University of Virginia Library

1. CHAPTER I.
A GLANCE IN THE MIRROR.

IT is a small and somewhat faded room in an unpretending
brick house in one of the streets that intersect Broadway,
somewhere between Canal Street and the Park. A woman
sits at a writing-table, with the fingers of her left hand thrust
through her hair and supporting her forehead, while in her
right hand she holds a pen with which she listlessly draws
figures, crosses, circles and triangles, faces and trees, on the
blotting-paper that partly covers a letter which she has been
inditing.

A window near by is open at the top. March, having come
in like a lion, is going out like a lamb. A canary-bird, intoxicated
with the ambrosial breath and subduing sunshine of the
first mild day of spring, is pouring forth such a Te Deum laudamus
as Mozart himself would have despaired of rivalling.
Yesterday's rain-storm purified the atmosphere, swept clean
the streets, and deodorized the open gutters, that in warm
weather poison with their effluvium the air of the great American
metropolis.

On the wall, in front of the lady at the table, hangs a mirror.
Look, now, and you will catch in it the reflection of her face.
Forty? Not far from it. Perhaps four or five years on the
sunny side. Fair? Many persons would call her still beautiful.
The features, though somewhat thin, show their fine

Grecian outline. The hair is of a rich flaxen, the eyes blue
and mild, the mouth delicately drawn, showing Cupid's bow in
the curve of the upper lip, and disclosing, not too ostentatiously,
the whitest teeth.

Her dress is significant of past rather than present familiarity
with a fashionable wardrobe. If she ever wore jewels, she
has parted with all of them, for there is not even a plain gold
ring on her forefinger. Her robe is a simple brown cashmere,
not so distended by crinoline as to disguise her natural
figure, which is erect, of the average height, and harmoniously
rounded. We detect this the better as she rises, looks a moment
sorrowfully in the glass, and sighs to herself, “Fading!
fading!”

There is a gentle knock at the door, and to her “Come in,”
an old black man enters.

“Good morning, Toussaint,” says the lady; “what have you
there?”

“Only a few grapes for Madame. They are Black Hamburgs,
and very sweet. I hope Madame will relish them.
They will do her good. Will she try some of them now?”

“They are excellent, Toussaint. And what a beautiful basket
you have brought them in! You must have paid high for
all this fruit, so early in the season. Indeed, you must not run
into such extravagances on my account.”

“Does Madame find her cough any better?”

“Thank you, Toussaint, I do not notice much change in it
as yet. Perhaps a few more mild days like this will benefit
me. How is Juliette?”

“Passablement bien. Pretty well. May I ask — ahem!
Madame will excuse the question — but does her husband treat
her with any more consideration now that she is ill?”

“My good Toussaint, I grieve to say that Mr. Charlton is
not so much softened as irritated by my illness. It threatens
to be expensive, you see.”

“Ah! but that is sad, — sad! I wish Madame were in my
house. Such care as Juliette and I would take of her! You
look so much like your mother, Madame! I knew her before
her first marriage. I dressed her hair the day of her wedding.
People used to call her proud. But she was always kind to

me, — very kind. And you look like her so much! As I
grow old I think all the more of my old and early friends, —
the first I had when I came to New York from St. Domingo.
Most of them are dead, but I find out their children if I can;
and if they are sick I amuse myself by carrying them a few
grapes or flowers. They are very good to indulge me by
accepting such trifles.”

“Toussaint, the goodness is all on your side. These grapes
are no trifle, and you ought to know it. I thank you for them
heartily. Let me give you back the basket.”

“No, please don't. Keep it. Good morning, Madame! Be
cheerful. Le bon temps reviendra. All shall be well. Bon
jour! Au revoir, Madame!”

He hurries out of the room, but instantly returns, and, taking
a leaf of fresh lettuce out of his pocket, reaches up on
tiptoe and puts it between the bars of the bird-cage. “I was
nigh forgetting the lettuce for the bird,” says he. “Madame
will excuse my gaucherie.” And, bowing low, he again disappears.

The story of Emily Bute Charlton may be briefly told.
Her mother, Mrs. Danby, was descended from that John Bradshaw
who was president of the court which tried Charles the
First, and who opposed a spirited resistance to the usurpation
of Cromwell in dissolving the Parliament. Mrs. Danby was
proud of her family tree. In her twentieth year she was left
a widow, beautiful, ambitious, and poor, with one child, a
daughter, who afterwards had in Emily a half-sister. This
first daughter had been educated carefully, but she had hardly
reached her seventeenth year when she accepted the addresses
of a poor man, some fifteen years her senior, of the name of
Berwick. The mother, with characteristic energy, opposed the
match, but it was of no use. The daughter was incurably in
love; she married, and the mother cast her off.

Time brought about its revenges. Mr. Berwick had inherited
ten acres of land on the island of Manhattan. He tried to
sell it, but was so fortunate as to find nobody to buy. So he
held on to the land, and by hard scratching managed to pay
the taxes on it. In ten years the city had crept up so near to
his dirty acres that he sold half of them for a hundred thousand

dollars, and became all at once a rich man. Meanwhile his
wife's mother, Mrs. Danby, after remaining fourteen years a
widow, showed the inconsistency of her opposition to her
daughter's marriage by herself making an imprudent match.
She married a Mr. Bute, poor and inefficient, but belonging to
“one of the first families.” By this husband she had one
daughter, Emily, the lady at whose reflection in the mirror we
have just been looking.

Emily Bute, like her half-sister, Mrs. Berwick, who was
many years her senior, inherited beauty, and was quite a belle
in her little sphere in Philadelphia, where her family resided.
Her mother, who had repelled Berwick as a son-in-law in his
adversity, was too proud to try to propitiate him in his prosperity.
She concealed her poverty as well as she could from
her daughter, Mrs. Berwick, and the latter had often to resort
to stratagem in order to send assistance to the family. At last
the proud mother died; and six months afterwards her first-born
daughter, Mrs. Berwick, died, leaving one child, a son,
Henry Berwick.

Years glided on, and Mr. Bute had hard work to keep the
wolf from the door. He was one of those persons whose efforts
in life are continual failures, from the fact that they cannot
adapt themselves to circumstances, — cannot persevere during
the day of small things till their occupation, by gradual development,
becomes profitable. He would tire of an employment
the moment its harvest of gold seemed remote. Forever
sanguine and forever unsuccessful, he at last found himself reduced,
with his daughter, to a mode of life that bordered on the
shabby.

In this state of things, Mr. Berwick, like a timely angel, reappeared,
rich, and bearing help. He was charmed with
Emily, as he had formerly been with her half-sister. He proposed
marriage. Mr. Bute was enchanted. He could not
conceive of Emily's hesitating for a moment. Were her affections
pre-engaged? No. She had been a little of a flirt,
and that perhaps had saved her from a serious passion. Why
not, then, accept Mr. Berwick? He was so old! Old? What
is a seniority of thirty years? He is rich, — has a house on
the Fifth Avenue, and another on the North River. What

insanity it would be in a poor girl to allow such a chance to
slip by!

Still Emily had her misgivings. Her virginal instincts protested
against the sacrifice. She had an ideal of a happy life,
which certainly did not lie all in having a freestone house,
French furniture, and a carriage. She knew the bitterness of
poverty; but was she quite ready to marry without love? Her
father's distresses culminated, and drove her to a decision.
She became Mrs. Berwick; and Mr. Bute was presented with
ten thousand dollars on the wedding-day. He forthwith relieved
himself of fifteen hundred in the purchase of a “new
patent-spring phaeton” and span. “A great bargain, sir;
splendid creatures; spirited, but gentle; a woman can drive
them; no more afraid of a locomotive than of a stack of hay;
the carriage in prime order; has n't been used a dozen times;
will stand any sort of a shock; the property of my friend,
Garnett; he would n't part with the horses if he could afford to
keep them; his wife is quite broken-hearted at the idea of
losing them; such a chance does n't occur once in ten years;
you can sell the span at a great advance in the spring.”

This urgent recommendation from “a particular friend, entirely
disinterested,” decided Bute. He bought the “establishment.”
The next day as he was taking a drive, the shriek
of a steam-whistle produced such an effect upon his incomparable
span, that they started off at headlong speed, ran against a
telegraph-pole, smashed the “new patent-spring phaeton,”
threw out the driver, and broke his neck against a curb-stone;
and that was the end of Mr. Bute for this world, if
we may judge from appearances.

Emily's marriage did not turn out so poorly as the retributions
of romance might demand. But on Mr. Berwick's death
she followed her mother's example, and married a second time.
She became Mrs. Charlton. Some idea of the consequences
of this new alliance may be got from the letter which she has
been writing, and which we take the liberty of laying before
our readers.