A stranger could not help thinking,
that, somehow or other, the captain held
the colonel in his power.

Well, we sat at our wine, by the pleas
ant light of the wax candles, and in the
cheerful warmth of the fire; every face,
from that of our jocund host, at the
head of the table, to that of the cadaverous
Colonel Eliphalet Cloud, convulsed
with laughter as Burley related his adventures—every
face save mine. I was
quiet and grave; if I did laugh, the
laugh was forced and hollow. Perhaps
the thought of my appointment in the
evening with the sister of the young
felon, kept me grave; perhaps—well!
perhaps—

Burley's adventures were of the most
interesting character. Now, it was a
story of a race-course; now, of a gambling
scene into which he had unexpectedly
happened; now, of a duel, in which
he had winged his man just between the
eyes; and now, there was a lady in the
case—it was always something quaint
and very rich. But the crowning story
of the evening was about a trout-fishing
excursion which Burley had taken the
previous summer into some lake country
of a New-England State. He had
put up at the house of a quiet farmer,
near the lake, and been made at home as
a welcome guest. The farmer and his
wife had an only daughter, a rosy girl
of seventeen. Burley staid a few weeks
at the house, trout-fishing and—making
love. Time came for him to leave, and,
under promise of marriage, he induced
the farmer's pretty daughter, one night,
to leave her home and come with him to
New-York. She came with him, and—

“The fact is, gentlemen,” continued
Burley, shutting one eye, as he took a
look at a candle through a long-necked
glass, brimming with champagne, “she
was so rosy, so blooming, and so innocent,
so d——d innocent, do you
know,” he looked round with an expression
of the most grotesque serio-comic
character, “that she actually expected
me to marry her!”

“Expected you to marry her!” echoed
Col. Cloud in his shrill voice, and he followed
his exclamation with a screech of
the shrillest laughter. “Good! Egad!
Ah! What next?”

The host at the table also laughed, and
then looked grave, as though a little
ashamed of his laughter; but, as for the
other guests, warm as they were with
wine, they made the room ring again.

“And what became of her, captain?”
asked Col. Cloud, his haggard features
twitching nervously, and his bloodshot
eyes shining with unusual feverishness,
—“What became of the dear little—little—robin
red-breast?”

The captain passed his hand through
his bushy black hair, and made a grimace
which showed at once the capacity
of his mouth, and the whiteness of his
teeth. “Well! the fact is, I lost sight
of her for a month or two. You know
these kind of adventures come and go,
and a man soon forgets 'em. But I did
meet her last night—”

“Last night!” echoed the shrill old
man of the world.

“You would not have known her, by
—! you would not! My pretty country
girl had become a city lady! She
was paler than when I first saw her on
the farm, but her eyes were brighter,
and she was draped in black, elegantly
draped in black. And she was—walking
Broadway! Egad, walking Broadway!”

“Walking Broadway!” cried Colonel
Eliphalet Cloud. “They all come to
that!”

The room again rung with laughter;
the host, at the head of the table, did
not laugh so loudly as before; as for myself,
silent and grave, I sat quietly marking
figures on the table with some wine
which I had spilt. My absent manner
was at length remarked.

“By —! What's the matter with
you?” inquired the captain, leaning over
the table and fixing his protuberant eyes
upon me. “Have you got the blues,
Van Warner? You look as glum—as
glum—”

“As an Egyptian mummy, unrolled
by Gliddon, for example,” facetiously
cried Col. Cloud.

“What are you thinking about, Van
Warner?” continued Burley Hayne.

“Of the story which you have just
told,” I said, quietly; and as I spoke,
somehow or other, a dead silence fell
upon the company.

“And what do you think about it?”
said the captain, rather pointedly, in his
deep, hoarse voice.

“Why, captain,” I returned, playing
in an absent manner with the neck of
my glass, a great many words might be
expended in developing my opinion of
your story, but for the present I will
confine myself to an expression of my
opinion of you. Here, also, a great deal
of eloquence might be wasted. I will
therefore put my opinion in the simplest
form and fewest words. Captain Burley
Hayne —”

“Well!” gasped the captain, very red
in the face.

“Captain Burley Hayne, you are a liar
and a coward!”

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

These words, firmly pronounced, were
followed by a dead stillness; the captain
from red, turned livid. He was a terrible
man when excited, and was evidently
struggling with his rage.

“W-e-ll, by —!” he gasped, and
made a movement, as if about to rise
from his chair.

But I gave him no time. I dashed the
contents of my glass full in his face; and
then, with the words distinctly said.
“A coward and a liar, Captain Burley
Hayne!” I dashed the glass itself into
his face, it striking him on the forehead,
between the eyes, and splintering in fragments
over the table.

There was a silence like death, and
then an uproar like Babel. Never had I
beheld a more terrible image of mad rage
than Hayne presented as he rose to his
feet, his forehead covered with blood and
small fragments of broken glass. His
rage choked him—he could not speak.

“Gentlemen! gentlemen! this can be
settled elsewhere,” cried the host, from
the head of the table.

“Yes, gentlemen! gentlemen!” buzzed
a half-dozen voices, “elsewhere! elsewhere!
An affair of honor! No apology
after this!—must fight!”

At last the captain found voice, and
his voice gradually grew more like the
roar of a maddened buffalo than any
other sound.

“Elsewhere?” he roared, extending
his huge, brawny arms, as though he was
about to reach over the table, grasp me,
and crush me to powder with his iron
fists. “Elsewhere? No! now—now!
—in this room!”

And he made a movement, as though
about to spring upon the table.

“Captain Hayne,” I said, slowly, “you
can come on—and now!—but before you

can lay your hand upon me, I will lay
you dead at my feet.” I drew a small
revolving pistol from the breast of my
dress coat, and, stepping back a single
step, covered the captain's forehead with
a deliberate aim.

Did this movement cow him? He
sank back into his chair, grating his teeth,
so that the sound could be heard over
the whole room. “Well, you must fight
me!” he said, wiping the blood and fragments
of glass from his forehead, “and I
will kill you. That is all. Morgan, (to
a gentleman on his left,) you will act as
my friend?”

“Clifton,” said I, to a gentleman on
my right, “I ask you to act as my friend.
And, captain, take my word for it, I will
meet and fight you where you please,
but you will not kill me.”

Still holding the pistol, I sat down.
The scene was a mixture of a good deal
of the serious and much of the funny.

Clifton and Morgan, (both “fast” gentlemen
of the world,) were already arranging
preliminaries in a corner; the
host was pale as death; the other guests
gazed first at me and then at Hayne,
with much the look of men who have
chanced into a powder magazine on the
eve of an explosion; and as for Colonel
Eliphalet Cloud, drawing nearer to the
younger men of the world, to whom he
looked up with mingled reverence and
fear, he whispered, but not so low but that
I could hear him,—“You'll wing him,
Burley, my boy! Between the eyes
you'll wing him!”

Burley pushed him gently aside, and
then, looking over the table, said in a
low voice, very hoarse and full of emotion,—“After
what has passed, Mr. Van
Warner, very few words can pass between
us. We must fight, and I must kill you.
But, once for all, I should like to know
how I have ever harmed you? You are
neither friend nor relation of this girl?
How, then, have I harmed you?”

Resting my elbows on the table, and
my cheeks between my hands, I bent
forward, and looked fixedly at the captain,
and said in a low voice,—“That,
captain, I will tell you, after I have shot
you and just before you die.”

Did I speak a mere bravado? Was
there some cause of hatred between the
captain and myself, other than his brutal
story about the poor New-England girl?

Did I feel confident that I would be
able to make good my words?

The captain regarded me with a curious
look—a kind of mingled wonder,
curiosity and hate—and then, rising from
the chair, went to the fireplace, and
leaned his head against the mantel. The
jovial host (not very jovial now) came
near him, and whispered him, but the
captain pushed him gently away.

“Gentlemen,” said the bland Morgan,
“all is arranged.”

“A quiet field near Weehawk—time,
to-morrow, near daybreak—weapons,
pistols,” added Clifton, the other fast
man.

“And, egad!” said the evil old man
of the world, Col. Eliphalet Cloud, with
an ominous twitch of his cadaverous
lineaments, as he regarded me across the
table—“he'll wing you, young man; he
will!”

In a little while the party broke up,
and I returned thoughtfully homeward,
just as evening was gathering over the
countless multitude of Broadway. Once
in my home again, I awaited the hour
of my appointment with the sister of
the felon, in a state of feverish anxiety.

The hour—eight o'clock—came. The
candle was lighted on the centre-table—
the fire burned brightly on the hearth—
the parlor was silent and lonely. Seated
near the table, with my eyes fixed on the
door, I listened to every sound, and every
instant expected the opening of the door
and the appearance of the lady. Half
an hour after, the time transpired, and
yet she came not. Had anything occurred
to prevent her fulfilling her appointment?

Could the scenes of the previous night
which I had beheld, (and of which I will
plainly speak in due time,) have prevented
her from coming to my house?

“The lady whom you expected, sir,”
said the liveried servant, suddenly breaking
my reveries, as he opened the door;
and across the threshold, thickly veiled,
came the sister of the felon; thickly
veiled, and the dark shawl gathered
closely about her bust.

As she sank into a seat she panted
for breath, and looked nervously over
her shoulder, like one who is afraid of
being pursued.

“You are faithful to your appointment,
miss,” I said, breaking a long

pause. She did not remove her veil,
nor could I discern a single feature of
her face, as she said in a low, tremulous,
but earnest voice,—“And you, sir! Oh!
have you been successful?”

I had much to say to her, but I knew
not how to begin.

“Lady, I wish you to listen to me for
a few moments, and to listen patiently,
—” thus I spoke. “Before I inform you
of the result of my endeavors in regard
to your brother, I wish you to hear the
details of an adventure connected with
my own life.”

I paused—there was a movement of
her veil.

“Your own life!” she echoed, in a tone
of deep surprise.

“Yes, my own life; and if you promise
to be patient and hear me to the end, I
will tell you the adventure.”

“I promise,” she said in a monotonous
tone, as though the subject did not concern
her in the least, and placed her
gloved hand languidly upon the table.

“Well, miss, one night in spring, not
many years ago, I was strolling along
Broadway, when I felt myself interested
in a young lady, dressed in black, and
found myself unconsciously following in
her footsteps. A glimpse of her face,
which I caught as she for a moment
paused in front of a store, and lifted her
veil, filled me with an intense desire to
know her history.

“Although she was very beautiful,
there was care upon her face, and traces
of some sad, dark history there; her
very attire, that of a lady of wealth and
taste, still wearing the marks of respectable
poverty, increased my desire to
know more of her. She entered the
store; unperceived I followed. It was
one of those stores where they sell rich
embroidered work; and while I stood
near her, (apparently examining some
fine specimens of such work,) she drew
from beneath her shawl a piece of embroidery
which had cost her two weeks'
labor, as she told the proprietor of the
store. For this she received a small
sum in gold, say five dollars, which she
clutched with an eager grasp, and hurriedly
left the store.

“Still, I followed her.”

“You followed her?” echoed the sister
of the felon, beating her hand gently
against the table.

“Followed her to her home in a distant
part of the city, into a large house,
(tenanted apparently by many families,)
and up four pair of stairs. Now, her
home was composed of two rooms, and a
small closet or anteroom, which communicated
with the main passage. Gliding,
unperceived, in her footsteps, I followed
her into this anteroom, and stood
in the darkness there, gazing, through
a small glass window, into one of the
rooms. I remained there for an hour,
or more. I heard much—saw much.”

For a moment I paused; the young
lady did not seem to manifest much interest
in my story; her little hand still
beat the table; as for her face, I could
not trace its emotions through her veil.

“The room which met my gaze was
neatly but poorly furnished. The carpet
was faded; a miserable wood-stove
stood near the wall; and a lady's work-basket,
evidently the relic of happier
days, stood upon the table, near the
lighted candle. From my place of concealment
I saw the young lady, as she
approached the light, and flung her bonnet
on the chair, and never saw so much
loveliness, so much despair, combined in
the same face. She gazed, wearily,
around the room, and then, with a shudder,
staggered to the door which led into
the second apartment. `Oh! my God!'
I could hear her exclaim, `where will all
this end?'

“Even as she spoke, the door of the
second apartment opened, and an old
man came forth, his haggard face betraying
much agitation, his finger on his lips.

“`Hush! he is there!' I heard him
whisper in a low voice, pointing cautiously
to the room which he had just
left. `What money have you, child?
We have been taking a quiet game, and
must have wine. The wine store is at
the corner; just put on your bonnet, and
get us two bottles of the best champagn,
Heidsick brand, you will remember!'

“The poor girl placed the gold coin,
the result of two weeks' labor, in his
tremulous hand—he grasped it eagerly,
but did not stir from her seat. `Why
do you not go, daughter,' said the old
man, evidently much surprised. `He is
in there, and will grow impatient.'

“`Sit down by me, father,' said the
young lady, who had grown very pale.
I want to say a few words to you.'

“He sat down, wondering, and she
said a few words. Oh! I heard every
word!”

The sister of the felon suffered her
hand to drop upon her knee, as if she
wished to avoid pressing it against her
bosom, which now rose and fell, perceptibly,
beneath the folds of her shawl.
`You heard every word!” she said, in
an almost inarticulate tone.

“Heard her every word, heard the
story of her life, and of the old man who
sat beside her; how that old man,
when a young and wealthy man, and living
in a New-England town, had been
deluded into evil courses while on a visit
to New-York; how, from a wealthy and
respected man, he became a gambler,
squandered his wealth, the fortune of
his wife, the very bread and future of
his little children; how he left that wife
to die of a broken heart, and left the
children friendless and motherless, to try
alone the hard battle of the world. He
was never afterwards seen in his native
town.”

“What became of the children? One
of them, a girl, grew up in the family of
a stranger, and learned to get her bread
by her needle. After toiling for years
in her native town, she left that town
and came to New-York, eager to find her
brother, who had disappeared a year before.
In New-York she supported herself
virtuously by her needle, using all
her efforts to discover her lost brother,
but in vain.

“`And, father! I did not find my brother,'
she continued, as I stood listening
in the anteroom, `but you found me out,
and made yourself known to me. For the
first time in many years I saw you. You
made your home with me. Since the
hour you first came here, six months
ago, till now, I have worked for you,
father, worked until now,—not to give
you home and bread,—but worked night
and day to supply you with money for
wine and for the gambling table. Father,
I now tell you that I can do so no
longer?'

“Her lifted finger, her pallid face, the
calm, deep resolution of her tone, all took
the old man by surprise.

“`Why, why,' faltered he, `what is all
this? Girl, what's the matter?'

“`The matter is, father, that to-day,
at last, I have found my brother!'

“`Found your brother?' echoed the
old man, with idiotic surprise. `Where!'

“`It matters not to relate, father, how
I found him, but I will tell you where,'
was her reply. `I found him in the
Tombs, in a felon's cell.'

“She hid her face in her hands; the
old man looked frightened and vacant, as
though stupified by a heavy blow.

“`And so, father!' continued the young
lady, `we will have no more cards, no
more wine,—at least, while your son, my
brother, wears the chains of a convict.'

“Scarce had the words fallen from her
lips, when the door of the second apartment
again opened, and a second man
came forth—” Here I paused.

“Shall I go on?” I said to the young
lady, who sat statue-like before me. Her
hands had fallen helplessly to her side.
Her veiled face was slightly dropped to
her bosom.

“Go on, go!” she said, in a scarce articulate
voice,—“Do not mind me! Do
not mind me, go on!”

“A second man came forth—a man
whom I recognized at a glance as one of
the notorious men of New-York. I saw
him approach the young lady, heard him
call her by her proper name. She rose
from her seat; I could not see her face,
but saw her shrink away from him, step
by step, as though he had been a noxious
reptile.

“Again I heard him familiarly call her
by name.

“`— You need not be afraid of me,'
he said, in his hoarse voice, `the partition
is thin: in fact, I was listening, and
heard all—all. Don't you see additional
reason for complying with the proposition
which I made to your father a
month ago? Do this and I will save your
brother, and lift your father from this
miserable place to comfort—affluence.'
He stopped as if awaiting for her reply.
She gave it promptly.

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

“`This promise of comfort — affluence,
comes from a gentleman who for
months has not hesitated to drink wine
and play at cards from the hard earnings
of a poor girl—a gentleman who has
played upon the fears and tremors of an
old man, in order to rob him, and who has

used his power over that old man in the
attempt to corrupt his daughter.'

“These words seemed to sting the
gambler to the quick.

“`Well, my lady,' he cried fiercely, `do
as you please. Only remember that I
hold a paper, to which your father sometime
ago had the indiscretion to sign
another man's name.'

“This threat evidently terrified the
young girl; it struck the old man with
`fear and trembling.'

“As for the gambler, he took his hat
and cloak, and left the room without another
word. He brushed past me as I
stood concealed in the anteroom. I only
remained a moment longer there. Gazing
through the glass, I saw the young girl
standing with clasped hands and pallid
face—despair in every line of that face.

“`Daughter,' I heard the old man say,
`you must consent.' To which came the
reply—

“`Do you think so, father? O would,
in the hour that you broke my mother's
heart, that you had completed your work,
and killed your children! thus saving
your son from a convict's chains, and
your daughter from —.' She stopped
and hid her face. I heard and saw
no more.”

My story was done. I looked upon
the veiled woman who sat before me,
anxious to discover what effect it had
upon her. Gathering her hands from
her side, she pressed them violently to
her bosom, for an instant only, and then
flung up her veil. Pale, very pale, was
that beautiful face; but there was firmness
in the compressed lips—there was
wild fire in the eyes. There was a swelling
of the muscles of the throat, a heaving
of the bosom palpable through the
thick shawl which covered it; and then,
leaning forward, and fixing her gaze full
upon me, she said,—“And you saw and
heard all—you.” She put her hand to
her throat as if her utterance was choked.

“Yes, I saw and heard all,” was my
reply. “Yes, Eugenia Cloud! and before
this time to-morrow Captain Burley
Hayne will meet his death by my
hand.”

There is no language to depict the effect
which these words had upon her.
Her face lighted up with a strange, wild
look, as though a flash of lightning had
passed over it.

“You—you—you!” she seized my
hands and wrung them in her own—
“you will save my father from this man;
you—will save him—”

“Captain Burley Hayne shall surrender
the paper, by which he holds your
father in his power, or he will meet his
death at my hand.”

She resumed her seat.

“Cannot my father be saved without
bloodshed?” she said, in a voice of deep
sadness. “Must one crime be avoided
only by another crime? If you”—she
shuddered—“if you kill him it will be
—murder, and you will have to fly. And
then—.” She hesited, and fixed her
gaze upon me with a look which I could
not define.

“Captain Burley Hayne has been long
enough abroad. It is a crime to take
life, but not a crime to take a life like
his—to prevent him from the commission
of a thousand crimes worse than murder.
I may have to fly,” I continued,
as though thinking aloud. “Well, be it
so. I will save you. My life itself is a
wreck. There is no living thing to care
for me. Come flight, disgrace, the stigma
of murderer! so that I can only save
you!”

“But,” and the color glowed warmly
over her throat and face, “he is a practised
duellist. He may kill you—.” Her look,
the tremor which agitated her frame,
said more than her words.

What strange thought was this which,
at her look, began to take shape and rise
like a phantom from the depths of my
heart?

I crushed it as I rose, and said calmly
and bitterly—

“Eugenia, my life, I repeat it, is a
wreck. I survey my wealth, I wander
through the lonely rooms of this grand
mansion, I essay every pleasure, try every
experiment of work and pleasure which
the world offers to me, and, after all, find
myself only a solitary and blasted man.
It may end the sorrows, it may atone
for the crimes of a life like mine, to spend
my blood in a cause so holy as yours.”

I spoke not in affectation of sentiment
or heroism, nor in the spirit of bravado,
but from an impulse which was as strong
upon me at this moment, as it had been
for the last twenty-four hours—an impulse
which I cannot define even if I
would.

I rose and paced the floor, now in light,
now in shadow.

As, after a long silence, I turned in
my walk, Eugenia confronted me, her
face turned from the light, her hand extended.

“This must not be,” she said, in a
firm, although tremulous voice,—“You
must not peril your life for me. Save
my poor brother from a felon's chains—
it is all I dare ask! As for myself, I
have struggled against misfortunes thus
far—I can struggle still—and if the worst
comes—”

“If the worst comes, you can marry
Captain Burley Hayne, and become, not
only his wife, but the instrument of new
impostures upon society, planned by
him.”

She drew nearer to me, and, to my surprise,
put her hand upon my shoulder; her
eyes flashed as if all her soul was in their
light.

“Marry Captain Hayne—marry him?
Is it fair, is it generous, is it manly, for
you to use your knowledge of my position
in order to insult me thus? Marry
him? No; if the worst comes, I can—
die.”

Her hand trembled as it touched my
shoulder; her face was very near mine;
the alternate glow and pallor of her face;
the vivid brightness of her eyes; the clear,
calm resolution of her forehead, all were
before and very near me, and the magnetism
of her presence was around and
about me.

“No! Eugenia, you shall not die!
Your life is worth a thousand such as
mine. Last night, as I saw you at your
home, and listened to you there, it seemed
to me as if I had known you from
very childhood. I then determined to
peril all, dare all, for you; and I will do
it.”

She interrupted me. What power was
there in the words she said? They
changed the course of my life. Let others
moralize; I only state facts.

“Live, then, for my sake,” she said, her
face so near me that her breath was on
my cheek, and her head drooped forward
until it rested against my breast, her
hand still trembling on my shoulder. At
her words the dark way of my life seemed
suddenly lit up with light from
heaven! I stood like one entranced.

“Live for my sake!” she whispered,
raising her face; her eyes were all the
brighter for their tears. Let me be your
sister! Let me still continue my humble
way of life, but be near you always,
in sorrow and in danger! When all is
well with you in your rich home, then I
will keep apart; but when sorrow comes,
and you need consolation and the presence
of one true to you, as sister to dearest
brother, then I will be with you!”

Why did something in her words grate
horribly on my soul?

“Sister—never!” I echoed; and put
my hand gently on her forehead, and bent
down to her face. “On one condition I
promise not to peril my own life, not to
shed the blood of Captain Hayne. Be
my wife.”

“Never! It cannot be! The world
would say I became yours for your
wealth. I am not worthy of you. My
brother a convict; my father—oh! you
know what he is! Your wife! Never—
never!”

“It is well, Eugenia. You have pronounced
my fate,” I said, coldly; and,
taking her hand from my shoulder, walked
into the shadows of the parlor.

When I turned again, she was standing
where I left her, her hands joined in
front of her form, her eyes absent and
dreamy. Although the shadow was on
her face, it was plainly to be seen that
she was terribly agitated.

“Your brother, in consideration of his
youth, and of representations made by
myself and the judge, will receive his
pardon before Saturday”—I began, endeavoring
to assume a calm.

“Oh! I know not what to do!” she
said, as though speaking to herself.
“For years denied the blessing of a mother's
counsel and a mother's love, I have
struggled on alone. Marry! It will be
said I sold myself for wealth. The disgrace
attached to my family will attach
itself to him.”

“Eugenia,” said I, drawing near to her,
“I was wrong to present to you such a
hideous alternative as marriage or—
bloodshed. Forgive me. And then, as
your hand was on my shoulder, as your
breath was on my cheek, I forgot that I
must meet the captain to-morrow, fight
him, or be disgraced forever. I must
meet him—fight him—there is no other
way. Let me beg you to allow matters
to take their course. Return home, and

hope for the best. In any case, your brother
will be pardoned, and whatever is
the event of to-morrow, you will be saved
from all chance—(of poverty I was about
to add, but I said)—from all chance of
harm.”

Was it merely surprise that mantled
over her face? Or, did she by an almost
supernatural effort, regain her composure?

After a moment's thought she bade me
“good-evening!” in a calm voice, and
turned toward the door. There she
seemed to linger as if in hesitation, but it
was for a moment only. She opened the
door; she did not once look back; she
crossed the threshold. I stood gazing
upon the space made black and vacant
by her departure. But in an instant
there was a wild cry, and the sound of
rapid footsteps; there were arms outstretched,
and a woman's voice, speaking
in broken impetuous tones; and—a woman's
face pillowed on my breast. The
blank space left by her departure was
filled again and shining with heavenly
light. And words, scarce articulate for
sobs and tears, said to me:

“Avoid bloodshed! avoid crime!—I
will be your wife!”

It is a pitiful thing that, while the
dark passages of every life may be described,
the best and holiest moments
that brighten the drear way of this
world are too pure, too sacred, to be told
again. Over the joy of that moment,
when, in the dimly-lighted parlor, Eugenia—a
tempted but stainless woman,
sobbing in my arms, her cheek to mine,
her lips to mine, her heart to mine,
—vowed to be the sharer of my fate—
over the joy of that moment drop the
veil.

Should I not here apologize to the
cynics and worldlings of both sexes (the
woman worldling, the hardest of all,)
who perchance will read this page, for
this confession of a spotless and sacred
emotion?

* * * Ere an hour passed, I went
with Eugenia to her humble home. Her
father was not there; he was, in all probability,
in the company of Captain Hayne,
helping to arrange “the preliminaries”
of the morrow's duel. I left her at the
threshold.

“Remember your promise—at all hazards,
avoid bloodshed!”

I raised her gloved hand to my lips,
and left her in the doorway, one side of
her beautiful face touched by the light
which shone from within. “Shall I ever
see her again?” the thought came up,
ugly and almost palpable, as I went down
the dark stairway. Avoid bloodshed—
how? Stung by the persecution which
I had seen Eugenia suffer from the captain;
disgusted by the shameless acts
which stained his whole career; reckless
of my own existence; driven forward by
an impulse which I could not control, I
had planned, I had executed the scene
of the dinner-table. The captain bore
my mark upon his forehead. A challenge
had passed; a duel would take place to-morrow,
just after dinner—how avoid
bloodshed?

“If I fire in the air, the captain will
shoot me; if I do not fire in the air, I
will shoot him! Bloodshed must be
avoided; for now I have something to
live for; but how shall it be avoided?”
Thus I cogitated as I strolled down
Broadway.

25. CHAPTER XXV.

“How shall I avoid bloodshed?” was
the question which troubled me as I
strolled down Broadway.

I put my hand upon my vest pocket
and felt a small piece of manuscript,
which I had carried there for a month
and more—a very precious manuscript
which a mercantile friend of mine, Mr.
Jardine, of undoubted character, had
given me as an equivalent for the sum of
five hundred and fifty dollars. It was,
in a word, a check, signed by a prominent
firm in New-York, Firkin & Smalley,
and given to my mercantile friend
aforesaid, by a strange gentleman of plausible
manners, in exchange for certain
wines of highest price and rarest flavor.

After receiving this check, I had, in
due time, presented it to Messrs. Firkin
& Smalley at their counter, instead of
going to their bank at once, and, with a
good deal of indignation, they had pronounced
it a forgery. I begged them to
remain quiet in the matter, and made the
same request to Mr. Jardine. Thus a
month or more passed away. During
this month, aided by Mr. Jardine, and a
police officer, who looked as demure as
a country parson, but was in fact as cunning

as any fox in Esop, I had amused
my leisure hours in the attempt to discover
the plausible stranger who had presented
the check. Had I succeeded?

Some four days ago my investigation
came to a close. That was before I
knew anything of Eugenia or her brother.
And those investigations all terminated
at the door of a certain gentleman, fashionable
in his address, and (when the
humor seizes him) most plausible in his
manners. Well! The paper is safe!
Shall I use it?

That was a very nice question. That
little bit of paper properly used, and—
there would be no duel on the morrow.
Gentlemen who occupy apartments in
that elegant public hotel known as the
Tombs, are not precisely at liberty to
walk abroad, much less to fight duels.

But would it be honorable in me to
invoke the aid of the magical little fragment
of paper, which bore on one corner,
in elegant numerals, the representation
of five hundred and fifty dollars, and in
another, the mercantile scrawl of Firkin
& Smalley? Honorable?

On the other hand, would it be honorable
for me to stand up in single combat
against a professed duellist, gambler,
debauchee; and who, to his other cardinal
virtues, had lately added the unobtrusive
practice of—forgery? A very
nice question, look at it as you will.

Much troubled by this delicate question,
I strolled down Broadway, and unconsciously
approached the Park.

The night had grown cloudy, and
something between a fog and a drizzle
obscured the lamps in the Park. The
leafless trees arose, grotesque and vague
in the misty air. Broadway was almost
deserted. A single person stood at the
corner of a street which extends from
Broadway toward the North River—a
very demure-looking person, with sadcolored
clothes, an imperturbable countenance,
and a white cravat.

I approached this person; it was the
particular police officer, whom I will call
Mr. Pittson.

“Ah! is that you, Mr. Van Warner?
You are out rather late. Coming home
from the opera, I suppose?”

“And you—what do you out so late,
Mr. Pittson?” that gentleman extended
his hand, and pointed down the street
which led towards the North River.

All was dark there; the street lamps
had been extinguished; the only thing
which relieved the gloom was a light
which shone from an upper room of a
four-storied mansion.

“A fine light, that. I have been
watching it,” said Mr. Pittson, quietly.
“There's something very interesting in
that light, Mr. Van Warner.”

The room from which the light shone
was in the fourth story of a large edifice.
The ground floor, and second and third
stories, were used for mercantile purposes,
alive all day with the hum of business,
but at night silent as a tomb. The
rooms in the fourth story, silent all day,
were always at night, especially late at
night, lighted up as if for a festival. Late
at night, low music broke the silence of
these rooms—music so low that it could
only be heard by a practised ear—the
soft rustling of small pieces of pasteboard,
and the sharp quick rattling of ivory
balls.

These rooms, in a word, were the residence
and the secret temple of Captain
Burley Hayne.

“He is there now, I guess,” whispered
Pittson.

“Aint it about time to give him a
call?”

“You remember your promise, Pittson—this
matter is entirely in my hands.
You will not take a single step without
my consent?”

“Of course,” emphatically responded
Pittson, arranging his white cravat.

“Well, I wish to have a few words in
private with Captain Hayne. I will ascend
to his room. You will follow me,
and station yourself in the dark outside
of his door. And, when I call your
name, you will enter the room, and proceed
as I may direct. You comprehend?”

“I do,” was his prompt reply, uttered
by Pittson with a peculiar twinkle of
his sharp eyes.

And I went down the street; and
stealthily, some twenty paces after me,
came Pittson, his India rubber shoes
giving not the slightest echo of a footstep.
As I ascended in the dark toward
the captain's rooms, I had by no
means decided upon the course which I
was to pursue.

Arrest him, in order to avoid the
duel? I did not like the thought.
Force him to sign a paper in which he

will confess that he was justly assaulted,
and decline to meet me in single combat?
The latter looked more plausible, but I
knew not which course to take.

“I will see him first, and leave the
result to chance,” I muttered, as I stood
in the dark at the captain's door. Chance!
is a word which always leaves a very
wide margin.

I knocked at the door; there was no
reply. All was breathlessly still. Again
I knocked, and still there was no sound
from within. After some hesitation I
tried the door—it was not locked—I
opened it, and crossed the threshold.
The captain's room was lighted by a
candle, which stood in the centre of a
large table covered with green cloth.
It would require a great many words to
give anything like a correct idea of the
place.

It was elegantly carpeted, pleasantly
warmed, and one side of it was occupied
by a huge sideboard, covered with glasses,
decanters, and cold viands. The
space above the mantel was decorated
with fencing-foils, boxing-gloves, and the
satin slipper of an opera dancer. As for
the walls, they displayed four or five
pictures, in heavy gilt frames—pictures
suggestive of the social state of ancient
Greece and Rome in their worst days.
The table itself spoke volumes; there
was a file of sporting papers; a pack of
cards, bran new; a case of duelling pistols,
and a glass of brandy and water.

And at the table, in a cushioned arm-chair,
sat Captain Burley Hayne, his
head dropped on his ruffled shirt, his
hand laid listlessly on the table itself,
evidently fast asleep. His dark hair was
tangled and disordered, and threw a
shadow over his face. He had been
overcome by exhaustion, in the midst of
his virtuous labors, and was in a profound
sleep.

I coughed; made a noise with my
feet; but the captain did not stir.

Determined to converse with him, I
called his name loud and louder,—“Captain
Hayne! Captain Hayne!” but still
he did not show the slightest sign of
awaking from his slumber.

“I thought you called,” said a voice,
and the demure Pittson stood at my
shoulder.

I turned to him angrily—“Wait without,
as I directed!” But Pittson, in
stead of leaving the room, advanced to
the table, took the light, and raised it to
the captain's face. It was something of
a contrast: the thin frame and sharp
visage of the policeman, and the broad,
burly form and bushy head of the captain.
After a keen survey of a moment,
Pittson put down the candle, and turned
to me, with an oath—a rare thing for
him—indeed, I had never before heard a
profane word from his lips.

“By —! that man will be hard to
wake! Dead as a grindstone!”

“Dead! You are jesting!” I cried,
and passed round the table.

I shook the captain roughly by the
shoulder; he did not move. I pushed
aside his bushy hair and raised his
head; the light, for the first time, shone
fully in his face.

A horrible face! Mouth agape; complexion
yellow and livid; eyes fixed in
a glassy stare; a horrible face, with
death printed in every lineament.

“Suicide!” I cried, shrinking back
horror-stricken, as I saw the stain of
blood on his vest, over the left breast.

“A pistol shot, anyhow!” exclaimed
Pittson, bending over the table, and
shading his eyes, as he examined the
marks left by the pistol bullet in its
passage.

“Not by suicide—no! no! But by
my hand!” said a strange voice, clear
and ringing in its every accent.

26. CHAPTER XXVI.

And from the door of the next apartment
— suddenly opened — came the
speaker, a young woman, whose hair fell
disordered and in tangled masses about
her face.

Her bonnet was crushed upon her
head, as if by a heavy blow; her attire,
gay and tawdry, was damp with rain,
and soiled with the mud of the streets.
And framed in the crushed bonnet and
matted hair, appeared a face not long
ago rosy and blooming with all the life
of seventeen, but now as colorless as the
visage of a corpse; the only life in it was
the wild feverish glare of the expanded
eyes. Clenching her head, with her tawdry
shawl, dangling from one arm to the
floor, she came forward with a rapid
step.

“I did it. Am proud of the deed!

To-night—not an hour ago, I met him
at the corner of the next street. I asked
him for a dollar, for I was houseless. He
refused me and passed on. I ran side
by side with him, and clung to his arm,
telling him how he had brought me from
my home, and after all his oaths and
promises had left me to walk the streets
of New-York,—to—to—to—” her utterance
grew thick and hysterical. “And
he thrust me aside, and when I clung to
him again, he struck me—yes, he struck
me! And then passed on, not caring
whether I lay dead upon the side-walk
But I was not dead; I followed him and
found him here in his room, examining
his pistols by the light of the candle. As
I entered, I seized one of the pistols; it
was loaded, thank God! I fired—and,
killed him,—killed him, do you hear?”

She stopped, and the echoes of her
hysterical bursts of laughter sounded
strange and horrible in that room, where
death sat in hideous reality.

“Oh! you base, bad man she cried,
approaching the chair, and looking at the
corpse, as though it were still the living
Captain Burley Hayne. “Oh! you base,
bad man, had you no shame? Not one
throb of feeling? Were you indeed human?
How could you treat me thus?
You know what you told me when you
took me from my home; how you had
a better home for me here, in New-York;
and what a dear good wife I
would be to you; and now you sit there
dead—and I—O my God! look at me!
What am I?”

The violence of her emotions, the madness
which for an hour had filled her
veins, now flung her into a deathlike
swoon; she fell on her knees, her face
resting on her clenched hands, and her
hair falling in thick masses over the table.

Mr. Pittson, who was a grim, demure
man, much accustomed to the sight of
overy form of human misery, turned his
face from the sight, muttering, as he
rubbed the corner of each eye, “Bad papers
for you, cap'in! bad papers!” A
dead stillness prevailed for a few moments,
while the girl, in her swoon, knelt
beside the table, and the captain sat hideously
erect in his chair.

That silence was broken by the voices
of two gentlemen, who entered the room
from the stairway.

“What! Mr. Van Warner, here at this
hour!” was the remark of the bland Mr.
Morgan, who was evidently deeply surprised
when he beheld me.

“Come to offer an apology, I suppose?”
said his companion, the venerable and
wicked Eliphalet Cloud. “Won't do,
young man he'll wing you,—a dead shot,
a dead shot! He'll —” the words
hung on his lips, for his gaze encountered
the face of the dead man.

The idiotic stare which expanded his
eyes as I hurriedly related how, and by
whose hands the captain met his death,
could only be exceeded in repulsiveness
by the fixed glare of the dead man's
eyes. Even the composed Morgan grew
pale, and sunk back into a chair, covering
his face for a moment with his hands.
Suddenly, the horror printed on Eliphalet's
visage was succeeded by an expression
impossible to describe; an expression
which reminded you of nothing
save a grin on the visage of a corpse.

“Dead is he!” I heard him mutter to
himself—“D—n him! I rather guess,
captain, you won't use that little bit o'
paper now.”

It was just after day break when I ascended
the stairs which led to Eugenia's
home. Feverish, from loss of rest, to
say nothing of long-continued excitement,
I wished to see her at the earliest
moment, and tell her that it was no
longer needful for me to kill, or be killed
in a duel. I passed into the anteroom,
and knocked gently at the door. There
was no sound in reply, but the door was
slightly ajar; I pushed it open and entered.
A dim light—the ray of a candle
fluttering in its socket—was shed
around the humble features of that
room.

Eugenia was there, on her knees, all
unconscious of my presence; her hands
clasped, her eyes upraised, her black hair
floating over her neck and bosom.

There are two expressions, the most
inexpressibly beautiful, which by turns
pass over the face of a pure and lovely
woman. One is when religion fills her
being, and sends its calm, holy light to
the upraised eyes, shedding over every
feature the baptism of a deathless emotion;
the other, when pure love (in itself
a part—yes, the essence of religion,) first
courses in heaven-born sunshine over her

face, filling the eyes, blooming like young
June on the lip and cheek, while the first
time the words “my husband!” tremble
on the air.

Of these expressions, so beautiful beyond
the power of words, that of religion
now baptized the face of Eugenia.

She was praying; my name was in her
prayer and on her lips as I came into the
room.

As she saw me she bounded to her
feet, made a step forward, as though
about to spring into my arms, but, pausing
where she stood, blushing and beautiful,
gasped the words—“It is over
then! You are safe! There—there is
no stain of blood upon your hands?”

“It is over, Eugenia!” I replied.
“There is no stain of blood upon my
hands. In a word, there has been no
duel. Captain Burley Hayne has been
summoned to his last account.”

“Dead!” she gasped, opening wide her
eyes, and growing very pale, as she sunk
into a chair. I took my seat beside her,
and while she sat, pale and frightened,
related the details of the captain's fate.

“So sudden!” she interrupted me;
“and by a victim's hand. Gone in his
sins to his last account! Oh! it is horrible!”

A pause ensued, and we sat silently
gazing in each other's faces, by the light
of the flickering candle.

At length, while the early sunshine
began to mingle with the flickering light,
I began to talk of our future—of our marriage,
of the quiet home, far from the
atmosphere of the city's crimes, where
we would live when our fates were joined
in one.

“To-morrow is Saturday. Your brother's
pardon will arrive. I will place
him in good hands, afar from the temptations
and vices of New-York—and
then, Eugenia, your brother, safe from all
harm, we will be married.” I paused,
for her gaze no longer met mine; her
downcast eyes and half-averted face indicated
an emotion which I could not define.

“O Frank!” she said, calling me for
the first time by name, “something tells
me that our marriage had better not be.
Think me not ungrateful! think not that
I do not—love you! But our social condition
is unequal. The world in which
you move will say that I had married
you for your wealth. And—and—” she
now turned toward me her radiant eyes,—
“Oh! let me be to you as sister to dearest
brother!” Her words were hesitating,
but the look which shone in every
lineament of her face contradicted her
words.

“Eugenia!” I said, taking her hand,
“you love me! That is enough! On
Monday next you will be mine—my
wife!”

“Yes—yes—” she faltered “but there
is at my heart a presentiment of evil for
which I cannot account—”

27. CHAPTER XXVII.

She paused, and laid her hand upon
her bosom, and in that moment—was it
a dream, an omen?—a shadow flung by
the dark wing of an overshadowing fate?
In that moment, between me and Eugenia,
there came, or seemed to come, the
image of my hag-wife, hideous and scowling,
followed by Eva, beautiful as ever
but with sadness and reproach in her
eyes. It was for a moment only. It
was as palpable and vivid as an object
brought out from intense darkness, for
an instant, by a flash of lightning.

Eugenia broke the silence, as she rose
from her chair, and placed a small book,
a thin volume, bound in a brown cover,
in my hands.

“Read this,” she said, “and then say
whether it is well that one of my social
condition should link her life with a man
of your wealth. It is a little book, but
it says a great deal.”

Wondering I took the book; opened it,
and glanced over its pages. It was a little
book, composed of a few pages of formal
manuscript, and yet it did say a great
deal. There was a world of meaning in
its cramped, formal pages. It was the
book in which were kept the accounts of
Eugenia and her employer.

For a week's labor of sixteen hours a
day, employed upon the finest kind of
needlework, Eugenia received just two
dollars and a half—so said the book. A
week's labor, that taxed eye and hand,
and lungs, to their utmost, repaid with
twenty shillings, to speak in the dialect
of New-York! And for every dollar that
the embroideress received, her employer,
by the sale of the production of her

needle, received his ten dollars! I could
not help throwing the account book on
the table, with a gesture of indignation
and contempt.

“Behold the justice of society to its
weakest and most helpless members!”
I ejaculated. “For the same amount of
labor, expended in any branch of mechanics
or manufactures, a man would receive
at least one dollar per day! But woman
is weak, she is defenceless, she can be
robbed with impunity!—”

“Or—” Eugenia interrupted me, her
eyes downcast, and her neck and face all
crimson, for the moment—“Or, if she
does not choose to lead this kind of life,
there is yet open to her another career.
That of the poor girl by whose hands
Burley Hayne met his fate! But you
are surprised at the record of my labors.
Here is a book which will surprise you
more. It is a book lent to me by a poor
seamstress, who works for the proprietor
of a clothing store—” and she placed the
second book in my hands.

Talk of black slavery! In what respect
can it rival with the white slavery,
a portion only of whose unutterable horrors
was detailed in the cramped figures
of the book which I held—a slavery
which, in order to make clothing cheap,
works up the heart and lungs and life of
poor womanhood into garments for the
nobler sex at—just sixteen pennies per
day!—a slavery which does not fall upon
an inferior race, abounding in rude physical
life—in rude happy animal life; nor
upon strong men, able to buffet and to
bear misfortune, but upon women, refined,
delicate women, rendered sensitive by
education and religion—women, fit to be
mothers, wives, sisters, daughters of the
best of you, O noble, disinterested masculine
sex!

Unroof New-York, and in her darkest
haunts you will find a thousand women
fit by nature to fulfil the highest duties
of woman's life, but who, by the wages-system
of this great Christian city, have
been consigned to that death of the soul
which is a thousand fold more horrible
than the death which lays the body in
the coffin and the grave.

“Well, Eugenia!” I said, flinging the
accursed book to the floor—“it is in my
heart to kneel at your feet, and in you
worship the enshrined images of holy
poverty and spotless virtue! You not
worthy of my hand. O would to heaven
I was worthy of yours!”

Here let “The Man of the World”
pause in his narrative for a little while,
while the editor of these papers intrudes
upon the reader a few thoughts suggested
by the facts just stated—facts which
tell of the awful contrasts presented by
the Wealth and Poverty of a great city
like New-York.

It is a pitiful thing that, side by side
with the most splendid victories won by
our modern civilization over dumb matter,
Poverty marches steadily on, like a
skeleton at the shoulder of the voluptuous
queen of some banquet-hall.

Look around you! and you behold
everywhere the trophies of enterprise—
edifices whose majestic architecture rivals
the wonders of old Rome—telegraphs
that annihilate space—Ericsson inventions,
that revolutionize the industrial
interests of an entire age. And look before
you! and there are little children, in
rags and naked feet, sweeping the crossings
of the streets.

On one hand, the St. Nicholas Hotel
and Grace Church; on the other, the
Five Points.

Why these contrasts? Can it be true,
as gravely asserted by sleek gentlemen,
with well developed physical organizations,
and good accounts at bank, that no
one is poor but those who deserve to be
so? That success is the test of virtue;
the want of it, the badge of crime?

Talk like this may do for a couple of
portly gentlemen, gravely engaged at
beefsteak and old Port; or for some editorling,
whose inquiries into life and its
mysteries have never led him to a higher
aspiration than a seat at the opera. But
for those who see misery everywhere;
see it livid, half-naked, and more horrible
to look upon, because it is everywhere
contrasted with enormous wealth and
boundless luxury—those who, thus seeing
it and confronted by it at every turn,
are either hardened into callousness or
wrung with perpetual anguish by the
sight—the doctrine of portly gentlemen
and editorling will by no means suffice.

Once admit that wealth is the unfailing
sign of virtue; poverty, the brand of
crime, and you write “felon” on the foreheads
of the noblest men, whose glorious
names brighten along the pathway of
ages.

Nay; you put the brand of infamy
upon a life whose every detail was
but an exemplification, in the most unutterably
touching form, of the divine gospel
of self-denial; a life which made poverty
holy, and failure godlike; a life
which begun with the calm hymn of
“Good tidings to the poor!” yet ended
with that burst of unutterable anguish,
“Eli! Eli! lama sabachthani!”

That life was designed as a lesson, as
an example, as a consolation, to all the
sons of men, in and through all time; it
was that holy, beautiful life—intended as
an embodiment of humanity, in its deepest
sorrows and loftiest yearnings, walking
patiently the fire-paved track of poverty
and suffering; and when you say to
the poor man, “Your poverty is the result
of crime;” to the unsuccessful,
“Your failure is the effect of your own
sins,” your brutal taunt falls not only
upon the poor and unsuccessful, but upon
His forehead who is the master of us all.
You mock God, and in his place enthrone
Mammon, that lowest of all the devils,
who, while his prouder compeers stood
erect, blasted but defiant, went crawling
on all fours in search of pennies.

“Any one who does right can get
along. It's only the idle, the improvident,
or the criminal, who are poor.”
This, reader, is not the sentiment of a
professed atheist, but of a large number
of good folks, who dress well, eat well,
sleep well, and rather think themselves
the exact models of respectability and
virtue. Let us try their doctrine a
moment.

If, though the rain and sleet of this
drear winter night, you will look into
yonder—hovel? no, but huge mansion,
rising in the heart of the great city, and
tenanted by at least a hundred of the
most miserable of the poor—if you will
cast your gaze into a particular room,
lighted by a single candle, you will behold
a pale woman working with her
needle.

A woman in suffering; but a girl,
scarcely more than a child in years;
eyes glaring feverishly in their hollow
sockets, cheeks sunken, lips pinched and
white, and the dead, blank look of misery
and want on every lineament.

This girl-woman, by the death of her
father, a hard-working laborer, who all
his life toiled late and early for rent
money and bread; and, when he could
work no more, died, has become the only
protector and hope of the brother and
sister, little children, whom you may see
sleeping now upon the bed in yonder
corner of the miserable room. To keep
them in bread and home, the girl-woman
works at her needle sixteen hours a day
—works until pulse is feverish, eyes hot
and dim, and lungs heavy as lead—for
which she gets per day from sixteen to
twenty-five pennies; from whom, we
will not say, for we wish to spare the
feelings of the sleek gentlemen who work
up the lungs and lives of women into
merchandize. Well, sixteen pennies per
day is rather small capital upon which
the girl-woman is to support herself, and
feed and clothe her orphan brother and
sister. Even the sixteen pennies will
not last long, for the consumption is busy
at the life of the girl-woman; in a little
while there will be a grave dug for her.

Now, gentle and comfortable people,
who smack your lips as you say,—“Any
one that is not idle and improvident can
get along; the idle, the improvident, the
criminal only, are poor”—will you tell
us the particular sin of this girl-woman,
who is now digging her grave with her
needle? You can hear her grave-cough,
as, for an instant, she stops in her work
and looks up with her feverish eyes.
The particular sin of this girl, if you
please?

Life has never disclosed to her any of
its blossoms—nothing but its thorns.
The joys of love, the name of wife, the
holy wealth of motherhood can never be
hers. She is dedicating herself to death,
for the support of her brother and sister.
Now, of what sin is she guilty? Speak
out, sleek gentlemen!

Was it a sin in her that her father,
unable to work any longer, fell sick and
died?

When she is dead, the boy and girl,
her brother and sister, will be cast friendless
upon the world, without education
or hope, the boy to end, it may be, one
winter's day, in the open square within
the Tombs, the rope about his neck and
the gibbit over his head; the girl to
come at last to a death-bed by which will
sit no comforters but dishonor and
shame.

Now, will you, complacent gentlemen,
tell us what sin it is of this orphan boy

and girl, that, by father and sister's
death, they are cast adrift upon the
world? Their poverty is the effect of
their sin, you know—that is your doctrine—tell
us the particular sin?

But, say you, this case is exceptional,
and button your pockets over your well
filled purses. Exceptional! O most
convenient loop-hole! through which
you can creep to escape the consequences
of your infernal dogma.

This case is not exceptional. It is the
case, in some shape or other, of one-half
at least of the large city's poor—poor,
who are poor through no fault of theirs,
but who work straight on for bread as
long as life's daylight holds out. At the
worst, scarcely one-fourth of the poor
are poor from their own fault. Bring
out your statistics; lift the veil which
hides the secrets of society; and you
will find this to be a truth, hard even
for you to get over.

But, taking the other side of your
dogma, by which you all, complacent
gentlemen, tell us, in effect, if not in so
many words—that wealth is the sign of
a virtuous life, spent in honest effort—
you will allow us to pause a moment,
while we endeavor to believe that you
are not in earnest—that this dogma is
only a joke of yours, a very brutal joke,
yet still intended for a joke.

Wealth always, or in one case out of
three, the symbol of a virtuous life spent
in honest effort!

Horrible mockery! Where is the
man who dares trace to their real source
five out of ten of the great fortunes of
this metropolis? The man does not
live who dares do it. And if such a
man did live, his disclosures, or rather
his analysis, would cause him to be
hunted forth like a wild beast from the
pale of city civilization.

28. CHAPTER XXVIII.

On Saturday morning I went into the
tombs,—that stone nightmare which
squats upon the breast of New-York,
surrounded by the atmosphere of moral
pestilence.

Ascending the steps, and passing
through those gloomy pillars, whose
very shadows seem to be imbued with
memories of violence and bloodshed, I
soon found myself in the court-room,
where the obscurity of a cloudy day was
relieved by gas-light.

Under the domed ceiling, were lawyers,
witnesses, judges, jurymen and
criminals—a vivid and heterogeneous
picture. From yonder door, criminals
emerge from their cells to receive the
sentence due their crimes; and through
yonder door, once sentenced, they pass
again, to linger a little while in the
Tombs, ere they are consigned to the
living death of the State Prison.

That court of sessions' room is a theatre;
every one who appears there,
whether as lawyer, witness, juryman,
judge, or criminal, is an actor; the only
essential difference between it and the
Park or Bowery, is, that when the actors
have played their parts under this domed
ceiling, some of them retire through
yonder door to be consigned to the moral
death of the State Prison, or to the more
merciful death inflicted by the gallows.

The judge, supported by two aldermen,
was on the bench; and, before him, in
the centre of the scene, a criminal stood
up to receive his sentence. The judge
was a pleasant, mild-faced man, who had
become so accustomed to sentencing
criminals, that he did it very much in the
same manner that a tired clerk at Stewart's
disposes of a dress pattern to a very
troublesome and homely woman.

And, contrasted with the round, pleasant
face of the judge, was the sharp, nervous
visage of the criminal—a swarthy
boy of eighteen, whose matted hair fell
over his forehead, while his small glittering
eyes wandered in defiance over the
crowded court.

It was John Smith, otherwise known
as Edward Cloud, the brother of Eugenia.

The judge expected his pardon from
the governor in the afternoon, but proceeded
to sentence the prisoner as though
there was no thought of pardon in the
case. As for myself, I had thought it
best not to communicate one word concerning
the anticipated pardon to the unfortunate
boy. Eugenia had not seen
him since the day when, from a paragraph
in a daily paper, she had been led
to believe that the young burglar and
her missing brother was the same person,—when
she had gone to the Tombs,
crossed the dreary prison yard, ascended

to cell “No. —,” and took the wretched
outcast to her arms.

And but a few hours before, I had left
Engenia in her modest home, and came
alone to the Tombs, to hear the law's
last judgment upon her brother.

Well! there was a buzzing noise all
over the room, as the young culprit
stood up to hear his sentence; then the
sharp voice and sharper knuckles of an
officer commanding “Silence!” and then
you might have heard a pin drop.

As the judge began to read the sentence
from a written paper, the young
burglar glanced about the court with an
earnest and softened gaze, glanced over
every face and peered into every corner,
and for a moment his face quivered and
his lips trembled. He was looking for
Eugenia! And when the consciousness
came upon him that her face was not
there,—that there was not one face there
to look upon him with pity and with
love,—the softened look passed from his
countenance; he was sullen, defiant, almost
brutal again. He drew his rough
overcoat closer over his chest, clenched
his right hand, and faced the judge with
an unfaltering gaze.

The remarks with which the judge
prefaced the sentence were of the usual
character,—well meant, without doubt,
but calculated to make the sides of a
devil ache with laughter, that is, if devils
ever laugh when the humbug of this
world is paraded before their eyes.

“Great wrong committed on society,
—shocking depravity in one so young,—
have time to reflect upon your crime,
and atone for it within the walls of the
State Prison;” such were some of the
prominent heads of the judge's brief sermon.

He did not say a word about any duty
which society owed to the miserable outcast;
did not breathe a whisper in regard
to the depraved father who had left his
boy to try the hard battle of the world,
friendless and alone; not the shadow of
a whisper concerning those bitter years
of ragged, half-naked, hungry, tempted
childhood, which the boy had endured
in the great city. O no! such things never
come within the knowledge of the law.
It is simply the business of the law to
imprison and to kill.

The judge concluded his homily with
this brilliant and startling thought—
“John Smith, it is the sentence of the
court that you be imprisoned for the term
of three years at Sing-Sing.” To which
John replied, with a look which showed
that State Prison discipline would do
about as much to reform his soul as a
course of sawdust and brickbats would
to fatten his body.

He was then taken out; the door
closed after him; the court buzzed again;
again an officer cried and rapped, “Order!”
and the judge proceeded to the
dispatch of other business.

That afternoon the pardon came, signed
by the noble-hearted governor, and
Eugenia and myself went to the Tombs,
and brought the young convict from his
gloomy cell into free daylight. No one
who had seen his hard, callous face in
the morning, would have imagined him
to be the same boy. We took him to
Eugenia's home, where he sat on the
edge of a chair, his nether lip quivering,
and his eye roving about the room, as if
he was not altogether certain that he was
awake.

“I thought you'd forget me—I did;”
—he faltered, as he looked into the face
of Eugenia—“I did. Are you, really,
my sister? No you aint—you aint!
You the sister of a cuss like me?” He
turned his face away from the light, toward
the wall, and leaning over the back
of the chair, “wept bitterly”—perhaps
the first tears he shed since he wandered
from his New-England birthplace.

At this moment, Col. Eliphalet Cloud
(whose consent, by the by, I had obtained
the day before to the anticipated
marriage) came into the room, prim and
cadaverous, and “dressed to the death.”
He gazed at the sobbing convict through
his eye-glass.

“This is you, is it? What a bad boy
you've been! A very—very bad boy!
You must have kept shockingly low
company! You young villain, I'm
ashamed of you!”

To which the boy, raising his face,
down which the tears were freely coursing,
made reply, as he gazed at the fossil
specimen of the man of the world before
him—“Get out! Who the — are
you! What are you gassin' at me fur?”

It was an odd picture—the ragged convict
son, and the genteel scoundrel father.
Eugenia came between them, and led the
old gentleman into the back room.

On the next Monday we were married.
There were no guests at our wedding—
only Eugenia, myself, and the clergyman,
(the same who had officiated at the
marriage of Louis and Evelina,) were
present. In the same parlor where I
had first met Eugenia, she placed her
hand in mine, and called me “husband!”

As for the good old man, her father,
(whose virtues were only surpassed by
those of my own departed parent,) I had
placed him in an establishment of his
own, where he could drink and gamble
to his heart's content. The boy, in
whom traces of a better nature were apparent,
I had sent far into the country,
to the house of a good clergyman, where
he might retrieve the errors of his youth,
in preparation for a bright and useful
manhood.

Happy days now in the grave city
mansion! No thought of hag-wife now
—only a softened and touching memory
of Eva! The place was musical now
with the voice of Eugenia, and the long-deserted
rooms imbued with the glory
of her presence and her beauty. Happy
days! Few women have walked this
earth combining the same qualities as
Eugenia—now, the tenderest child in
her emotions; and now, the proud,
queenly, intellectual woman. And yet,
Why was it that oftentimes, in the very
moment when her face was all radiant
with life and loveliness, a cloud would
come upon it, for an instant only, but the
sadder to behold from its contrast with
her previous joyousness?

Do you see yonder old mansion that
stands upon the heights above the Hudson,
bearing traces of the cannon-shot of
the Revolution on its walls of dark gray
stone—a massive edifice, centred in a
garden, its steep roof overhung by the
boughs of encircling oaks? Between
the garden and the Hudson there is a
steep cliff—a broken link of the Palisades
— and, standing in the garden
walk, by that huge old oak, which has
faced the winter of three centuries, the
broad Hudson, the roof and steeples of
New-York, the Sound, the Heights of
Brooklyn, and the glorious Manhattan
Bay, all lie stretched before you, distinct
as the lines of a map, and as beautiful as
any picture every lighted up by a summer
morning sun.

The mansion itself is very massive and
gloomy, with wings projecting to the
north and south; and within its sombre
walls are many rooms, all bearing the
same appearance of stately grandeur
which they wore in the Revolution—
rooms which, it is said, long ago were
the theatres of crimes which never found
a record in the books of courts of law.
There is a hearthstone there yet red with
the stain of a tragedy enacted seventy
years ago.

Well, this house I purchased, and, as
May came, led Eugenia across its threshhold.
It was a bright, beautiful day;
May rippled over the river's surface, and
scattered her blossoms among the trees.
I was the happiest man alive, and as for
Eugenia, never had she looked so surpassingly
beautiful. We crossed the
threshold. No omen scared us back.
And yet the most terrible event of both
our lives was to happen within those
walls.

I can see Eugenia yet, as she lingered
for a moment on the threshold her face
and form framed in the dark doorway;
the form robed in white, with a shawl
of many colors falling aside from her noble
bust; the face set in the shadow of
her rich black hair. Her bonnet had
fallen to her shoulders, her hand was
lifted to her brow, as she looked forth
upon the spring sunshine, the river, the
city and the bay. Very beautiful! Who,
in this queenly woman, now pausing on
the threshold of the house which, (with
its lands,) I had purchased for her in her
own name, would have recognized the
poor seamstress of New-York?

“Oh, is not the day beautiful, Frank?”
she cried, in the very fullness of her joy.

“Beautiful, Eugenia!” And, all unconscious
of the dark future, we went
over the threshold into the gloomy
house.

29. CHAPTER XXIX.

We lived in the old mansion, afar
from the world, and untroubled by the
laborious amusements of what is called
fashionable life, and I was happy once
more, and I lived again; the black memories
of the past grew dim and dimmer.
May expanded into summer, autumn
passed, winter shone calm and
cold from clear skies through the boughs
of leafless trees. “Spring was near

again, and Eugenia was crowned with
the holy name of mother!” A new face
bloomed in blessing on our home. O
the calm, untroubled peace of those
days!

One evening in early June, as I was
returning alone from New-York to my
country mansion, the carriage broke
down on the high road, not more than a
mile from home. I left it in charge of
the coachman, and walked homeward.
It was one of those mild, beautiful evenings,
enriched by the light of the rising
moon, and fragrant with the breath of
young summer, which you never forget.
As I entered the gate, and took the
winding path which led through the
grounds to the old house, there was a
paly stillness in the air.

Grand and majestic rose the old trees
around me, their leaves moving with the
faintest motion; now and then a turn
of the path gave me a glimpse of the
Hudson, rippling in the moonlight, and
of the distant city, which slept, or seemed
to sleep, in the smile of the calm,
hallowed night.

Walking quietly on, every sense lulled
by the sacred influence of the hour, I
was thinking of my past and of my present
life, and thanking God most fervently
that the darkness of the past was dim
in my memory, while the joy of my
present was upon me, vivid and all-absorbing,
like a gush of sunshine through
an open window in the better world.

Thus I drew near my home, and came
into the garden, which encircled the
gray old walls with a drapery of foliage,
vines and blossoms.

There was a window, which served
the purposes of window and door, and
opened on the garden from the sitting-room
of Eugenia. It was framed in a
flowering vine. Instead of approaching
the hall-door, I drew near this window,
determining to enter by it, and surprise
Eugenia. The sash was raised; the
light from the room came cheerfully
forth, mingling with the rays of the
moon. Concealing myself among the
vines, I looked within.

In a fine old room, with paneled
walls and arched fireplace, sat Eugenia,
reading by a candle which stood on a
workstand near her, while her babe was
sleeping in a cradle at her feet. She was
attired in a flowing white robe, and her
dark hair was disposed in glossy masses
about her face. Serene and pure, she
sat there in her quiet room, a soft glow
on her cheek, her eyes half veiled by the
downcast lashes—the very impersonation
of all that is noble in woman, wife
and mother.

While I stood silently contemplating
this picture, a door opened, and, to my
unfeigned surprise, a man whose face
I had never seen before entered the
room.

A man of some twenty-seven years,
with a pale, haggard face, dark hair that
hung in tangled and uneven locks, and
large glittering eyes. His dress was
faded and worn, and he looked very
much like a man who had seen much
misfortune, poverty, and, perchance,
crime. He approached Eugenia silently,
and stood near her, unperceived, gazing
upon her with a look in which hatred
seemed to struggle with other emotions.
Was his object robbery?

I stood spell-bound, yet prepared to
rush upon him the moment he showed
signs of violence. Fortunately, I was
armed; by some chance or other, I carried
a revolving pistol in the breast of
my dress-coat. I drew it silently forth,
and covered the intruder with a deliberate
aim. It may be imagined that I
awaited the issue of this scene in keen
suspense.

Still, Eugenia, reading, had not raised
her eyes or perceived the presence of the
stranger. He drew a step nearer,
stealthily, noiselessly, and reached forth
his hand. Then, in a low voice, broken
by a strong effort to restrain some deep
emotion, he spoke. I heard every word.

“Well, Eugenia! It is about three
years since last we met, or rather since
we parted.

She raised her eyes, and for the first
time beheld him. All color fled from
her face. She sat on the sofa as though
suddenly paralyzed.

Then rising to her feet, pale and trembling,
her lips bleached, and the hands which
she extended quivering as with a spasm,
she faltered forth the words,—“Albert!
Albert! O my God, is it you!” And
the next moment she was in his arms,
sobbing on his breast; and he, the dark
expression gone from his face, pressed
his kiss upon her forehead with impassioned
rapture. I staggered back from

the window as though my reason had
been bewildered by a violent blow.

I wandered, I know not why, down
the garden toward the cliff which overhung
the river shore. The moon was
shining brightly; the river stretched
along there, calm and beautiful in the
soft light; nature all around me was
still, but the agonies of the damned were
tearing at my heart-strings,

On the edge of the cliff, I leaned
against a tree, and pressed my hands to
my forehead in the effort to collect my
shattered senses. As I looked back
upon the events of that fearful night, I
can remember distinctly that, after standing
for a moment on the verge of the
cliff, I went up the garden-walk, toward
the house, the pistol in my hand; that
I trembled from head to foot; that the
ground seemed to rock beneath my
tread, but that my eye was clear, my
hand firm; that, as I reached the porch
in front of my mansion, a man came
forth, passing from the shadow into the
light of the moon, until he stood face to
face with me. I can remember how
there was a glow as of triumph on his
pale face, and how he met my gaze with
a look all defiance and insolence. I can
remember that I called him by his first
name— the name which had trembled
from the lips of my wife—that I told
him to look his last upon the river and
sky; for, as there was a God above us,
he must die. I can remember the look
he gave as he staggered back from the
leveled pistol; how he cried, “Hold! I
have never harmed you!”—and how I
drove him before me, step by step, until
he was against one of the pillars of the
porch, and there I made an end of the
scene, and fired.

He fell forward on his face, bathed in
blood. I can remember a shriek, and a
hurried step, and the form of a woman
bending over the dying man, until her
white dress was spotted with his blood.

After this, all memory is a dead blank,
only broken by dreams that might
change heaven itself into hell.

30. CHAPTER XXX.

From the moment when in clear moonlight
I saw a woman's form bending over
the dying man, until her white robes
were stained with blood, a vague shadow
stretches over my life—a vague and awful
shadow, broken only now and then
by gleams of light that resemble a flash
of lightning, the crater of an extinct volcano.

What a strange, horrible existence became
mine! My individuality was lost.
I was a king, an emperor, a savage beast,
a tree blasted in the midst of a blooming
garden; I was my hag-wife, and Eva,
any thing, every thing, but myself.

I knew not where I was, whether in
this world or the next, whether in a
palace or a prison; I only lived in my
dreams, and the last dream that possessed
me, more vivid than any reality I had
ever encountered, clothed and surrounded
me with its own peculiar associations.
As long as that dream lasted I lived in
it, and in it only; when it passed, another
took its place.

Such dreams never before harrowed
an immortal soul! I was buried alive;
they had nailed down the coffin-lid; they
had locked the door of the vault and left
me there; I was living in my coffin, and
it was my judgment that I could not die.
Gnashing my teeth and tearing my flesh
in my efforts to burst the coffin-lid, I
still had no power to kill myself.

Then, I had committed the unpardonable
sin, and was exiled to some distant
corner of the universe, where neither
man, nor angel, nor devil—not even one
ray of God's presence—could visit me,
for I was an outlaw from heaven, earth,
and hell. I was the only occupant of a
blasted planet, whose volcanic mountains
arose into a copper-colored sky. There
was no sun, nor moon, nor tree, nor
flower, nothing but mountains of a leaden
color, lighted by smouldering volcanoes,
and towering away, away, and away, until
their peaks were lost in a copper-colored
sky.

Then I was a spirit returned to earth
again, and forced to occupy the body of
some inferior animal; beaten, starved,
overworked, always endeavoring to speak
and tell the human faces round me that
I was not a beast, but an immortal soul,
and always finding my utterance dying
away in a brutal howl.

This passed, and another dream came.
From the beast I glided into the emperor.
I was Napoleon amid the snows
and cannon-smoke of Austerlitz or by
the glare of the burning Kremlin, or on

the rock of St. Helena. The blood I
shed could not be measured; the corpses
I laid around me, wherever I went, made
all the earth white with the livid faces.
I was happy in carnage, and pursued
murder as a lover his mistress.

From Napoleon on his throne I was
suddenly transformed into my hag-wife,
suspended by the cord, always struggling,
choking, strangling, and never dying.

Then I was Eva in her coffin, with her
dead baby on her breast, and saw my
own self bending over the coffin and
weeping there. Thus, dream succeeded
dream, not like the visions of a fever, but
most strangely and horribly palpable;
and I had no existence of my own.
Whether moments, hours or days passed,
I had not the remotest consciousness.

At last I seemed to awake, and looked
about me with the external eye. I
found myself in a small room, with the
sunlight shining through the grated bars
of a solitary window. I was seated on
a small cot. Near my feet were cords,
which had, to all appearance, but lately
bound my wrists and ankles. I was
clad in a jacket and trowsers of coarse
cotton.

“Madhouse or jail?” I muttered, and
seemed to hear my own voice for the
first time since the night of the murder.

I arose and went to the window. A
summer sun, near its setting, shone over
a garden, a prospect of woods, and fields,
and a distant city, from a calm, clear
sky. O how that calm, happy view, so
full of the spirit of peace, contrasted with
my late dreams!

Turning from the window, I looked
around my cell. The grated door had,
by some chance, been left open. I passed
through the doorway, and found myself
in a long, dimly-lighted and silent corridor.

Without a definite object I wandered
along this corridor until I came to a point
where it connected with another. Here,
from an opened door, a gleam of light
shone out on the dark passage.

I pushed the door wide open, entered,
and found myself in a well-furnished
apartment, with an elegant bed, chairs,
table overspread with books and papers;
evidently the apartment of some official
connected with the place. A mahogany
wardrobe stood between the bed
and the window.

This I opened, and as quietly as
though the event was a matter of course,
proceeded to exchange my coarse cotton
garments for a suit of black cloth,
which happened to fit me, and which I
found in the wardrobe. A pair of boots
stood near the table, a hat and white
cravat stood upon it; these, in a moment,
I assumed. I could not tell how the
dress became me, for there was no mirror
in the room, but after carefully surveying
myself, I sallied forth, resolved
to entrust my adventures to fate or
chance.

I plunged into the second corridor,
dimly lighted like the other, and walked
on (the doors of cells on either hand)
until I came to a large grated door,
which stretched across the passage.

Beyond this an official waited, silent
and demure as a statue.

He unbolted the door without a word,
and suffered me to pass, evidently taking
me for the person whose dress I had assumed.

“This is better than my dreams, any
how!” I muttered, and hurried on.

I soon came to a second door, beyond
whose bars I saw a passage all light and
sunshine.

The second official, like the first, suffered
me to pass without a word.

The passage into which I now entered
resembled the ward of a hospital—the
ward for convalescents—only that it was
lighter and more cheerful. Numerous
windows on either hand gave entrance
to the rays of the declining sun, and
opened to the gaze a pleasant prospect
of fields and gardens, and a distant village
or city. Up and down this passage
walked, perchance, fifty men, of all ages,
and mostly well-dressed—up and down,
with a quick, nervous motion, and with
a perpetual fire in their restless eyes.
These did not resemble convicts so much
as the better class of patients of an—insane
hospital.

Raising my kerchief to my face, I
passed rapidly through their various
groups, and soon came to the door at
the other extremity of the passage.

The third official, like the others, let
me pass without a word.

I traversed a wide hall, descended a
broad stairway; and, through a lofty
door, emerged into open sunshine.

Still keeping the handkerchief to my

face, I hurried down a broad garden
walk, toward the porter's lodge, which
I saw in the distance. Half-way down,
I encountered a party, composed of ladies
and gentlemen, who had evidently
been visiting the place, for they were
chatting pleasantly about the various
forms of insanity which they had beheld.

As I came up, I heard my own name.
O how like a word from another language
it sounded!

“Yes, he is there,” said another voice,
“but the public are never admitted to
the ward in which he is confined. They
only keep the most hopeless and desperate
there!”

Passing the kerchief rapidly over my
face. I passed through the group, and
heard the whisper as I passed—“That
is Doctor N—, one of the most successful
in the treatment of hopeless
cases.”

I approached the porter's lodge, and
now, for the first time, my heart began
to beat with anxiety. Would the porter
detect the cheat? The sight of sun, of
trees, of flowers, the free atmosphere
which filled my lungs, all conspired to
fill me with new energy, and I hurried
on with a rapid step.

The porter, a middle-aged man, rose
from his chair, approached the gate,
looked at me languidly, and—let me
pass!

I was free! I did not cast a single
backward look upon the massive pile
which had lately imprisoned me, but,
turning my face to the village or city,
hurried on.

A train of cars stood waiting by a depot.
Passing rapidly through the crowd
upon the platform, I entered the first car
that offered, and flung myself on a seat
in a dark corner.

In a moment the train was whirling
away, and I saw the roofs of the Asylum
shine in the sun, far behind me, just
before they were hidden by a grove of
trees. And drawing my hat low over
my brows, I gave myself up to a joy too
deep for words, as I contemplated my
strange escape. Not once perchance in
a million times could such an attempt
have proved successful.

The circumstances which favored my
escape, (as I afterwards learned,) were
these: Dr. N— has a man about my
height, very taciturn, and nearly always
seen with an essenced kerchief lifted to
his face. On the day of my escape, he
had found me in a profound sleep, which
had succeeded a terrible paroxysm, and
been summoned from my cell to a call
not far away, where his services were
more immediately demanded. While he
was in this cell—an hour or more—my
escape had been consummated. And now
I was free!

But was there no danger of detection
in the cars? The conductor came along
to collect the fares—I felt my heart
jump to my throat. What could I do
without money? I, not long ago the
owner of half a million of dollars, now
without even a dollar to pay my railroad
fare.

I put my hand into the pocket of the
black vest which I wore, and drew forth
a pocket-book. To my inexpressible joy
it contained some gold and bank-bills—
about fifty dollars. I paid my fare, and,
sinking back into my seat, I fell into a
pleasant slumber, unbroken by a dream.

When I awoke the cars were in Albany.

I called a coach and directed the coachman
to drive to the — Hotel, the best
in the place, where, entering my name as
“Caleb Jenkins,” I at once hurried to
my room, which was an elegant parlor,
with a bed in an alcove. I directed the
servant to bring light and a newspaper,
which he did at once, and then I found
myself alone.

I had not yet looked into a mirror,
and I was afraid to do it, afraid that
some great change had passed over my
face, which it would appall me to behold.

I was afraid to look upon the newspaper;
afraid, I could not tell why; I knew
that I had not been confined in the Asylum
for a year, and yet I was afraid that
the date of the paper would inform me
that I had been imprisoned many years.
At last, I rose, and took the light, and
looked into the mirror.

“O my God!” was the exclamation
which was forced from my lips.

Changed, indeed! On that fatal night
I had been a young man; the face in the
mirror, colorless and wrinkled with
great hollows underneath the eyes, was
that of a man of middle age. My hair
was cut close; it was thick with gray
hairs. My beard, which seemed the

growth of about three days, was also
sprinkled with gray hairs. How many
years had passed since that accursed
night when I laid the destroyer of my
peace at my feet in his blood? Had I
been tried for the crime? Transferred
from the convict's to the madman's cell?
I seized the newspaper, and you may be
sure that my hands trembled as I held
it to the light.

The fatal night had occurred in the
year 1842—the date of the paper before
me was June 10th, 1847.

31. CHAPTER XXXI.

Five years of my life a blank—a chaos!
I sank back into my chair, and for
a few moments surrendered myself to all
the bitterness of my agony.

And Eugenia, what had become of
her? My wealth and estates, in whose
hands were they? I paced the floor
with clasped hands, and it was some
time before I could recover my presence
of mind.

“But,” I said aloud, “we must not go
mad again. We have had enough of
that. Doubtless, my good wife, after
betraying me, consigned me to a madhouse,
and then, procuring a divorce
with the wealth of the insane husband,
married again. A-h!”—I could not help
grating my teeth—“we have need of all
our presence of mind, for we have a hard
battle to fight.”

I summoned the servant, and directed
him to bring me a barber, and in a few
moments that odious dark beard, streaked
with gray, was removed from my face.
Then, as I was faint from want of nourishment,
I ordered a substantial supper
in my room, and ate heartily, and drank
a glass of undoubted champagne—yes, a
bottle of the amber liquid, topped with
its snowy foam.

“Yes, in any case, I will leave this
country forever,” I soliloquized, raising
the glass to my lips. “I may find Eugenia
dead, but it is more probable that
I will find her married again, and in possession
of all my wealth. Let her have
it! There is a curse upon it! It came
from my hag-wife, and will carry a curse
wherever it goes. But, in any case, I
must see Eugenia before I leave the
country.”

I directed the servant to call me in
time for the boat, which left at daybreak
for New-York, and soon was enjoying
a pleasant and dreamless sleep. By
daybreak next morning I was on board
of a North River boat to New-York. To
New-York! What adventures would I
encounter there?

Secluded in my stateroom, I reviewed
my past life, and endeavored to lift the
veil which covered five years of it with
impenetrable mystery. Had I been tried
for the murder?

Was there not in my mind a dim, awful
memory, vague as a half-obliterated
daguerreotype, of a thronged court, myself
in the criminal's place, Eugenia on
the witness-stand—of a verdict of guilty
and a sentence of death for the crime of
deliberate murder? Was this vague impression
only the wreck of a memory, or
the mere figment of an idle dream?

If, sentenced for murder, had I, in consequence
of insanity, been transferred
from the condemned cell to the madhouse?

What had become of my houses and
lands? of my immense wealth? of—Eugenia?

I bowed my head in very bitterness of
soul,—“Ah! untrue to her husband,
whom she had driven to madness and
murder, Eugenia has obtained a divorce
and married again! My property has
been divided between her new husband
and my own greedy relatives. I am like
one risen from the grave,—alone, utterly
alone,—without a soul to love or care
for me in the wide world.”

There was one thought which cut the
deepest—my child! O my child! blood
of my innermost life; soul of my soul!
what had become of my child? I hurried
from my room and paced the deck.
How like an old friend, always trusted,
and never faithless, the Hudson spread
his generous old face before me, bright
with the morning sun!

And the mountains yonder, stretching
away into the western heaven, seemed
to bend their pine-clad tops to greet me
—I knew them—old memories filled my
heart at the sight, and tears came to my
eyes.

Down the Hudson we glided under
that calm summer sky, until the highlands,
grand and mysterious with revolutionary
memories, were passed, and
broad Tappan Bay lay before us, like a

mirror framed in hills of emerald and
gold.

And then my gaze roved nervously to
the southwest.

My home, the gloomy old mansion on
the heights, was there; there the garden,
in which, by the light of the summer
moon, I had seen the livid face of the
dying man; soon it would be in sight.
Pacing the deck with short rapid steps
I watched for the first glimpse of it with
an intensity that was agony itself.

At last it came in sight, the son shining
on its steep roofs and embowering
trees. Straining my eyes I sought to
pierce the shadows of those trees, to look
into the old house and see the faces that
now gazed upon the gloomy paneled
rooms; and of all rooms that in which
Eugenia sat on the night of the murder.

There were—yes! I could not be mistaken—there
were forms moving in the
garden walk, and the white dress of a
woman fluttered among the trees.

“Can it be Eugenia!” The words
rose to my lips. The boat glided on, and
soon the old mansion was out of sight.

To the east I turned my gaze, searching
for that home by the river shore to
which the young student used to come
in the still dusk to meet that woman who
was a child in her experience, an angel in
her love. And presently it came in sight
—a glimpse of it only—through the
thickly clustered foliage.

The sight unmanned me. I sank into
a seat, and hid my face in my hands, until
it was lost to view.

We arrived in New-York in the afternoon.
The bustle, the uproar, the tramp
of ten times ten thousand feet, the sea
of faces, always hurrying by, all startled
me like the wonders of some fantastic
dream. New-York was to me as much
of a miracle of mad, impetuous life, as
though I had never trod its streets before.

Five years I had passed in a living
grave; and now, confronted with the ever-changing
panorama of New-York life, I
could scarce believe the evidence of my
eyes and ears.

Entering my name at a retired hotel in
Courtland-street, I took a carriage, and
directed the driver to proceed to a certain
place some miles out of town—in a
word, the home of Eva.

It was near sunset when the carriage
halted in the by-road, near the wood,
and in sight of the river. How eagerly
I darted into the wood and followed the
path which led to Eva's home!

I was faint with excess of emotion as
I reached the garden gate. Yes! it was
the same place; true, the garden was
overgrown with weeds; the house, now
bathed in the sunshine, was falling to decay,
but it was still the place in which I
had loved Eva; in which her child had
blossomed into life; in which mother
and child had been hurried down to
death.

I sprang through the gate, threaded
my way among the weeds, and soon stood
at the door, which evidently had not been
opened for a long time.

I knocked—a hollow echo— but no
sound of footstep or voice.

What had become of the good-hearted
Irish woman whom I had left in charge
of the place at the time of my marriage
with Eugenia? Who was now the owner
of Eva's home? These questions rose
to my lips, but there was no answer to
them.

Flinging my weight against the door, I
burst it open, and hurried from the cheerful
sunshine into the damp, close passage.
Then, up stairs into the room which was
once mine, and which was next to Eva's.

Through the broken blinds and torn
window curtain, a gleam of sunshine
trembled in, and quivered (from the motion
of the leaves before the window)
upon the picture of the Virgin Mary on
the wall. There was my table, the very
chair on which I had slept on the night
when Eva in the next room was writhing
in the grasp of murder—table and
books and chair were thick with dust,
but the room was still the same.

I opened the door which led into the
next room—Eva's room—you may be
sure that my hand trembled.

The room was dark, but as I opened
the door a belt of sunshine streamed into
it, disclosing its details, and—yes! lighting
up the bed in which Eva had slept.
Every detail of the room was the same
as on the night when Eva died. There
was the fireplace in which the taper had
stood, flinging its faint ray over the
cheek of the sleeping mother and her
new-born child; there was the glass
which had so often reflected her joyous
face; there the coverlet which had pressed

her form, the pillow over which her
hair had wandered in wavy masses. Silent,
silent, desolate now! Is it a wonder
that when the sunlight lit up this darkened
room that the past came back upon
me vivid, overwhelming!

Risen suddenly from a living death, I
found myself brought face to face with
the holiest memories of my life. There
was no eye to look upon me. Why not
let my heart take its free course? my agony
find relief in tears?

I staggered forward. I knelt by the
bed, kissing the pillow upon which Eva's
cheek had rested. “O my God! O my
God!”—the words wrung from my heart
—sounded strangely in that silent chamber.

And then from my lips trembled the
name of Him who, in his own person,
drank the last drop in the cup of human
anguish, and was oftentime, in his awful
loneliness—for his sorrow had no one to
understand it—cheered by the kind faces
and low voices of holy women. His
name trembled on my lips, in itself a
prayer.

I rose—one glance around the place—
one glance into my own room, where oftentime
Eva had sat beside me—and I
hurried down stairs and from the house,
compressing my lip and hiding my eyes
with my hand.

Oh! beautiful upon the ruined house,
upon the garden whose flowers struggled
among weeds, upon the river seen in
glimpses through the foliage—Oh! holy,
and calm and beautiful, upon roof and
flower and river, streamed the last rays
of the setting sun.

And the peach-tree rose in the garden,
thick blossoms on every bough, as in the
old time it rose; its blossoms now and
then, like fragrant snow, tossed by the
summer wind into the air.

One last look upon the garden and
house, and then I turned my back upon
the place, a sad, friendless, blasted man.

It was quite dark when the carriage
into the city.

As the glare of the lamps flashed
through the window into my face, a new
rose in my mind. Well, I knew,
many incidents which I had remark
my way through life, how easy it
for covetous relatives to imprison a
man in a madhouse.

“Those who have divided my property
will pursue me, and thrust me once more
into a madman's cell. There they will
keep me, until again I am mad indeed.
Or, I shall be arrested for murder. I
must lose no time—not a moment. I
must put the ocean between me and this
accursed city. But first, at all hazards,
I will see Eugenia.”

Descending from the carriage, I dismissed
the driver, and bent my steps in
the direction of my “grand city mansion.”
You may take it for granted that
my heart beat quicker as I came in sight
of those lofty walls—of those familiar
windows now lighted from sidewalk to
roof.

The owner of half a million dollars
standing friendless and a beggar in front
of his own palace! It was an incident
for those who delight in strong contrasts.

Ascending the steps, I rang the bell.
A liveried servant appeared, and regarded
me with a mixed look, one-fourth curiosity
and three-fourths impudence.

“Well, sur?”

“I wish to see Mrs. Van Warner.”

“She doesn't live here. An' I don't
know where she does live. This is Mr.
Morton's house.”

And this was all the satisfaction I
could obtain from the gentleman in lace
and velvet. He closed the door, and I
went sadly down the steps. My own
house was, without a doubt, the property
of another man.

“The old house in the country!” I
cried, “I must go there to-night—to-night,
as I am a living man.”

I was resolved, and lost no time in
putting my purpose into execution.
Crossing to Jersey City, I procured a
coach with little delay, and bade the
coachman drive to a certain point on the
high road, near my country seat. In
less than two hours he set me down
near the gate, from which the winding-path
led to the old house. I paid him
his fare, (which reduced my fortune to
ten dollars and some odd change,) and
having waited until the carriage was out
of sight, opened the gate, and took the
path through the wood.

There was no moon, the night was
still, and bathed in calm star-light. I
hurried on, trying to banish thought, and
choke down the fast-gathering memories,
as my footsteps led me near and nearer
to the fatal house.

Through the old trees, under the wide
branching boughs, as on the night of the
murder, I hurried on, until the old mansion
came in sight. The garden, the
broad walk, and the porch by which the
dying man had writhed in his last spasm,
all were before me in the calm star-light.

I paused for a moment, and leaned
against a tree, in the effort to suppress
or to command my emotions.

From Eugenia's room, on the ground
floor—yes! from the window, half canopied
by vines—the ray of a fireside lamp
trembled out upon the garden, and described
a belt of light upon the foliage.

Treading on tiptoe, I approached the
window, and looked within. The lamp
stood on the workstand, as on the fatal
night and in its light the room, dark
paneled walls, sofa, chairs, fireplace, all
appeared the same.

And a woman dressed in white was
seated on the sofa; I could not see her
face, for it was averted, but her hair was
dark—dark as Eugenia's—was it indeed
her? My heart rose to my throat at
the thought; and, without a moment's
pause, I glided beneath the lifted sash
and entered the room.

In the centre, half-way between the
window and sofa, I paused, trembling in
every nerve; the woman heard my step
and turned her face to me. It was not
Eugenia's.

She started to her feet and regarded
me with a look of surprise and fear.

“Whom do you wish to see, sir?”

“Pardon me,” I hesitated, “but I
thought—” I heard the sound of a door
opening behind me and of a light footstep.

Why at the sound of that light footstep
did the blood rush in a torrent to
my heart?

Slowly I turned.

The intruder was a child, a beautiful
girl of some five or six years, with black
ringlets floating on her shoulders, and
large dreamy eyes that seemed to look
at once into your soul; a very beautiful
child, who raised her large eyes to
me, with a look in which love seemed to
struggle with awe, who made a step forward
as if about to spring into my arms
and then shrunk back again; a child
upon whose sinless face there was the
stamp of my own features, mingled with
the rich loveliness of Eugenia's face.

“Come here, Mary!” I said, in a low
voice, and knelt and gathered the dear
child to my arms. She rested there in
my bosom, trembling but pleased; and,
as I kissed her, she said,—“You look
like papa's picture, but you are older.”

Her infantile voice was interrupted by
a second footstep. I looked up and beheld
Eugenia.

Yes, Eugenia stood before me, dressed
in white, and beautiful as ever, save that
her form was more rounded and flowing
in its outlines, and that the rich maturity
of summer had succeeded the spring
bloom of her cheeks; beautiful as ever,
her dark hair disposed in thick masses
about her face, and her eyes glittering
with unchanging light.

She was entering the room, when she
beheld a stranger, whose face was hidden
from view, gathering her child to his
bosom. I raised my face. She saw me,
and, pale as death, stood transfixed to
the floor.

I said not a word, but gazed upon her
steadily. Then her bosom heaved, a
burning blush crimsoned her throat, her
cheek and brow. She moved her lips,
but no sound was heard. She stretched
forth her hands and came towards me.

“Back, polluted woman!” I cried.
“This child is mine; but, as for you, I
know you not! Back!” The room
swam around me, and I fell, like one
dead, upon my face, near the feet of my
wife.

32. CHAPTER XXXII.

Overcome by long-continued excitement,
I had fallen in a fainting fit at the
feet of my wife.

The next sensation that I can remember
was that of profound calmness and
repose. When I unclosed my eyes, they
were saluted by the cheerful beams of
the summer morning sun, stealing
through the half-drawn curtains of my
bed. The breath of flowers imbued and
filled the air.

Gazing through the curtains of my
bed, I beheld the details of a luxuriously
furnished room; the windows were
shaded by vines and flowers, trembling
on the outside to every breath of air;
a vase of freshly gathered flowers stood
on an ebony table near the bed; on
another table the massive family Bible,

in which was recorded my marriage with
Eugenia; and directly opposite me, from
the wall, smiled a picture which I had
purchased, because it looked like Eva—
the same room to which I had led
Eugenia when we first entered the gloomy
mansion.

Raising myself on my pillow, I turned
my head on my shoulder, and through
the open window beheld the vines and
flowers, and the broad Hudson glittering
in the morning sun. It was indeed a
beautiful morning, full of the peace and
repose of early June.

“If Eugenia were only true; if five
years of my life had not been blotted
out; if I was not friendless and a begger,”—thus
I murmured, but did not
complete the sentence. A fatal “if”
stood before every hope of peace and
happiness.

A footstep broke the calm stillness,
and I sank back upon the pillow, closing
my eyes. Presently, I was conscious
that a form was bending over me; that
a hand was lightly pressed upon my
forehead; that the soft pressure from
the lips of a woman who fears to awake
a beloved sleeper, was upon my lips and
cheek and brow. God knows I trembled
then! Could it be Eugenia, false
to the husband who had made her happiness
the ambition of his life—Eugenia,
whose crime had consigned me to a madman's
cell? I dared not unclose my
eyes.

Next, I heard the sound of footsteps
stealthily receding from the bed, and
ventured to unclose my eyes, and look
around. Eugenia, dressed in a flowing
morning robe, was bending over the vase
of flowers, very beautiful, with her clear
brown complexion set in her raven hair;
but there was a look of deep sadness on
her face.

O how earnestly, in that momentary
gaze, I devoured every detail of that
noble face and form, in which the pure
loveliness of the maiden, the matured
beauty of the matron, seemed to mingle!
and how I gnashed my teeth in very
bitterness of soul, as the thought arose,
—“That beautiful woman was once my
wife; but, faithless to me, is now the
wife of another!”

And on tiptoe, like a kind nurse, afraid
that the slightest movement may awake
a fevered sleeper she moved through the
room, seeming to shed around her an atmosphere
of purity, although I knew her
to be false as Satan.

Why is it that, although we know a
woman to be faithless as incarnate falsehood
itself, yet we can never believe her
to be thus when the magnetism of her
presence, the clear calm light of her eyes
is upon us?

A light, quick, rapid step, sounded
through the room, and the child came
bounding to her mother's arms, her face
all sunshine, and her ringlets waving in
the summer air.

Oh! how her simple words went to my
heart! “Is pa awake?” she whispered,
pointing to the bed—“Oh! I do so wish
he was awake, that I might talk to
him.”

“Hush! He is sleeping, and you must
not wake him,” whispered the mother,
kissing her beautiful child; and they
glided to the window and sat down
there, the child cradled on the mother's
knee, both very beautiful, and as like
each other as the rose-bud, just trembling
into life, to the rose of summer in
ripe bloom. It was a beautiful picture.
Stealthily, for a long time, I gazed upon
that picture, until again footsteps disturbed
the stillness.

“We have come, madam, after our
stray patient,” said a harsh voice.

“Yes! after our poor, distressed relative!”
added another voice, not so harsh,
but soft and low, and very sneaking.
“Our poor distressed relative! who, day
before yesterday, escaped from the Asylum.
We had some trouble to find him,
but know that he is here, and will take
him back with us.”

I confess that these voices made the
blood run cold in my veins.

In one I recognized the voice of Dr.
N—, the taciturn physician of the
Asylum; in the other, the voice of a relative,
who, in the days of my prosperity,
had fawned upon me, but who, despite
his sleek exterior, was as complete a
scoundrel as could be found in Wall-street,
or in the State Prison.

Through an aperture in the bed-curtains,
I stealthily surveyed them. Dr.
N— stood, prim as a waxwork figure,
his hat held in both hands, his form arrayed
in the changeless black suit and
white cravat.

As for Isaiah Porgy, my relative, he

was a man of singular make—very picturesque—thin
legs, expansive corporation,
narrow shoulders, all clad in shiny
black; and all over this, placed upon a
short apoplectic neck, appeared one of the
most singular faces that ever frightened
a portrait painter to death—narrow forehead,
on either side of which straggled a
lock of unpleasant-looking brown hair,
faintly lined brows, small aquiline nose,
huge bulging cheeks, with mouth and
chin about as big as a hazle-nut, supported
by a semi-circle of flesh, that possibly
might be called a double chin. As for
the eyes, they were so small that it is
hardly worth while to mention them,
were it not to record their expression of
simple, unadulterated knavery. It was
the mad doctor, (or doctor for the mad,)
and Mr. Porgy, who now confronted my
wife, that is to say, Eugenia. She rose
from her chair, as she saw them, and I
remarked that her face had grown very
pale. Was she about to consign me
once more to the madhouse?

I confess that I felt that the first words
she uttered would fix my fate.

But she did not speak.

“Now you know, madam,” said the
sleek Porgy, shifting his broad-rimmed
hat from one hand to the other, as
though it were something hot,—“You
know, madam, that since the court appointed
me, as the nearest relative, one
of the administrators, or trustees of the
estate of the unfortunate lunatic, (you
were the 'tother,) I have had a world of
trouble in managing his affairs, and in
keeping all things right, and—eh, eh—in
fact, madam, to make a long story short,
it is best for all parties to take him back
at once. He is insane, you know”—

“And he stole my clothes,” quaintly
interrupted the taciturn doctor. Eugenia
spoke; she was very pale, and I noted
a tremor of her lip.

“Gentlemen, do not speak so loud.
My husband is sleeping. I will speak
with you down stairs;” and with a quiet
gesture of the hand, she pointed to the
door.

Could I believe my ears? “My husband!”
And then that calm, proud attitude;
that quietly extended hand; that
beautiful face, pale as if from the force of
some secret purpose, fixedly resolved
upon. Was this Eugenia, my faithless
wife, or the creation of a feverish dream?

Mr. Porgy did not seem at all inclined
to go.

“But, madam,” he began, and made a
step toward the bed.

She quickly placed herself before him.

“This is my room, sir,” she said, quietly,
but with flashing eyes. “I will see
you down stairs.”

The doctor had already moved to the
door, and Mr. Isaiah Porgy followed him,
very reluctantly, stepping backward, like
a man who retreats before a hot iron
held near his nose by another man.
They left the room, and my wife—if I
can call her so—took her child by the
hand and followed them.

How nervously I awaited the result
of the interview! how I longed for her
reäppearance! An hour passed — it
seemed an age—and she did not come.

Through the still summer air, I heard
voices in the room below—now, the monotonous
voice of the doctor; now, the
calm, clear voice of Eugenia, and now,
the voice of Porgy, which gradually became
blustering and violent.

To rise, to hurry on some clothes, to
hasten down stairs and confront the
scoundrel, now became my prominent
desire; but, in the effort to leave the
bed. I sank back exhausted on the pillow.
“And it could do no good,” was
my bitter thought, “I am not master,
only a beggar here.”

At last the voices died away, and Eugenia
reäppeared.

She came into the room with a rapid
step. She was pale and agitated, her
bosom rose and fell, and one side of her
face was swept by her loosened hair.
There were traces of tears upon her
cheeks.

“No! no!—I will not consent!” I
heard her whisper. “I will die first!”

A sudden impulse prompted me to
speak. “To what will you not consent?”
I said; they were the first calm words
I had addressed to her for five long
years. She paused in her walk, and regarded
me with a look in which surprise
was only a single element.

33. CHAPTER XXXIII.

“Francis!” she said in a low voice,
“are you well? are you strong? that is,
well enough and strong enough to converse
with me about your affairs? I

had proposed to defer this conversation
until you had recovered your usual
strength. But, if you can converse now,
it will be all the better.”

I silently took her hand, but she withdrew
hers; and, crossing the apartment,
took some papers from the drawer of a
bureau. Then she came back again, and
seated herself near, on the edge of the
bed.

“Since you were first taken ill, this
man, your relative—,” (she pointed to
the name of Porgy, which appeared on
the back of a paper,) “and myself have
been, by the appointment of the court,
joint trustees of your estate. Here is
an account of my stewardship—” She
placed the paper, covered with writing
in her own hand, in my grasp. “As for
him, he has done his best to obtain possession
of your property. I have had
one continued battle with him for five
years. He was here this morning. He
fears that you have recovered your
health, and knows that, once recovered,
you will call him to account. Therefore,
he affects to believe that you are still—
still—” she did not say insane—“still
far from well, and wishes to consign you
to the Asylum again. Now, here are all
the papers, which show the exact position
of your affairs. As soon as you
can hold a pen, petition the court that
you may be reinstated in possession of
your property. And—”

“And so,” I interrupted her, “you do
not believe that I am still insane?”

She regarded me earnestly with her
expanded eyes. “I do not. All that
you need is physical strength, and that
will soon return.”

I could not help laying my hand gently
on her arm.

“Well! suppose me reinstated into
my property,—you will reinstate me in
the happiness which I enjoyed five years
ago?”

Her gaze fell. “As soon as all is well
with you,” she said, in a low voice, “I
will take my child and leave you; my
shadow shall not once cross your pathway—”

“Then you are guilty?” I said, bitterly.

“Innocent before heaven, Francis!”
was her reply, given firmly, and with an
unfaltering gaze.

“I did not, then, on that fatal sum
mer night, five years ago, see you in the
arms of another man, resting on his neck,
your forehead warmed by his kisses?
It was all a dream, then?”

“It was no dream,” and her face grew
paler. “But, Francis! hear me once for
all! Albert Monroe was the only son
of the gentleman in whose family I found
a home. He loved me, but I never loved
him—in any light—save as a brother.
A short time before I left my New-England
home to come to New-York in
search of my lost brother, Albert departed
on a long voyage—to China, I
believe, as supercargo of a merchantship.
News came of his death—news
which had every appearance of truth,
and which was believed by his family
and myself. And when, on that fatal
night, I saw him, whom I thought long
since dead, standing near me, appearing
like a ghost, without a word or sound to
announce his coming, it was surprise,
mingled with affection for a long-lost
brother, which brought me, for a moment,
and a moment only, to his arms.
Had you seen all, you would have seen
me, as soon as I recovered my self-possession,
retreat from his arms, and
in answer to his reproaches about my
marriage, you would have heard me
command him to leave the room and the
house. This, Francis! is the simple
truth.”

Her firm accent, her clear, unfaltering
look, the expression which hung
upon every line of her beautiful face, all
confirmed her words. But still, there
was a doubt, a latent bitterness in my
heart.

“And then you are not married again?”
I said. She did not answer me with
words, but with a look—a look which
said more than words, and which I cannot
describe. Her lips were, for the
moment, compressed, and her eyes flashed,
as though her soul was in their
glance. Then she turned her face away,
and a single tear rolled down the half-averted
cheek, glittering there like a
star.

“When you are well again”—her voice
was scarcely audible—“I and my child
will leave you.”

“That is, you will leave the murderer
to the full enjoyment of his wealth and
his remorse?” I said.

“Murderer!” and she fixed her eyes

full upon me. “Have you not heard
that Albert Monroe recovered, and is
now a thousand miles away, in the enjoyment
of all that worldly prosperity
can offer?” These words made my
brain reel; a starving wretch, suddenly
informed of his accession to a fortune of
a million dollars, could not have been
bewildered with a madder joy than now
bounded through my veins.

“Albert Monroe living!” I ejaculated,
and sank back upon the pillow, while
every fibre of my being was filled with
gratitude—unutterable thankfulness to
God. A cloud was lifted from my soul.
Like a prisoner suddenly led forth from
the dungeon in which for years not one
ray of light had visited him, I felt myself
blinded by the sunshine which all
at once shone in upon my darkened
soul.

After a long pause, in a low voice I
spoke,—“Freed from the remorse which
haunts the murderer, and placed once
more in possession of my estates, why
will you leave me, Eugenia?”

Her face was very beautiful, but very
sad, as she answered me:

“Because, Francis, there will always
be a doubt, a suspicion in your innermost
heart. Even while pressing me to
your arms, and gazing upon the face of
our child, you will be haunted by a fear
which you cannot banish or control—
that your wife has been false to you.
You have a noble nature, Francis, but in
its depths lurks one element, which, at
times, poisons and overshadows your
whole nature—an element which I can
scarcely call by name, but which may be
called doubt, fear, suspicion! It is,
therefore, well—” and that something
in her look which, when first I saw her,
I could not analyze, now came over her
face,—“It is, therefore, well that we
should live apart; we will think kindly
of each other, and the slightest portion
of your immense wealth will suffice for
me and our child. You will be happier
when I am away, and when my presence
no longer brings a doubt that harrows
your inmost soul.”

While she spoke I gazed upon her
earnestly, thinking of the time when I
had first met her, of the first happy
year of our marriage, of the day when
our child first blossomed into being; and
felt my love for her roll back in a flood
in all its force upon my heart. But I
said calmly—as calmly as I could—“You
have spoken my fate, Eugenia!”—and
turned my face from the light.

Not another word passed between us;
after a long pause she rose, and I heard
her footsteps die away.

That day, I sent for an able lawyer,
and, after a long interview with him, succeeded
in putting measures afoot, which
in a few days, spite of Porgy and all
doubts, would place me once more a sane
man in possession of my estates.

Three days passed, and although often,
while I seemed to be asleep, I felt upon
my brow the pressure of Eugenia's hand,
her kiss upon my lips, and felt unutterable
joy at the consciousness that she
was near me, still not a word passed
between us.

But my child often—yes! nearly
always—was near me, and in my arms,
loving me as though she had seen me
every hour since her birth.

O how like peace from God to a heart
chafed by the bitterness of life—its hard
experience, its broken friendships, its
loves buried in treachery or death—
comes the vision of the face of a sinless
child.

And how like bitterness from the deeps
of hell comes the thought that, one day,
that fair young face, lovely as those child-faces
which long ago smiled in the Savior's
embrace, will be hardened in every
outline by the iron hand of experience,
wearing on the cheek the feverish flush
of this world's loves and hates, and burning
in the eyes with the light of this
world's passions, or the glare of its despairs!

The third day I was strong again; my
mind was clear, and every pulse was full
of strength and life. Dressing myself in
the apparel which I had worn five years
before, I looked in the glass, and found
that, although it was seamed with wrinkles,
and crowned by dark hair streaked
with gray, upon its every outline there
was the calm manhood which a noble
resolution imparts.

I had taken my resolution, and said I
to myself—“This day, as sure as the sun
shines, I will fulfil it.” My lawyer came
early in the morning; and, after a long
interview in my chamber, departed, first,
however, leaving in my hands papers
which re-established me in possession of

my estates. The petition of my wife,
conjoined with that of Porgy, (for this
good gentleman had, by my lawyer, been
brought or frightened into acquiescence,)
had been answered by the proper court,
and I was once more myself, owner of
something more than half a million of
dollars.

After the lawyer left, I took my hat
and cane, and descended to the sitting-room
of my wife, through whose opened
window were seen the leaves quivering
in the sunshine, and the broad Hudson
glittering like molten gold. There was
a lady there—the same whom I had seen
the night of my return—the governess
of my child. I requested her to call
Eugenia, and was presently alone in that
quiet room, through whose window on
the fatal night, I had looked and been
driven mad by what I saw.

Seated on the sofa, hat and cane in
hand, I anxiously awaited the appearance
of Eugenia.

My resolution was taken, and although
it was fixed, still I felt agitated as the
moment of its execution drew near.

At last Eugenia came, dressed in white,
her rich black hair gathered plainly aside
from her face. Surpassingly beautiful,
she was very pale, and looked at me with
surprise in her clear deep eyes.

“Sit by me for a moment, Eugenia,” I
said as calmly as I could, “I wish to say
a few words to you.”

She sat down on the sofa near me, her
hands crossed in front of her form, her
eyes gazing not upon me, but on the
leaves without, bathed in sunshine, and
her glossy hair touched by the softened
ray which came through the closed curtains.
Beautiful as a queen, and trembling
as a child.

“I wish to say a few words to you,
and I wish you to listen to me calmly.
Will you?”

“I will,” was her faint response.

“I have discovered that, during my
five years' sickness—nay, call it madness—instead
of plunging into the gay
world, and gathering the enjoyments
offered by almost boundless wealth, you
preferred to be true to the memory of a
madman; and, yes! came often to sit
for hours and days a silent watcher by
the madman's couch. This you did, Eugenia,
and never told me of it.” I paused,
but her gaze was still fixed on the flowers,
which, without the window, trembled in
the morning sun. “Why did you not
tell me of it, Eugenia, on my return?”

Her voice was scarcely audible as she
replied,—“It was not worth while. In
taking care of your property, I simply
did my duty to our child. In watching
by you in your sickness, I endeavored
to make some atonement for the suffering
which I had caused you.

And her face grew paler, her bosom
heaved beneath its snowy vestment, but
still she did not turn her gaze upon me.

“Well,” I resumed, “well, Eugenia, the
past is with the past, and cannot be recalled
or changed. The present is with
us, and we must deal with things as they
are. It seems we cannot live together;
we must part.”

“We must part,” she echoed in a low
voice. “But you—you—will not—take
our child from me?”

I did not seem to note that last remark,
uttered with a quivering lip, but continued,—“We
cannot live under the same
roof. That is true. But it shall not be
said that I only came back to thrust
mother and child from these walls. No!
Eugenia, no! One will go forth; and
that one shall be myself; and I will go
forth alone, leaving you secure in possession
of my wealth, happy in the love and
presence of our child!”

And at the word, determined to fill
my resolution at all hazards, I rose, hat
and cane in hand, and moved a step
toward the door.

Eugenia rose with me, seized my hand
with both of hers and confronted me,
her eyes expanded and glittering, while
her face was perfectly colorless.

“Stop! For God's sake, stop!” she
gasped and wrung my hand.

But I took my hand from her. “Eugenia,
my determination is taken. Do not
try to change it. Believe it is best for
all of us!”

I pushed her gently aside, and, with a
rapid step, moved to the window, and in
a moment was in the open air.

I did not once look back, but, plunging
into the path which led through the
wood, walked rapidly on, banishing every
thought but this—“My determination is
taken—it is best for all parties—and it
is final.”

And under the boughs, rich with foliage;
over the path where sunlight and

shadow chased each other; over a carpet
of grass and flowers, I hurried on. There
was a point where, from the foot of an
aged oak, (encircled by a rude bench,)
you could obtain a glimpse of the Hudson
and the distant city. Here, for an
instant, I paused; and, gazing on the
distant waves, and upon the city's spires,
sank into a reverie upon my past and
future life.

My reverie was broken by the abrupt
rustling of a bough; by the low sound
of footsteps on the velvety sward. I
looked up; my wife stood before me,
pale as death, her hair unbound and waving
on her shoulders, while her bosom
heaved with agitation.

By her hand she led our child, who
sprang forward, her arms outspread, and
my name ringing on her lips. From her
agitation, Eugenia could not speak, but
stood silent and pale and trembling before
me. As for myself I could not help
sharing her agitation.

At length, she said a single word,
“Francis!” in a faint voice, and pointed
to the old mansion whose roof was visible
through the trees,—“that is our home!”

And she bent her head upon my
breast, and put her arms about my neck,
while our child clung to my knees.
“That is our home!”

And here—in the June sunshine, the
drapery of the foliage about us, as wife
clings once more to husband, child to
father—here let the curtain fall.

You may be sure that I did not go forth
alone, friendless into the wide world that
day, nor next day, nor any day. Let no
words attempt by description to mock
the unutterable joy of that moment
when trembed on my ear the sentence,
“That is our home!”

A few words more will bring my confessions,
as “A MAN OF THE WORLD,” to
a close.

It is Sabbath-day, and the summer
sun shines upon the distant spires of the
city. But we do not go to church in the
shadows of those distant spires; our
church is here, in the old mansion, in
our home. The sunlight trembles
through the vine-canopied window into
our quiet sitting-room. Eugenia, in the
bloom of her matronly beauty, sits by
me; upon her knees the open Bible, from
which she has just read a lesson of the
Gospel. And by me, as I write, stands
Mary, with ten summers shining from
her eyes—those eyes which repeat the
loveliness and purity of her mother.

In this calm moment, let me give a
passing word to certain actors in these
confessions. The poor girl by whose
hands Burley Hayne met his death, acquitted
perchance by a partial jury,
dwells once more in her New-England
home. Edward, once the “boy-burgler,”
is now the graduate of a well-known college.
Maria takes charge of my city
mansion.

As for myself, behold me! after all
my trials, seated in my home, crowned
with blessings of which I am all unworthy;
wife by my side, and child resting
on my arm.

“Come hither, Mary, child, and let me
look up in your face! May God's blessing
and your mother's goodness be
yours all the days of your life; and may
—and may—the spirit of Eva, from the
better land, stretch forth her arms to
guide and guard you, Mary!”

[Note by the Editor of these Papers.—It
will be perceived that the “Life of a Man of the
World” ends well, although perchance his mingled
crimes and virtues merited a darker termination.
He has told his story in his own way—a narrative
of real life, with all its lights and shadows, and
mingled impulses of good and evil. From this
strange life every reader can draw the proper moral.
Many a better man than Francis Van Warner,
(or the person whose real name is concealed under
this fictitious one.) has met with a worse fate in
the living world around us; and many a worse man
has existed in the same living world, committing
all his faults without one ray of his virtues.]