away from him if you can; but do not let her know what I have suffered
from him. I have arranged for him to care for the property I have to
leave her, so that she may never feel that I did not trust him. He will
surely guard what belongs to her safely. * * * Perhaps I was unjust to
him; it may have been my fault; but if she can respect or love him I
wish it to be so._”

“You see there is no question of lying here. I found this--in a trunk
of mother’s, in the garret--quite accidentally, a few days after I came
home. It was intended for Uncle Rodney or Aunt Julia and not for me.”

He was silent for a moment, staring at the page before him and refusing
to meet her eyes.

She sat down and watched him across the table. Suddenly he laughed
shrilly, and slapped his hands together in glee.

“I might have known it; I might have known it! This is delightful; this
is rich beyond anything!” His mirth increased, and he rocked back and
forth, chuckling and beating his knees with his hands.

“Zee, Zee, my child,” he began amiably; “I am glad this has happened.
I am glad that there is an opportunity for me to right myself in your
eyes. I could not have asked anything better.”

He began to nod his head as was his way when pleased by the thought of
something he was about to say.

“Zee, the animus of this is clear. Your mother hated me,--”

“You needn’t tell me that! Her own testimony is enough, pitiful enough.”

“But the reason, the reason! I should never have told you. I have hoped
to keep it in my own bosom,--my lifelong shame and grief. But your
mother, your mother played me a base trick, the basest a woman can
play. She married me, loving another man. And I suffered, O God, how I
suffered for it!”

He lifted his head and raised his hands to heaven.

A sob leaped in her throat and tears sprang in her eyes as she rose and
bent toward him over the table.

“If you mention her again I shall punish you, Ezra Dameron.”

He did not heed her, but began speaking with a haste his tongue had
rarely known. The smile that forever haunted his lips vanished.

“She loved another man when she married me. I knew it well enough; but
I was glad to marry her on any terms. She was a beautiful woman,--a
very beautiful woman;” and the anger died suddenly from his eyes and
voice. Zelda wondered whether he was really touched by the thought of
her mother or whether the little flame of passion had merely burned
out. As he continued speaking she listened, as though he had been an
actor impersonating a part, and doing it ill, so that he presented no
illusion to her eyes. She was thinking, too, of her own future; of the
morrow in which she must plan her life anew. She thought of Morris
Leighton now, and with an intenseness that made her start when her
father spoke his name.

“You have been a better daughter to me than I could have asked. An
inscrutable Providence has ordered things strangely, but--” and he
chuckled and wagged his head, “but,--very wisely and satisfactorily. I
suppose your Uncle Rodney thought a marriage between you and his young
friend Leighton would be an admirable arrangement; but you have done as
I would have you do in rejecting him. Ah, I understood,--I was watching
you--I knew that you were leading him on to destroy him.”

“I should like to know what right you have to speak to me of such a
matter in such a tone. He is a gentleman.”

“He is; he is, indeed;” and Dameron laughed harshly. “He is a gentleman
beyond any doubt; but you refused him, just as I knew you would. The
force of heredity is very strong. You are a dutiful daughter; you even
anticipated my wishes. Your conduct is exemplary. I am delighted.”

“I think you are mad,” said Zelda, looking at him wonderingly. She
had begun to feel the strain of events of the few hours since she had
gone to her uncle’s house; she was utterly weary and her father’s
strange manner had awakened a fear in her. Perhaps he was really mad.
She walked toward the door; but he was timing his climax with a shrewd
cunning.

“When your mother was engaged to Morris Leighton, the elder,”--and he
paused, knowing that she had turned quickly and was staring at him with
wonder and dread in her eyes,--“when your mother was engaged to this
young man’s father,” he repeated, “your uncle was greatly pleased. But
she was not so easily caught!”

“You ought to know that I believe nothing you say,--not a word!” But in
her heart she felt a foreboding that this might be true.

“You should ask your uncle; or your Aunt Julia. Possibly we three are
the only people that remember. I should like to have you quite sure
about it, now that you have decided not to marry the son,”--and he
laughed with ugly glee.

The front door-bell rang out harshly, and the old man sprang up:

“You are not at home; you must see no one.”

Polly’s step was heard in the back hall.

“Never mind, Polly. I’ll answer the door,” said Zelda. The sight of any
other face than that of her father would be a relief; but it was nine
o’clock, an hour at which no one ever called. She expected nothing more
than a brief parley with a messenger boy.

“Pardon me, Miss Dameron--”

Leighton stood on the step with his hat in his hand. He had been
wandering about the streets since he left her, afraid to return to
report to Rodney Merriam. He had passed the Dameron house a dozen
times, held to the neighborhood by a feeling that Zelda might need his
protection; and he finally stopped and rang in a tumult of hope that he
might see her again and reassure himself of her safety. As he stepped
into the hall, he saw Ezra Dameron peering at him from the living-room
door.

“Good evening, Mr. Dameron,” said Leighton. The old man turned back to
the table and his papers without reply; but he listened intently.

“I was passing,” said Leighton, truthfully, “and I remembered a message
that Mrs. Copeland gave me for you this afternoon, and I’m sorry to say
I forgot about it until now.”

He looked at her, smiling; she understood well enough why he had come.

“Please put off your coat and come in. We are alone, father and I,
having a quiet evening at home!”

“Thank you; I can’t stop; but Mrs. Copeland wished me to ask you to
come in to-morrow afternoon. She has an unexpected guest,--a friend
from Boston,--and you know she likes everybody to appreciate her
friends!”

“Thank you, very much. I shall come if I possibly can.”

She knew that Mrs. Copeland had intrusted Leighton with no such
message, for she was on telephonic terms with Zelda, and Morris
Leighton was of rather heroic proportions for an errand boy.

“Mrs. Copeland would never forgive me if I forgot,” said Morris,
wishing to prolong his moment at the door.

“I shall come if I can,” said Zelda, raising her voice slightly, so
that her father might hear.

“And I apologize again for disturbing you. But I feared Mrs. Copeland’s
wrath;” and Morris grinned rather foolishly.

“You are a faithful messenger, and I thank you very much,” said Zelda,
formally; but when the door closed on him and she heard his step on the
walk the tears sprang to her eyes in her joy at the thought that he had
remembered!

When she went back to her father he was poring over his papers at the
table.

“It was that Leighton fellow,” he said, looking up.

“Yes; it was Mr. Leighton,” said Zelda.

“I don’t like him,” said Dameron, sharply.

“I’m very sorry,” said Zelda.

“I don’t like him,” the old man repeated; and he did not raise his
eyes, but kept them upon the papers.

“What dreadful liars we are, you and I, Ezra Dameron,” she said, going
back to her old post by the mantel.

“You have used language to me that is infamous, blasphemous, from a
child to a father.”

“Very likely,” she said; “but I can’t discuss these things with you any
further.”

Leighton’s appearance had broken the spell; it had given her new
courage and assurance, though it had not lifted the burden from her
heart. Her father was loath to part with her; there was the extension
of the trusteeship to be effected; he was about to make an appeal to
her, to throw himself on her mercy, when she said, half-turning to go:

“You need not be afraid--I will sign your deed. And I have not the
slightest idea of holding you to account for any of your acts.
Only,--only,”--and her eyes filled and her voice broke,--“only you must
never speak my mother’s name to me again!”

“Yes; yes; I understand,” he said absently; though it was clear that he
did not know what she meant.

She turned and looked at him musingly, with a composure that was
complete; but a barrier in her heart broke down suddenly.

“My girlhood, the beautiful ignorance of life, has all gone now. It
began to go as soon as I came home to live with you; but I wish--I
wish--it had not gone--so wretchedly, so cruelly. Good night.”

She spoke with difficulty, and he saw that she was deeply moved; and
even after the rustle of her skirts had died away in the hall above he
stood looking after her, and listening and wondering. Then he opened a
bundle of papers containing his computations and bent over them in deep
absorption.

“She will sign it; she will sign it,” he repeated, though he did not
raise his head.

When twelve o’clock struck he went to the front doorstep and looked up
through the boughs of the cedars to the great host of stars. He gazed
long, muttering as though at prayer, while the night wind blew upon him
until he was chilled.

“The frost, the frost, it will cut it down, the corn, the corn, the
beautiful corn! But it is too late, too late!”

He went in and closed the door, muttering, “The corn! the corn!”

CHAPTER XXXII

IN SEMINARY SQUARE

At midnight Leighton sat in the old house in Seminary Square debating
the situation with Rodney Merriam.

“What we said to her here this afternoon evidently failed to arouse
her. She either doesn’t understand, or she doesn’t care.”

“She understands perfectly,” said Merriam; “but it’s quite like her to
wish to shield him. Her mother did it before her. It’s a shame for the
money to have gone so; but it was inevitable, and I’m glad it’s over
now.”

“If it _is_ over--something might be saved for her.”

“We’ll let it all go. She’d better be a beggar than have her father
published as a felon. Whatever I have shall be hers; and there’s my
sister, with no one else to care for. The dread of her father’s doing
something to disgrace her and all of us has hung over me all the year;
I’m glad we’ve reached a crisis. She is like her mother; yes; she is
like Margaret. Ah, Morris! it seems to me that I have seen nothing but
failure in this world.”

Morris was silent. Rodney Merriam was growing old and the thought of it
touched him deeply, for Rodney Merriam was his best friend, a comrade,
an elder brother, who stood to him for manliness and courage, much as
Carr represented in his eyes scholarship and professional attainment.

“You never saw Zelda’s mother?” asked Merriam, presently.

“No.”

“You never knew anything of her life?”

“No,” said Leighton. The old man’s head was bent and he did not look at
Leighton; but the young man saw that he was moved by some memory.

“Your father and my sister were once engaged to be married,” said
Merriam, still not looking up. He was silent for an interval.

“I never knew,” said Leighton. “I never had the slightest idea of it.”

“I knew you did not know; and Zee does not know, and she mustn’t know.
It’s too bad, Morris, that we can’t order our lives as they should be.
Mine is a failure. I am sixty years old; and I am not only a failure,
but the people I have tried to help I have injured.” He spoke bitterly.

“No, no; you must not talk so. If you have done half as much for any
one else as for me,--”

“I have done nothing for you,--or for Zee, and I have tried to help
her. I have wanted--I have wanted very much for you to care for each
other. It’s like an echo of an old story. All that I ask now is that
you will bear me no ill will when I have gone. I have done the best I
could.”

“Please don’t! There’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay in the world
for many years to come.”

“We don’t say ‘many years’ when we have passed sixty. Your father was
my intimate friend, Morris. We were boys together at college,--it’s
your college and mine, too. I’m glad you went there. Your father would
have liked it so. Some of the fellows who taught us, taught you. When
you saw them you saw gentlemen and scholars. They gave up the chance
of greater things to stay there among the elms and maples of the old
campus. God never made finer gentlemen!

“Your father and I were seniors at Tippecanoe when the Civil War came.
Your father rose from the ranks to be a colonel. My own affairs didn’t
prosper; but that’s all over now,”--and the old man sighed. “After the
war it didn’t seem worth while to go back to school, but your father
finished, and stayed there in Tippecanoe where he was born, and studied
law. I tried the law here, but it wouldn’t go; the war had spoiled
me--I failed there, as everywhere. My father died and left me enough
to live on, and a little more; so I’ve never done a single thing to my
credit from beginning to end.”

He was speaking brokenly, in a way that was new to him. He felt
helplessly about on the table for the safety match-holder, and Leighton
sprang up and handed him a light,--something that he had never before
felt that he dare do. No one ever held Rodney Merriam’s coat for him,
any more than one patted him on the back.

“At the end of our war, the Maximilian affair was on in Mexico and I
wanted to have a hand in it. When I came back your father had moved
here. He was an ambitious man. There was every likelihood of his taking
a high place at the bar; and he had, too, a taste for politics. He
could hardly have failed to receive substantial rewards, for everything
went to the soldiers in those days. Then he met my sister. She was the
youngest member of our family,--only a girl at the end of the war. She
was a very beautiful woman, Morris. She and Zee are much alike; but
Zee has marked traits of her own. I don’t quite account for them. Her
mother was a quick-witted woman, well educated for her day. Zee is more
a woman of the world than her mother was and she has more spirit.”

Merriam opened a drawer in his table and drew out a miniature painted
on porcelain. He put on his spectacles and studied it intently for a
moment before handing it to Leighton.

“The old-fashioned way of wearing the hair makes a difference; but to
all intents and purposes this is Zee. As Margaret was our youngest, we
had a little different feeling about her. I had--I was the oldest--and
the rest of them had. She had known no trouble; she was light of
heart,--the brightest and cheeriest girl in town; and there seemed no
reason why she should not marry happily and never know care or trouble.
It was understood in the family that they were to be married, though
there was never any formal announcement. Your father meanwhile was
establishing himself. Then Margaret went East to visit a friend of
hers. That was thirty years ago. I was going to Washington to appear
before an army board that was investigating some claims that grew out
of the war, and I went with her and left her in New York. We made a
fine lark of the trip. When I left her with her friends I said, ‘Don’t
forget Morris; he’s back there working for you.’

“My errand in Washington kept me longer than I expected. Margaret went
home alone finally, and when I got back, a little later, I found that
it was all off between her and your father. The girl had never been
away from home before, and the people she visited put her through
lively paces. It was easy to admire her, and the admiration from
strangers went to her head. Mariona wasn’t very gay in those days,
and Margaret had missed a good deal of the social life that she was
entitled to.”

The old man paused, lost in thought, and Morris was glad of the
silence. He was trying to construct for himself the past,--to see his
father as Rodney Merriam had painted him, and to see, too, Margaret
Merriam as she had been when his father knew and loved her.

Merriam was feeling about for matches,--a sign that he was ready to
resume; and Morris again struck a light for him.

“There’s no use going into it. She stopped writing to your father
without any warning that she had changed. She was completely carried
away with the excitement of her New York experiences. Morris came to
Washington and asked me what to do, and I sent him to New York to see
her and fix it up; but it did no good. She was not ready to settle
down yet a while, she told him. I supposed it would all come right,
for I had faith in her. She was a true-hearted, gentle woman, but she
was proud and headstrong; and your father had his pride, too. I don’t
blame him for taking it hard. He closed his office here and went back
to Tippecanoe. I don’t believe they ever saw each other again. When she
came home she was her old self; she had been having her fling, and she
didn’t understand that the same glamour hadn’t blinded all of us.

“She really expected your father to meet her on the old footing. She
had cared for him a great deal, and it was the first great shock of
her life to find that a man whose heart she had trifled with did not
seek her again when she was ready for him. But it had cut into him
deep; your father took things hard. It was temperamental, I suppose. I
was a loser, too, in all this. I lost the first and best friend I ever
had. I rarely saw him after that. He stayed close to the old college
town. He made himself its best lawyer. He was sent to the legislature
and Congress. He went just so far in politics and then stopped. I
always had an idea that he was merely testing his powers. He wanted to
see what he could do; and finding that he could make it go, he decided
that it wasn’t worth the candle.”

Merriam rose, threw away his cigar and filled his pipe.

“It doesn’t seem quite square to be telling you this. I had never
expected to tell you. I shouldn’t be telling you now if it hadn’t
been,--if it hadn’t been--”

He crossed to where Morris sat and put his hand on the young man’s
shoulder.

“Yes; I know,” said Morris,--“please don’t say it;” knowing that it was
of Zelda that Merriam was thinking.

“My sister never let us know by any conscious sign that she had any
regrets. There was a great spirit in her. She was a thoroughbred. She
was a wonderful woman. But as the years passed, I think she tired of
the strain of playing a part. Your father was getting on; his name was
a good deal in the newspapers in those days. Then suddenly came the
news of his marriage. You know all this. Your mother was a Maryland
woman whom he met in Washington. Up to that time I think Margaret
always thought he would come back to her. She had offers to marry
repeatedly, but she stayed at home up there in the old house until our
father and mother died. I always had the curse,--the _Wanderlust_. I
sometimes wake up in the morning, even now, with a mad sort of hunger
to be moving. I’ve put all my maps in the garret. The very sight of one
makes me want to pack my trunk. But I’m getting old and I don’t want to
be shipped home in a box.

“I’ll finish my story. I went away for a long trip late in the
seventies, and when I got back my sister was about to be married,--to
Ezra Dameron. He had lived here for a good many years. He was one
of those psalm-singing fellows who build their lives on the church,
and have a smile for everybody. I had never known him well--he is
somewhat my senior--and was much older than my sister. He was a
fairly presentable man in those days,--the old clothes and hatchet
and nails came later. He had an established business and was an
eminently respectable citizen. You know the rest of the story. My
mind’s wandering to-night. I’m getting old and I don’t see anything
very cheerful ahead and mighty little that’s pleasant behind. I’m a
failure,--only, I hope, not a very conspicuous one. I never tried very
hard. But at times I’ve had some fun.”

“You are hard on yourself. It’s a bad frame of mind to get into.”

“But the frame’s hung,--and the picture isn’t attractive. One of these
days the wire will break and the whole thing will go to smash.” And the
old man laughed at the conceit.

“My father told me once that you were the finest man he had ever known.
I remember it very well. I was a kid at the time, playing one afternoon
on the hillside over at Tippecanoe, where we lived. It was Fourth of
July, the first one I remember much about. Father got out his sword for
me to play with; he told me you had given it to him.”

“He hadn’t forgotten?” and Merriam smiled in a gentle, sweet way that
made something very like tears come into Leighton’s eyes. “He hadn’t
forgotten?” the old man repeated. “God! It was after Shiloh,--and that
was yesterday!”

“He talked about you often. The war had meant a great deal to him. But
I could never get him to talk to me about himself. I used to ask him
for war stories, but he always put me off.”

“Most of the old fellows who really saw service felt that way, Morris.
War isn’t funny. It’s what Sherman said it was! Now, I’ve said things
to you, my boy, that I never meant to say to any one. I hope you won’t
think hard of me for telling you of your father and my sister. But ever
since I’ve known you, I’ve thought about it constantly,--your mother
may know about Margaret Merriam. It was like your father to tell her. I
have never seen your mother, but I hope that sometime I may know her.
I may get over to commencement with you next year. They’ve put up a
tablet for the Tippecanoe men who went to the war. And our names are in
the big monument down here. It’s glory enough!”

“Yes, I hope you will go over to Tippecanoe with me sometime. Mother
will be glad to see you.” He hesitated a moment, and added, the words
coming slowly:

“My mother is the dearest woman in the world. She has made every
sacrifice for me. I feel guilty these days about not having her here
with me; but that will come later. You know I always go over to spend
every other Sunday with her. If I prosper I’ll have a house here some
day, so we can be together.”

“I’m not afraid but that you will do what is right. You are the son of
your father. I don’t believe you take things as hard as he did. Don’t
do it. And don’t remember what I have told you to-night. It’s a queer
story. And it hasn’t any moral at all. Your father missed something out
of his life,--the fine ardor of his younger manhood, maybe. But he had
your mother and he had you. It wasn’t he that was punished.”

He was silent a moment, and then blurted out:

“What does Zelda think of Pollock?”

“I don’t know!” Morris rose and walked the length of the room.

“What does she think of you, then?” demanded Merriam, looking directly
at Morris.

“I think she hates me,” said Morris. He turned and left the house
abruptly, leaving the old man alone with his memories.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE FIRST OF OCTOBER

The old Dameron house had known much of the pain and joy of life.
Merriams had been born and had died there; but the tumult of spirit
that shook it on the last night of September was of a new and
disquieting order.

Zelda closed the door and sat down at her desk by the window. She went
over the interview with her father sentence by sentence, with surprise
that she could remember so well; and a kind of terror possessed her,
now that she saw the hideousness of it all. One sentence rang in her
head over and over again, like a tolling bell; and she could see at
every repetition the angry light that had flashed in her father’s eyes:

“_I wish you would not lie to me, Ezra Dameron!_”

She doubted whether she had really said it; but it continued to taunt
her. She tested her memory by omitting his name at the end; but back
it came again and again; and the name with its deep insult, its ugly
disavowal of their kinship, was always the climax of every sentence.

“_Ezra Dameron!_”

In her memory it rose at the end just as it had risen and clung in
the room below as she had spoken it. It seemed to her that it must be
ringing across the night; and it was all wrong, wrong, wrong! She
bowed her head in her hands and wept.

She grew calm again as the night wore on. It seemed that she had been
there in the dark room for an eternity when she heard a clock strike
midnight in one of the lower rooms. She threw up a shade and looked
out, finding in the lights of the streets and houses a grateful contact
with the outer world. In a house that she identified she saw a light
in the room of a girl she knew very well; and she fell to wondering
about this friend, whose father was a well-known man of affairs,--whose
name none spoke but to praise. She felt the sob coming into her throat,
and drew down the blind as though to shut out the mockery the thought
awakened of her own father.

“_I wish you would not lie to me, Ezra Dameron!_”

She threw herself on the bed and lay for long, dreaming, wondering. She
thought of every place she had ever been, of every one she knew; and
little things long forgotten sped past in the running flood-tide of
memory.

At last she found a point of rest for her spirit. She needed help, and
it was her right to demand it of her uncle. She had led a false life
out of devotion to her mother’s memory, that no one might say that she
had been weak where her mother had been strong; but it was at an end
now. It would be a simple matter to leave the house at an early hour in
the morning and go to her uncle’s door, or she could summon him to come
to her; and while she debated which course she should adopt she fell
asleep.

The first gray light of the autumn morning was breaking when she awoke,
chilled and numbed. She was very tired from lying cramped in her
clothes on the bed, but she arranged the pillows on a couch, and lay
down on it, drawing a comforter about her.

Her thoughts found new channels. She watched the eastern window whiten
slowly and listened to the first tentative notes of traffic in the
street. She had been trying to avoid thinking of Morris Leighton, but
the thought of him was sweet in her heart. He had offered her his love
and she had repelled him, not as a woman may, with an honest denial,
but in a spirit of hard rejection of all that life and love meant. As
the dawn grew her thoughts sought little harbors of security and peace
that her love for him made; and she fell asleep as a child will, when
it has known a hurt in its little world, but finds oblivion at last
under the soothing touch of loving hands.

She woke as the little French clock in her room chimed seven, and as
she lay for a moment taking account of her surroundings, she heard a
step in the hall outside her door. It was her father; he stood by her
door an instant listening, and then passed on slowly to the stairway.

“_I wish you would not lie to me, Ezra Dameron!_”

The hateful words came back to her again! She had failed! This was the
thought that the morning brought; and as she rose from the couch her
mother’s book, with its fateful words, fell on the floor.

She caught it up and pressed it against her face.

“Mother! O mother!” she whispered. “Yes; I have failed; I have failed,”
she said.

And with the sense of failure dominant in her mind she made ready for
the day. It was her birthday; she was twenty-one, and that was very
old!

By the time she was ready to go down stairs to meet her father she saw
the whole matter in what seemed to her a sane, reasonable spirit; she
was even tranquil, as she sat for a moment at her dressing-table, her
hands clasped before her, pondering her course. She had put on a cloth
street-gown, and fastened a black stock at her throat. The little book
lay beside her and she carried it to her desk and put it away in the
drawer, where she had kept it since the morning a year ago, when it had
first fallen under her eyes in the garret. She had been false to its
charge; but that was past. She had failed; but she would begin again.

Her heart heat fast as she went down stairs. Her father sat in the
sitting-room as he always did, waiting for her to come to breakfast;
but as she stood upon the threshold, whence she had often called her
good morning, he did not look up from the newspaper with his usual
smile. She was touched by the pathos of his figure. He seemed older,
more shrunken; his profile, as the early light gave it to her, was less
hard. His lean cheeks had the touch of color they always wore in the
morning from his careful shaving, and his long hair was brushed back
with something more than its usual uncompromising smoothness. A certain
primness and rigidity in him which had often vexed her, struck only her
pity now.

“Father!”

He rose and turned toward her with a pathetic appeal in his eyes.

“Good morning, Zee,” he said. Habit was strong in him and they usually
went to breakfast as soon as she came down. He took a step now toward
the dining-room.

“Father, I wish to speak to you a moment,” she said kindly; and he
paused.

“I am sorry for what happened last night. I was not quite myself; I
said things that will always trouble me if you--unless you can forgive
me. I was wrong,--about everything. You must let me help, if I can help
you,--in any way.”

He said nothing, but stared at her.

“What angered me was that you weren’t quite frank, father. I didn’t
care about the money. It wasn’t that--but if things haven’t gone well
with you, I wish to share the burden. No,--I mean it,--that I am
sorry,--let us be quite good friends again.”

She went up to him quickly and took his hand.

“Father,” she said.

“Zee, my little girl,--my little girl,” he began brokenly, touching her
cheeks with trembling hands.

“Yes, father,” she said, wishing to help him.

“I have been very wicked; I have led a bad life. I must not harm you; I
am not fit--”

“You are my father,” she said, and touched his forehead with her lips,
wondering at herself.

She led him to the table and talked to him brightly on irrelevant
matters. The situation was now in her own hands and she would not fail
again. She usually visited the kitchen after breakfast to make her list
for the grocer; but this morning she went back to the sitting-room with
her father. The autumn morning was cool, and she bent and lighted the
fire.

“Now,” she said, rising quickly and smiling at him, “there are those
bothersome business matters that we were talking about last night. I
wish to sign that paper--”

He shook his head.

“You can’t do it, Zee. You have lighted the fire with it.” The deed had
been torn to pieces and thrown upon the kindling in the grate,--half
had already been destroyed.

“That is probably just as well. We shall make a new one,” she said,
in a matter-of-course tone. “I wish you would tell me, so that I may
understand, just what it is that has happened.”

“It’s a long story. I thought I should be able to make a great fortune
for you. It was my greed,--my greed.”

“Let us not use ugly words about ourselves, father. A great many people
lose their money. It isn’t so terribly tragic. Only,--there mustn’t be
any further trouble.”

“What I proposed about the deed was purely selfish--to shield myself.
It is a grave matter--I have betrayed you--I have betrayed your
mother’s trust. I have robbed you.”

“I haven’t been robbed, father, and I don’t intend that anybody shall
use such words to me. We shall make the deed; no one need ever know
that anything has happened.”

“You are kind; you are more than generous, Zee; but I was mad when I
asked you to re-create the trust last night. I am a bad man; I must
face my sins; I have lived a lying, evil life. I am a thief, worse than
a thief.”

“My father can’t be a thief,” she said.

“I am a thief,--your uncle will see that I am punished. And it will be
better so,--if only I did not drag you down, smirch your name.”

Her strength,--her readiness to meet the situation grew as she saw his
weakness.

“How bad is it, father; have we anything left? Don’t be afraid to tell
me. It’s concealment you must avoid. If we haven’t a thing--”

Her tone reassured him; he lifted his head with more courage.

“This house--the place in the country--they are free. They are yours
to-day. My investments,”--he hesitated and blinked at the word--“they
can not come back to injure you.”

“Then this house and the farm are still ours.”

“They are yours, not mine. I have wasted so much! It was a
fortune,--nearly half a million dollars when I began throwing it away.”

“I don’t believe that’s very much. When you haven’t a million
you’re,--you’re not in it!” and she laughed. “The loss of anything else
isn’t worth crying over. And then, you might have made a great deal
more out of it.”

He flinched, knowing how culpable he was; but her generosity and
kindness were lifting his spirit.

“I have given an option on a piece of ground--you may know it--out by
the creek, and have received a thousand dollars on account of it. It
may be binding on you. It grew out of my necessity. It is not fair for
me to talk to you of these things at all. You should take advice of
some one else,--just as though there were no sort of tie between us.”

“We are not going to do it that way,” said Zelda, decisively. “We are
going to understand this between ourselves. Now this strip of ground
that has been practically sold. What is there about that?”

“The money should be returned, or offered to them. Balcomb was managing
it--”

“Mr. Jack Balcomb?--then of course it wasn’t regular.”

“It was my fault, Zee.”

“I don’t believe it. He was contriving a pitfall,--that is what might
have been expected of him. And he came to our house and pretended to be
our friend!”

“Yes; he pretended that; but I pretended much more. Deceit is something
that feeds on itself.”

He repeated the words, “It feeds on itself,” as though he found
satisfaction in them. He was quite willing now to yield everything to
Zelda’s hands. The very way in which she asked questions was a relief
to him.

“Mr. Balcomb gave you a thousand dollars to bind a bargain--is that
what they call it?--for the sale of the creek strip. I think I
understand that. But are there debts,--are there other things that must
be paid? And if we still have two houses we can get money for them. We
must face the whole matter now,--please keep nothing back.”

“I have told you everything. I have squandered your money in
speculations,--gambling is the name for it; but I have kept the farm
and this house, untouched. Everything else has gone and I have given an
option for the sale of that strip of ground on the creek. And I sold a
block of lots belonging to you, in an irregular way. I could not sell
property without an order of court--that was required by your mother’s
will; but my necessities were great, and Balcomb arranged an abstract
to suit himself--but I let him do it. I am the guilty one; it is my
crime.”

“Let us not use unpleasant words. It’s my birthday. I’m quite grown up
and you must let me help--or find help!”

“Yes; but not Rodney; not your uncle,” he said hurriedly. “He is
violent, very violent. He would have no mercy on me. And I am an old
man, and broken, very badly broken.”

He settled back in his chair despairingly.

“I shall have to tell Uncle Rodney; but you need have no fear of him, I
promise you that.”

“He is very violent,--he and I have never been friends.”

“You imagine that. I shall take care of him. He and I understand each
other perfectly,” she added, and smiled to herself.

“Mr. Carr is your lawyer, isn’t he?” she asked.

“Yes; but he has been away. I took advantage of his absence to do
things he would never have countenanced.”

“There is Mr. Leighton.”

“No, no, not that man!” She had tried to avoid any reference to the
interview of the night before, but the mention of Leighton’s name
brought the whole wretched scene clearly before her again. It was he,
more than her uncle, that she relied on.

“I’m sorry you feel toward him as you do, father. I believe that we
might trust him. I look upon him as a friend.”

Ezra Dameron was weak and the talk was wearying him. He closed his eyes
and rested his head on the back of the chair, moving it from side to
side restlessly.

He was silent for a moment; then he brought his eyes to bear on her.

“Zee,” he began haltingly,--“Zee, I’m sorry I spoke of him as I did. I
was quite out of my senses. He is a fine, manly fellow.”

“Don’t trouble about anything, father,” she said, and went to her room
for her wraps.

Ezra Dameron was beaten and he was not heroic in defeat. He was stunned
by the failure of his gambling operations. He had lived so entirely
in dreams for a year that it was difficult for him to realize the
broad daylight of a workaday world. Echoes of the harsh things that
had passed between him and the child of his own blood but a few hours
before still haunted him. She had summoned the apparition of her dead
mother and had called him a liar; and he had insulted her in the
harshest terms he knew; but he was now leaning upon her helplessly.
He did not know, and he could not understand, the motives that were
prompting her. He had thrown away her money, and she did not arraign
him for it; she was even devising means of covering up his ill-doings;
and the fact that one could overlook and pardon the loss of a fortune
was utterly beyond his comprehension.

When she came down, her father was still sitting as she had left him,
with a look of unutterable dejection on his face.

“You won’t go out to-day,--of course!”

“What? No! no! My business is over. If they come for me they will find
me here,--here--at home,” he said wearily.

His smile, the smile that had been hard to bear, was gone.

“Try to cheer up,” she said, resting her hand on his shoulder for a
moment. “Don’t talk to anybody about business of any kind. I’m going
down to uncle’s; and you needn’t be afraid of him, or of anybody.”

She went to the telephone and called her uncle’s number.

“Tell Mr. Merriam that Miss Dameron is coming to his house at once,”
she said to the Japanese boy who answered.

CHAPTER XXXIV

A NEW UNDERSTANDING

Rodney Merriam opened the door and greeted Zelda cheerily.

“Am I not the early bird?” she demanded, walking into the library and
flinging at its owner her usual comment on its eternal odor of tobacco.

“I’ve been here early in the morning and late at night, _mon oncle_,
and it’s always the same. I’m glad to see a cigar this morning. It’s
the pipe that I protest against. You’re sure to have a tobacco heart if
you keep it up.”

“You’re a trifle censorious, as usual,” said Merriam, looking at her
keenly. “How can I earn your praise? Do you confer a medal for good
conduct,--I’d like one with a red ribbon.”

“I shan’t buy the ribbon till you show signs of improvement. I had
hoped that you would congratulate me in genial and cheering words. It’s
my birthday, I would have you know.”

“At my age,--”

“You’ve said that frequently since we got acquainted.”

“As I was saying, at my age, birthdays don’t seem so dreadfully
important. But I congratulate you with all my heart,” he added
sincerely, and with the touch of manner that was always charming in him.

“Thank you. And if you have--any gifts?”

He marveled at her. He had rarely seen her more cheerful, more
mockingly herself; and he was proud of her. He had told her a few hours
before that her father was a scoundrel, and she had left his house in a
rage. She could now come back as though nothing had happened. She was a
Merriam, he said to himself, and his heart warmed to her anew.

He drew out the drawer of his desk.

“Of course I haven’t any gift for you; but there’s some rubbish
here--hardly worth considering--that I wish you’d carry away with you.”

He took out a little jeweler’s box and handed it to her.

“I’ve rarely been so perturbed,” she said. “May I open it now, or must
I wait till I get home,--as they used to tell me when I was younger.”

“If you’re interested in an old man’s taste, you may open it. I’m
prepared to see you disappointed, so you needn’t pretend you like it.”

She bent over the gift with the eagerness of a child, and pressed the
catch. A string of pearls fell into her lap and she exclaimed over them
joyously:

“Rubbish, did you say? Verily, I, that was poor, am rich!”

She threw the chain about her neck and ran it through her fingers
hurriedly; then she brushed the white hair from Rodney Merriam’s
forehead and kissed him.

[Illustration: _Zelda_]

“You dear: you delicious old dear! I know you hate to be thanked--”

“But I can stand being kissed. Put those things away now; and don’t
forget to take care of them. You can give them to your granddaughter on
her wedding day.”

“I can’t imagine doing anything so foolish. I can see myself cutting
her off without a pearl.”

The suggestion of poverty carried an irony to the mind of both. Her
father was a rascal, who had swindled her out of practically all of
her fortune. He was a lying hypocrite, Merriam said to himself; and
here was his daughter as calm and cheerful as though there were no such
thing as unhappiness in the world. His admiration and affection rose to
high tide as he played with the pipe that lay by his hand on the table.

“Smoke it if you like,” said Zelda. “This curse of habit, how it does
take hold of a man! But a man who gives pearls away in bunches,--well,
he may make a smoke-house of his castle if he likes.”

“The smoke-house suggestion isn’t pleasant, my child. Pearls are spoken
of usually as being cast before animals whose ultimate destination is
the smoke-house. Please be careful of your language.”

“I don’t care to be roasted or smoked. I have come to talk business and
I wish you to deal graciously with me, as becomes the noblest uncle in
the world in dealing with his young and wayward niece.”

He filled the pipe from a jar, and she grew grave, watching him press
the crinkled bits of dusky gold into the bowl, for now she must talk
of her father and her own affairs seriously. The light of the match
flamed up and lit the stern lines of Rodney Merriam’s fine old face.
He threw the stick into a tray.

“Yes, Zee,” he said very kindly.

“I’m sorry if I seemed a little--precipitate--yesterday. But it was all
new and strange. And I have known that you did not like father. You
will overlook whatever I did and said yesterday, won’t you?”

There was a note of real distress in her voice.

“It’s a good plan to begin the world over every morning. I want to help
you in any way I can, Zee. I began at the wrong end yesterday. The
fault was all mine!”

“Father and I have had a long talk about his business. He approached
it last night on his own account. I have told him that I was coming to
you.”

“Yes; it is better to have told him that.”

She felt quite at her ease, and his kindness encouraged her.

“Father has met with misfortune. He has told me frankly about it: he
speculated with the money that belonged to me--and the money is all
gone.”

“Yes; I am not surprised.”

“There is the house we live in and the farm,--they are still free. He
says they belong to me.”

“If he has not pledged them for debt in any way, they pass to your
possession to-day. They are yours now.”

“Yes; I understand about that. This is my fateful birthday;” and she
smiled.

He smoked in silence, wondering at her.

“But there are some things that are not quite right. Father has told me
about them. There is something about an order of court, which affects
a piece of property that he has sold through this Mr. Balcomb. Father
takes all the blame for that. I suppose that is what you wished to tell
me last night. But I’m glad I heard it from father. I hope you will
not be hard on him. He has talked to me in an honorable spirit that,
that--I respect very much.”

The sob was again seeking a place in her throat and her eyes
filled, but she looked straight at her uncle till the old man grew
uncomfortable, and stared at the bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln on the
mantel and wished that all men were honest, and all women as fine as
this girl.

“Uncle Rodney, I wish to protect father fully in every way from any
injury that might come to him for what he has done. I understand
perfectly that it was a large sum of money that he lost; but he is an
old man and he was doing the best he could.”

The color climbed into Merriam’s face and he smoked furiously. The idea
that Ezra Dameron had done the best he could, when he had sunk to the
level of a common gambler, wakened the wrath against his brother-in-law
that was always slumbering in his heart.

“Zee!” he exclaimed, suddenly appearing through his cloud of
smoke,--“Zee, he isn’t worth it!”

“Please don’t!”--and the sob clutched her throat again--“I didn’t come
to ask what it was worth; but to get you to help me.”

“Yes. Yes; to be sure. It must be done your way,” he replied quickly.

“But it’s the right way. Now I want you to tell me what to do. People
have bought property of my father, and he failed to get the approval
of the court. I’m not sure that it was his fault,--it must have been
Mr. Balcomb’s way of doing it. But it makes no difference, and father
takes all the blame. Now a title given in this way is not right,--is
that what you say?”

“We say usually that titles are good or bad,”--and he smiled at her.

“But there must be a way of making this good.”

“Yes; perhaps several ways. That is for a lawyer. You are the only
person that could take advantage of an omission of that sort, I
suppose.”

“That is what I wish to know. And it wouldn’t be very much trouble to
make it right.”

“We must ask a lawyer. Morris understands about it. He is considered a
good man in the profession. The advantage of calling on him is that he
is a friend and knows Balcomb.”

“I told father I might ask Mr. Leighton to help us.”

Rodney looked at her quickly. Ezra Dameron, Zelda his daughter, and
Morris Leighton! The combination suggested unhappy thoughts.

“Morris is coming up this morning. He said eleven, and he’s usually
on time. That’s one of the good things about Morris. He keeps his
appointments!”

“I imagine he would. Uncle Rodney, I’m going to ask you something.
It may seem a little queer, but everything in the world is a little
queer. Did you ever know--was there anything,”--it was the sob again
and she frowned hard in an effort to keep back the tears--“I mean about
mother--and Mr. Leighton’s father?”

The blood mounted again to the old man’s cheek, and he bent toward her
angrily.

“Did he throw that at you? Did Ezra Dameron, after all your mother
suffered from him, insult you with that?”

“Please don’t! Please don’t!” and she thrust a hand toward him
appealingly. “I used to see the word _past_ in books and it meant
nothing to me. But now it seems that life isn’t to-day at all; it’s
just a lot of yesterdays!”

The old man walked to the window and back.

“It was your mother’s mistake; but it must not follow you. When did
your father tell you this?”

“Yesterday,--last night. I had provoked him. It is all so hideous,
please never ask me about it--what happened at the house--but he told
me about that.”

“He’s a greater dog than I thought he was; and now he has thrown
himself on your mercy! I’ve a good mind to say that we won’t help him.
Morris’s father was a gentleman and a scholar; and Morris is the finest
fellow in the world.”

“Yes; but please don’t scold! It won’t help me any.”

“No; I can’t ever scold anybody. My hands are always tied. I’m old and
foolish. Talk about the past coming back to trouble us! You have no
idea what it means at my age; it’s the past, the past, the past! until
to-day is eternally smothered by it.”

He cast himself into his chair; and she laughed at him--a laugh of
relief. His anger had usually amused her by its lack of reason; it gave
her now a momentary respite from her own troubles.

“I’ve never got anything in the world that I wanted. Here I hoped that
you and Morris might hit it off--”

“Please don’t,--”

“But you wouldn’t have it; you’ve treated him most shabbily.”

“I shouldn’t think he would have told you anything about it,” she said
with dignity.

“Of course he didn’t tell me anything about it! Don’t you think I know
things without being told?”

“I don’t envy you the faculty,” she said, with a sigh. “I’m not going
to look for trouble. It all comes my way anyhow.”

Her tone of despair touched his humor and he laughed and filled his
pipe again; then the bell rang and he went to open the door for Morris.

“Morris,” he began at once, “we can omit the preliminaries this
morning. Mr. Dameron’s trusteeship has expired. His daughter is
entitled to the property left her by her mother, or its equivalent.
There has been a sale of property that is not quite regular, and--”

“We wish to make it quite legal,--quite perfect,” said Zelda.

“And we wish to avoid publicity. We must keep out of the newspapers.”

“I understand,” said Morris.

Zelda had purposely refrained from mentioning her father’s own plan of
continuing himself as trustee to hide the fact of his malfeasance; but
with Morris present, she felt that her uncle was easier to manage.

“We have agreed to continue the trusteeship, just as it has been.
Father and I have had a perfect understanding about it.”

“No! no! we won’t do it that way,” shouted Merriam.

But Zelda did not look at him. Her eyes appealed to Morris and he
understood that in anything that was done, Ezra Dameron must be
shielded; and the idea of hiding Dameron’s irregularities struck him as
reasonable and necessary.

“You can give your father a power of attorney to cover everything he
has left of yours if you wish it,” said Morris.

“I won’t hear to it; it’s a farce; it’s playing with the law,” declared
Rodney.

“Uncle Rodney, I’m glad the law can be played with. There’s more sense
in it than I thought there was. You will do it for me that way, won’t
you--please? And there are some people who have paid father for an
option on what he calls the creek property. I wish to protect them,
too.”

“You needn’t do that,” said Morris. “We can repudiate the option
probably. It’s not your affair, as the law views it.”

“But I wish to make it my affair. I wish to do it, right away. I’ve
heard that important things can’t be done right away, but these things
must be,”--and she smiled at Morris and then at her uncle.

“You understand, Zee, that if you give this power of attorney you are
brushing away any chance to get back this money.”

“Yes; perfectly. And now, Mr. Leighton, how long will it take?”

Morris looked at Merriam as though for his approval.

“Uncle agrees, of course, Mr. Leighton. You needn’t ask him,”--and the
two men laughed. There was no making the situation tragic when the
person chiefly concerned refused to have it so. She had accepted the
loss of the bulk of her fortune and the fact of her father’s perfidy
without a quaver. She seemed, indeed, to be in excellent spirits, and
communicated her cheer to the others.

“If this is final--” began Morris.

“Of course it’s final,” said Zee.

“I’ll come back here at four o’clock and you can sign the power of
attorney if you wish. But there’s one thing I’m going to do--on my own
responsibility, if necessary. I’m going to get back that option on the
creek strip that Mr. Dameron gave my friend Balcomb. Balcomb’s a bad
lot, and I’m not disposed to show him any mercy.”

“I’d rather you didn’t--if my father pledged himself to sell--”

“Let Morris do it his way,” begged Merriam. “You may be sure Balcomb
won’t lose anything.”

“I’m afraid he won’t,” said Leighton, and left them.

“Sit down, Zee,” said Merriam, as Zelda rose.

“I must go back to father,--you can imagine that these things haven’t
added to his happiness.”

“Humph!” and Rodney folded his arms and regarded Zelda thoughtfully.

“I wish you wouldn’t say ‘humph!’ to me, _mon oncle_! It isn’t polite.”

“Zee,” said the old gentleman, kindly; “what do you intend doing? I
suppose you have no plans,--but you must let me make some for you.”

“Of course I have plans; they are all perfected, and they are charming.
There’s no use in talking to you about them. I’ve given you enough
trouble.”

“I hope you’ll give me more! As long as my troubles are confined to you
I’ll try to bear them.”

“Oh sir, thank you,--as the young thing always says to the good fairy
uncle in the story-books. Well, as you seem sympathetic I’ll tell you.
You remember that little Harrison Street house where Olive lived?
Well, they owed father some money and the house was mortgaged. Olive
wouldn’t let me release the mortgage,--or whatever they call it; but
it’s the dearest house in town. Olive and her mother are going to move
into a flat. I loved that house the first time I stepped inside of
it. Well, I’m going to sell the farm and the old house where we live,
and anything else we happen to have, and move to Harrison Street; and
I’m going to give music lessons; and I can get a place to sing in a
church whenever I please. I’ve had offers, in fact. It’s all perfectly
rosy and beautiful,--” and she stretched out her arms and played an
ascending scale of felicity in the air with her fingers. “Perhaps,
sometimes, you will come over to see us in the new place!”

“Zee, I have sometimes hoped that you had a slight feeling of affection
for me;” and Rodney Merriam’s face grew severe.

“How you do flatter yourself! Go on!”

“And I want you to do something for me.”

“If it’s sensible I’ll consider it.”

“I want you to go home and pack up and come down here to live with me.
And I beg of you don’t talk about giving music lessons and moving to
that Harrison Street hovel,--even as fun it doesn’t amuse me. Come now,
be a sensible girl. How soon can you move?”

“You seem to be addressing me in the singular number. There are two of
us to plan for.”

Her lips quivered and the tears came to her eyes. Here was the old
question of her father, that had been a vexation all the long year
through. If only she might be suffered to manage her affairs alone!

“Please let me go! You have been so kind to me--I should hate awfully--”

“But Zee,--we must be reasonable. You are young, and your way must be
made as easy as possible--for the road’s a tough one at best. It seems
a hard thing to say, but your father is no proper companion for you. I
can arrange for him in some way; but I owe it to you, to your mother’s
memory, to keep you apart. I haven’t anything else to do but care for
your happiness; and your father doesn’t fit into any imaginable scheme
of life for you.”

Zee laughed.

“Please don’t imagine schemes of life for me. I have one of my own, and
it’s quite enough. And my mother,--”

“Yes, your mother, Zee.”

“My mother--was a good woman, wasn’t she, Uncle Rodney?”

“She was a wonderful woman, Zee.”

“And she did what she thought was right, didn’t she?”

“She certainly did.”

“And do you think--is it reasonable to believe--that she would be
pleased to know that I had abandoned father because he had been
unfortunate, even criminal, if you will have it so? Do you think, Uncle
Rodney, that to leave him in his old age would be quite in keeping with
your own idea of chivalry? I’m sorry to know that you would propose
such a thing. I should like to have your help, but I don’t want it on
any such terms,--on any terms.”

She spoke very quietly and waited patiently for anything further that
he might have to say. The clock on the mantel struck twelve and across
the town the whistles were blowing lustily the noon hour. Merriam
lifted his clenched right hand slowly and opened and shut it several
times, then dropped it to his knee.

“Zee,” he said, “you shall do it your own way,”--he smiled--“with a few
exceptions. You are right about it. Your mother would like you to stand
by your father. I can’t even say what is in my heart about him; but I
had counted on--having you--now--for myself.”

And the old man’s face twitched from the stress of inner conflict.
Zelda crossed to his chair and threw her arms about him.

“Dear Uncle Rodney!” she cried, and then sprang away, drawing him up by
his hands.

“I’m going to be a lot nicer to you than I ever was before,” she
declared. “And you will help me to be good!”

“There are two or three things that I want you to do for me, Zee. I ask
you as a favor,--as a very great favor.”

“It’s going to be something hard,--but go on!”

“Let me be your banker. And don’t begin teaching or making yourself
ridiculous in other ways. I have enough, and I want you to begin having
the benefit of it now. And I should like you to keep the old house
up there, for a while, at least. My father built it, and I was born
there--and your mother--and you! I should hate to have it pass to a
stranger, in my day. And another thing. You’ve done a beautiful but
not a very sensible thing in continuing your father in charge of your
business--what’s left of it; but you’d better let me--consult with him
about matters.”

“But you won’t--scold, or be disagreeable?”

He smiled at her words, which seemed ridiculous when applied to the
squandering of a comfortable fortune, under circumstances that did not
appeal to his pity.

“I’m not going to be hard on your father. My enemies have always
escaped me. I suppose it’s because I’m so amiable.”

There was a pathos in his figure as he stood, quite free from his
chair, his hands thrust into the side pockets of his coat, his
shoulders a trifle drooped, and the half-smile upon his face marking
still his inner reluctance.

“Zee,” he said, and he swayed a little, and put out his hand and rested
his finger-tips on the table,--“Zee, you are the finest girl in the
world. I wish you would tell your father that I shall be up to see him
soon. And don’t worry about what I shall say to him. You can be there
if you like.”

He followed her to the step, looking after her as she walked swiftly
away, kissing her fingers to him from the corner.

Across the street, in Seminary Square, the wind was driving the
leaves hither and thither aimlessly in the warm October sunshine,
and it stole across to Rodney Merriam and played with his fine white
hair. The branches of the park trees were so thinned now that he
could see clearly the bulky foundation of the new post-office. He
sighed at the thought of the changes that must come, watched the
procession of automobiles and wagons in High Street, and glanced at the
uncompromising lines of the overshadowing flat whose presence never
ceased to annoy him.

Then he anathematized it under his breath and went in and abused the
Japanese boy because luncheon was not ready.

CHAPTER XXXV

A SETTLING OF ACCOUNTS

“Good-by, and hail my fancy!” shouted Balcomb as Leighton entered the
promoter’s office. “Excuse my quotation from Whitman, the good gray
poet; but you always suggest bright college years, the dearest, best of
life to me, Demetrius.”

“I don’t want to suggest anything to you, Balcomb. I’ve come to talk
seriously about an unpleasant matter.”

“The devil you have! You’ve certainly brought a death’s-head with you.”

“You always had the seeds of scoundrelism in you. I had hoped they
wouldn’t sprout; but the sprouts are in full bloom.”

“Sprouts don’t bloom; but we’ll pass that with the gloomy silence it
deserves,” said Balcomb, imperturbably lighting a cigarette.

“You’ve been taking advantage of Mr. Dameron. You’ve played upon his
necessities and got a block of lots away from him for nothing. You’ve
also got an option from him on the strip of land out there on the creek
where you propose putting up that flat you’ve been talking about.
While you were planning this you were going to his house, where his
daughter received you with courtesy. And I suppose that, in a way, I
was responsible for you. I rather let it be inferred that you were
a good fellow, and I allowed you to mention that we had been friends
in college, though I knew all the time that you were a blackguard. I
really think Miss Dameron might forgive you for involving her father in
disgrace, but I don’t think she would ever overlook your attentions to
her cousin at a time when you were plotting to swindle a member of the
family.”

“You are a fool,” said Balcomb. “I’m not responsible for old man
Dameron’s morals, am I? He was crazy to get money and came to me
because he knew I had some snap and could get cash for his lots. He
lied to me about it all along. You can’t charge me with notice of all
the private history of the Dameron family. I didn’t know about the
trusteeship until I took the deed. I was just as surprised as anybody
when I found it out.”

Leighton smiled at Balcomb’s tone of outraged innocence.

“You’re such a cheerful rogue I don’t believe you really appreciate the
fact that there are limits to human enterprise. Now your interurban
friends are jays, aren’t they?”

“They are, my brother. They are the genus _cyanocitta cristata_, or
common blue jay, and mighty fine types, I can tell you that.” He
slapped his thigh in joy at the thought.

“You are a depraved beast,” declared Leighton. “It seems a shame to
disturb your peace of mind; but I came here to talk business. Now, your
agricultural friends, when you sprang this lot purchase, asked about
the title to the real estate, didn’t they? If they didn’t they are not
the farmers I take them for.”

“Your confidence is not misplaced. They did, and they quite satisfied
themselves about it.”

“They wanted to see an abstract of title.”

“They certainly did, old man. You’re a regular mind reader.”

“They asked for an abstract of title,” continued Leighton, “and you
gave them one, didn’t you?”

“Please don’t mention it, an thou lovest me. They nearly wore out the
damned thing studying it.”

“I have seen a copy of the original at the abstracter’s office.”

“Awfully keen of you, I’m sure,” said Balcomb, amiably. “I tell you,
you’re a credit to the bar, Morris. You do honor to your preceptor.”

He bowed mockingly, but he was growing a trifle anxious and fingered
the papers on his table nervously.

“The abstract, as I was saying, consisted of a good many pages. And
there was a certain page forty-two, where a will was set forth, in due
form, when you got the document from the abstract office; but when your
friend Van Cleve made his report on it for your rural syndicate that
particular page was missing, and another, bearing the same page number,
but with certain points of the Margaret Merriam will omitted, was
substituted. That is quite correct, isn’t it?”

“You may search me! If there’s anything crooked about that abstract
it’s not on me, you can bet your life. But say, you’re getting
insulting. Now, I’ll tell you something, Leighton, as long as you’ve
come to me in this friendly spirit,--this old-college-friendly spirit.
I’ve been all over this thing in my mind. I’m not the twittering little
birdling you think I am, to fix up a fake abstract and work it off
on a lot of reubs. I didn’t order that abstract made; I didn’t have a
damned thing to do with it. You seem to think that because there’s a
beneficiary of the fifteenth amendment in the cordwood, I must be there
somewhere, dressed up like a minstrel first part; but you’re a dead
loser. I’m prepared to prove that that abstract of title was ordered by
your Uncle Ezra Dameron, and that he gave it to me with his own hands.
I guess you’ll have to admit that my reputation in this community is
about as good as your Uncle Ezra’s. Now, it wounds my pride to have you
talking to me as though I were the traditional villain of our modern
melodrama, that you have cornered with a merry ‘Ha, ha! base churl, at
last I have tracked thee to thy lair!’ No, darling, you can’t catch
me on fly paper--not while my wits are in good working order. If you
can see how to save Miss Dameron’s money without getting her dear old
papa into the mulligatawney all well and good; but if you’re trying to
bring me within the long, lean arm of the penal code you’ll have to get
better. It’s your Uncle Ezra that you’re looking for.”

“We’re going to protect the stock-holders of your company whose money
has gone into the Roger Merriam lots,” continued Leighton. “I honestly
think I could set aside the sale; but we’ll be generous and straighten
the title for you.”

“I rather guess you will, or Uncle Ezra wears the stripes.”

“I don’t think I’d say much about the stripes, with that abstract in
Harry Copeland’s possession. You know Copeland is rather a persistent
fellow, and one of his rural friends is in your company.”

“The devil he is!” But Balcomb batted his eyes uneasily.

“Now give me that option; it isn’t any good, anyhow; but I’ll feel more
comfortable to have it out of your hands.”

“You’re welcome to it,” replied Balcomb, fiercely. “The old man’s
crooked, and the idea of his being swindled by me or anybody else is
funny, as you’d see if you weren’t trying to be his son-in-law. The old
fool is playing the bucket shops--”

“I’m in a hurry. Give me the option and get busy about it.”

One of the typewriters came in with a card.

“Excuse me, Mr. Balcomb, but the gentleman said he couldn’t wait,”--and
Balcomb rose from the iron safe before which he was bending and
snatched the card.

“Tell him I’m engaged. Tell him I don’t want to see him anyhow,” yelled
Balcomb, in a voice that was perfectly audible to the waiting caller in
the anteroom.

“Here,” he said to Leighton, in the same tone of fury, “here’s your
damned option. Give me back the thousand I paid Dameron and go to hell!”

“Now I want you to give me a check for that money you wrung from Mr.
Dameron--”

“I didn’t wring any money from him, you yelping ape. I _paid_ him
money. You don’t seem to understand this transaction.”

“I understand it perfectly. You reported to your company that twenty
thousand would buy that group of lots; you took that amount of money
from them, gave Mr. Dameron eighteen thousand and put the rest in your
pocket as commission. It sounds well, doesn’t it?”

“_He_ isn’t making any kick, is he? I bet he isn’t. He was perfectly
satisfied. He needed money and was glad to sell at any price. I did him
a great service.” And Balcomb thrust his thumbs into the armholes of
his waistcoat with the air of a man who is ready and anxious to face
the world on any charge.

“Jack, you will write me a check for that money--your commission, as
you call it, deducting the one thousand that was paid for this option,
or I’ll make Mariona too hot to hold you.”

“This is blackmail, and, by God! I won’t submit to it,” shouted Balcomb.

“Maybe so, and you can get redress later if it is. I want your
check--whether it’s any good or not.”

“I’ll give you half of it if the old man’s beefing,” said Balcomb,
after a minute’s reflection.

“All--right away--quick!”

Leighton rose and stood with his hands thrust into his pockets while
Balcomb turned to his desk and wrote the check.

The girl outside was heard debating with the caller, who refused to be
denied.

The door opened suddenly and Leighton, with the check and option in his
hand, looked up to see Captain Pollock standing within the partition,
his little stick, as usual, under his arm.

“Leighton,” he said quite imperturbably, “I’m awfully sorry to disturb
you, but I’m really glad you’re here. In fact, I thought for a moment
of going to your office to ask you to come with me--to call on our
gifted friend.”

“You get out of here, you damned little--”

“My dear Mr. Balcomb, you’ve called me little before, and other people
have called me little, and I can’t help it any more than you can help
being a contemptible, lying scoundrel--”

Balcomb made a rush for him, but the captain thrust his stick forward
and Balcomb seemed, rather ridiculously, to have impaled himself upon
it.

“Stand back, Balcomb,” commanded Leighton, and as Balcomb tried again
to reach Pollock, Leighton stepped between them.

“I quite agree with you, Pollock, that Balcomb is a bad lot, but this
isn’t the right place for a scrap.”

“I don’t care whether it is or not,” snapped Pollock. “I’m going to
muss him up. He’s lied about me; he’s tried to blacken my reputation--”

“You’re a fool,” shouted Balcomb. “I’ve never mentioned you--I
_wouldn’t_ mention you.”

“You wouldn’t, wouldn’t you? I should like to know what you meant by
writing a letter to the War Department charging me with being drunk
here in one of the clubs,--a club, you lying blackguard, that you never
were in in your life,--that you couldn’t get inside of to save your
neck. You charged me with being drunk and raising a row in that club;
and you hinted that I was in collusion with contractors at work on the
army post. You don’t deny it, do you?”

“I do, indeed! I never wrote any letter to the War Department on any
subject!”

Pollock laughed and took a step toward him.

“Don’t you deny what I tell you before Mr. Leighton! I have the letter
here in my pocket. It was sent to me direct by my chief, the very
hour it reached him. I suppose you thought they would telegraph my
discharge immediately when they got an anonymous letter like that.
I’ve a good notion to break your neck right here.”

He was a little fellow, but he seemed suddenly to take on heroic
proportions. He whipped open his tightly buttoned coat and drew out an
envelope.

“Here’s a letter--do you dare tell me you didn’t write it--an unsigned
typewritten letter to the quartermaster-general. I knew instantly where
it had come from.”

“I never saw it before; it’s a put-up job,” declared Balcomb, though
not in a tone that carried conviction.

“My chief sent it to me,” continued Pollock, “with his indorsement,
‘Better find this fellow and punch his head.’ And now, by the great
Lord Harry, I’m going to obey orders!”

Balcomb ducked under Leighton’s arm and bolted for the door, but as his
hand found the knob Pollock seized him by the collar and flung him back
against the ground-glass partition with a force that shook it.

“Leighton,” said Pollock in his blandest tones, as he held Balcomb
against the partition at the end of his stick, “I’ve told you, and
probably some of the adjoining tenants have heard me, that Mr. Balcomb
is a liar. I wish to add now that he is a coward. Stand up!” he
commanded, letting his stick fall, and Balcomb, thus released, made
another rush for the door, only to be seized again by the little
captain.

Leighton had tried up to this time to keep a straight face, but Balcomb
was so clearly frightened to the point of panic that Morris sat down
and laughed. Pollock, however, was as grave as an adjutant on parade,
and he continued to address Leighton:

“He is a contemptible coward, and I want to warn him before a witness
that if he ever appears at any place where I am--I don’t care where or
when--I’ll rise and proclaim him. Now get out before I break my stick
on you!”

He turned away from Balcomb, who seized the moment to dart into the
anteroom, where the two young women stood huddled together, and
began giving them orders with a great deal of unnecessary vehemence.
Leighton and Pollock followed at once, passing through the anteroom at
a leisurely pace set by Pollock. At the outer door the captain paused,
lifted his hat with a mockery of courtesy to Balcomb’s back, and
remarked in a pleasant tone:

“Good day, Mr. Balcomb. If you should ever need anything in my line
please give me the pleasure of a call.”

“Sutler’s clerk!” screamed Balcomb. Pollock made a feint of turning
back suddenly and Balcomb darted into his private office and slammed
the door.

Leighton leaned against the elevator shaft outside and laughed
until the corridors rang and sedate tenants came out to see who was
disturbing the peace. He laughed at Balcomb’s anxiety to keep out of
Pollock’s way, and he laughed now at Pollock, who joined him, wearing a
look of outraged dignity that was altogether out of proportion to his
size.

“He called me a sutler’s clerk,” said the captain, twisting his
mustache.

“Then he ducked. His insults don’t cut very deep.”

“I owe you an apology,” said Pollock, when they had reached the street,
“for running in on you that way; but I had to tell the chap I knew
about his lying letter the hour I got it.”

“It’s his busy day. I was there on a similar errand,” said Leighton.
“He’s a dangerous person--not in the way of personal violence,”--and
they both laughed--“but as an intriguing scoundrel.”

“Say, old man,”--they paused on the corner and Pollock cleared his
throat once or twice and struck a trolley pole with his stick as he
hesitated. “You don’t think she’s interested in him, do you?”

“Which she are you talking about?”

“I mean Miss Merriam. He’s been about with her a good deal. I just
wondered.” And the captain seemed both perplexed and embarrassed as he
continued to tap the pole.

“Miss Merriam is a very bright young woman, and bright young women are
not easily deceived,” replied Morris.

“You really think they’re not? Well, I devoutly _hope_ they’re not; but
I believe I’ll ask her.”

“I think I’d ask her,” said Morris, significantly.

And Captain Frank Pollock walked up-town with a look of determination
on his face.

CHAPTER XXXVI

WHEN DREAMS COME TRUE

“I think I have begun to live,” said Zelda the next afternoon.

She sat in the parlor at home, talking to her Uncle Rodney.

Her father was out walking about the neighborhood. He had not been
down-town since the crisis in his affairs, which had left him much
broken. He had been disposed to accept his brother-in-law’s kind
offices warily at first, but Zelda had reassured him as to her uncle’s
friendly intentions, and it was a relief to him to be able to shift the
responsibility of adjusting his affairs to other shoulders.

To all intents and purposes nothing had changed, and beyond the
short-lived gossip of business men who knew him personally, Ezra
Dameron’s losses passed unnoticed. Olive, who was Zelda’s closest
friend, never knew just what had happened. Zelda merely told her cousin
that her father had gone through some business trouble, but that it
had all been straightened out again. Mrs. Forrest knew even less than
this; there was, Rodney Merriam said, no manner of use in discussing
the loss of Zelda’s fortune with his sister, and talking about family
matters was a bore anyhow. Rodney was surprised at his own amiable
acceptance of the situation; but it had resulted in linking him closer
to Zelda’s life; she was dependent on him now as she might never have
been otherwise; and as for Ezra Dameron, he was a pitiful object, whose
punishment was doubtless adequate. It was possible for Rodney Merriam
to sit in the parlor of the old house in which he had been born, and
talk to Zelda with an ease and pleasure that he had not known since she
came home and went to her father instead of going to live with her aunt
or with himself, which would have been the sensible thing for her to do.

“I think I have begun to live,” repeated Zelda.

“I hope you are happy, Zee. To be happy’s the main thing. There is
nothing else in the wide world that counts; and I say it, whose life
has been a failure.”

“You shouldn’t talk so! You must remember that I’m letting you be good
to me, kinder and more helpful than any one ever was before to anybody,
just because you said you couldn’t be happy any other way.”

“Yes; I’m going to lead a different life,” he said ironically. “It
doesn’t pay to cherish the viper of enmity in one’s bosom. But I
suppose there’s a certain fun in hating people, even though you never
get a chance to even up with them.”

“You still have a little lingering paganism in you, _mon oncle_. But
it’s disappearing. Olive tells me that you and Captain Pollock have
quite hit it off. You certainly were nasty to him. He ought to have
called you out and made you fight for the snubbings you gave him.”

“Bah! I’m a little absent-minded, that’s all.” But Merriam smiled when
he remembered Pollock. “By the way, I’ve accepted his invitation for
to-morrow afternoon to drive out to the post site with him, I believe
you are asked? And Olive and Morris? Which wing of our family is
Pollock trying to break into, will you kindly tell me? He has shown you
rather marked attention, it seems to me.”

“You are quite likely to have a niece in the army. I fancy that it’s
all arranged; of course, it’s been Olive all the time. She hasn’t told
me yet,--but she doesn’t have to tell me!”

“You don’t say! I had no idea of it. I was troubled last winter for
fear--”

“It was foolish of you. I flattered myself for an absurd little while,”
she added mockingly, “that he might see something pleasing in me; but,
alas and alack! Olive stole him away from me, and she didn’t have very
hard work doing it, either. But you will help me to start Olive off
happily, won’t you? You know there’s nobody to do anything for her
except us. I think she ought to have a church wedding, and you could
give the bride away and Aunt Julia could have a wedding breakfast or a
large reception for her--all to show the community that we Merriams are
really a united family. Maybe Olive will have a military wedding! The
prospect is positively thrilling. In any event, you will do your very
nicest for her, won’t you?”

“I don’t see any way out of it,” he said, in a tone that was wholly
kind. “Olive is a pretty girl and a sensible one. If she’s going to be
married, I’ll let you buy my wedding present for her. Good-by.”

It rained the next day and Pollock telephoned to the members of his
party that the excursion would be postponed. Zelda hoped that Olive
would come up to the house, and when the bell rang she thought it was
her cousin and called to the black Angeline, who still acted as Polly’s
assistant, to bring Miss Merriam directly up stairs. But it was Morris
Leighton whom the girl announced.

“I’ll be down in a moment,” she said, but she waited, sitting at the
table, where she had so often pondered great and little matters during
the year, a troubled look upon her face, considering many things. The
fact that her mother and Morris’s father had once been lovers, as
blurted out by her father in his rage and confirmed by her uncle, had
impressed her profoundly; she was not a morbid girl, but there seemed
something uncanny in the story, and she had determined that Morris
should never again speak words of love to her. It was all too pitiful;
she had no right to any happiness that Morris might bring her; and here
again her mother’s memory seemed to follow and lay a burden upon her.
She was sorry that she had not asked the maid to excuse her, but it was
too late and she went down to the parlor with foreboding in her heart.

Morris was standing at the window watching the rain beat upon the
asphalt in the narrow street outside. He turned quickly as he heard her
step.

“You are a brave man to venture out in a storm like this! Of course,
you knew that our excursion is off? Captain Pollock telephoned that
we’d wait until a better day.”

“I understood so. But I was keyed to vacation pitch and I thought you
wouldn’t mind if I came,--if I didn’t stay very long.”

“Oh, of course,--if you don’t stay very long; but you needn’t
stand--all the time!”

“You wouldn’t have had me keep my office a dreary afternoon like this.
It’s rather cheerless in our office on rainy days, I should like you to
know.”

“But I’ve heard that the office is picturesque. You ought to give a tea
or do something of that sort, so that the rest of us, who daren’t go
down otherwise, may see it.”

“You should make the suggestion to Mr. Carr when he gets home. It would
have weight coming from you.”

“I can’t imagine it! The firm would probably lose all its clients if a
social function were held there.”

“I see that you’re not really interested in us; you’re afraid of the
microbes. I suppose our old office must have a lot of them.”

They both laughed at the inanity of their talk. The room was chilly,
and she rose and found the matches on the mantel.

“No! I can’t allow you,” she said. “I superintend the laying of these
pyres--I know exactly where the paper is--behold!”

The flame leaped suddenly through the light kindling, and as she
watched it he felt that her interest in it was the simple unaffected
interest of a child. Her dark-red gown enhanced her faint color; he
accused the slight black velvet line that crept here and there over
the cloth of trying to match her hair and eyes; then he turned his
attention to her hands,--that were, he told himself, like swift little
birds in their quickness and certainty.

Her father came to the door and hesitated.

“Won’t you come and share our fire, father?” Zelda asked.

“No, oh, no! I’m quite busy. It’s a very bad day, Mr. Leighton.” He
turned and they presently heard him climbing the stairs to his room.

It was very still in the parlor, and the wind outside sobbed through
the old cedars in accompaniment to the splash of the rain. It was very
sweet to her to know that Morris was so near; there was in his presence
in the house at this unwonted hour of the day a suggestion of something
intimate and new. She was looking away from him into the fire when he
rose and drew close to her.

“I have come to ask you to do something for me,” he said. “I want you
to sing me the song--my song--the one that means--so much--that means
everything.”

“I can’t, I can’t! Please don’t ask me,”--and she clenched her hands
upon her knees.

“You hurt me once,--when you knew you did, when you wished me to be
hurt, when I spoke to you of the song,--of my song,--of our song! But
I want you to sing it to me now, Zee, and if you can sing it and then
tell me that you don’t care,--that you don’t know what love is,--then I
shall never again speak to you--of love--or anything.”

“No; I don’t know--the song. I can’t sing it,--ever again!”

“Is it because you are afraid,--is that it? You can’t wound me now by
anything that you may say; but if you will sing me the song and then
tell me that your word will always be no, then I shall go away, Zee,
and I shall never trouble you again.”

She remembered, as she listened with her head bowed over her hands, the
first time she had heard his voice, that was deep and strong. It was
only a year ago, in Mrs. Carr’s drawing-room.

She rose and walked away and looked out through the window upon the
rain-swept street; she saw the wet leaves clinging in the walk; it was
a desolate picture; and something of the outer dolor, the change of the
year, touched her.

“I can’t sing your song--any song!” and she turned to him suddenly
with laughter in her eyes. “My throat is very painful,” she added and
laughed.

He did not smile, but took a step nearer.

“Is the reason because you are afraid? I must know,--I have waited a
long time to know.”

“Some other time,--when the sun is shining, then I may sing it,” she
said, her eyes upon the window.

“Then if you won’t sing it,--if you are afraid of it,--then you mean
for me to believe--”

“Nothing!”

“But I won’t be thrown off so easily, Zee,” he said, as though he had
always addressed her so. “You may as well take me seriously,--”

“I’m not--” and mirth lighted her eyes--“I’m not taking you at all!”

“Zee,”--and he drew still nearer, so that he could have put out his
hand and touched her.

“Please,” she begged, grave again, “please forget all about the
song,--and me! I wish you to,--very much. There are reasons,--a great
many reasons,--why you must forget all about the song you liked, and
everything that I may--suggest to you. Won’t you believe me,--please?”

“There can’t be any reasons that make any difference.”

“You can be kind if you will,” she said, “and merciful.”

“There is a reason; there is myself! I’m not fit to call your name or
to stand near you. I have little to offer; but I love you, Zee,”--and
the sincerity of his plea touched her, so that she did not speak for a
moment, but stood staring at the rain-beaten pane with eyes that saw
nothing.

“You could spare me--if you would,” she said.

“I would give my life for you,” he answered steadily, unyieldingly.
“But I can’t let you put me aside,--for any idle fears or doubts. You
must tell me what troubles you; you have not told me that you did not
care. I shall not go until you tell me what it is that weighs against
me. I have a right to one or the other.”

She looked at him suddenly; it would be easy to say that she did not
care; but her eyes filled at the thought, and she turned to the window
again. The beat of hoofs upon the hard street struck upon her with a
sense of the world’s vastness and the wind in the cedars sang like a
mournful prophet of the coming winter. She could not tell him that he
meant nothing to her, when he meant so nearly all; but if she should
set up a barrier, it might be enough and he would go.

“You know we have had trouble,--that my father has met with
losses,--and he needs me. My duty is here; that must be a sufficient
reason.”

“No,” he said instantly, “that is not a reason at all, Zee. You are
doing for your father all that you could be asked to do,--and I should
not ask you to do less.”

“I must do all I can,” she said. “There must be no question of loyalty.
And now,”--she turned to him smiling,--“it’s very disagreeable
outside; let us be cheerful indoors.”

“Zee,” he began gravely, “I’m not so easily dismissed as that. There’s
something that I want to say, that I shouldn’t dare say to you, if I
did not love you. I knew months ago that you were showing a cheerful
face to the world while you suffered.”

“Please, oh, please!” and she lifted her hands to her face. “It is not
kind! You must not!”

“You made light of things that you knew were good; you said things
often that you did not mean; but you were brave and strong and fine. I
understood it, Zee. But now that is all out of the way. There is no use
in thinking about it any more.”

“No; but you must know that I talked to you as I did because,--oh,
because I hated goodness! I tried to hate it! It was because--father--
but I mustn’t--speak of it.”

“I understand all about that, Zee.”

“But I am very old,”--she went on pitifully; “I am very old, and my
girlhood--it all went away from me last year--and every day I had to
act a part, and I did so many foolish things,--you must have thought--”

“That I loved you, Zee,” he declared, refusing to meet her on the
ground she sought.

“The sweetest thing in the world,” she said, “must be--not to know--of
evil; not to know!” and there was the pent-up heartache of a year in
the sigh that broke from her.

“Yes; it was all too bad, Zee; but we’ll find better things ahead--I’m
sure of it.”

She was not ready to look into the future. Her mind was still busy with
the year that had just ended.

“I said so many things that I did not mean, sometimes, and I was
hard--on you, when you meant to be kind; but I’m sorry now.”

“You _were_ a little hard on me now and then, but I think I liked it.
Some day I shall laugh about it.”

“I don’t see how you ever could,” she declared severely.

“I was thinking of the moose,” he answered, smiling down on her. “It
was your idea that I lacked enterprise; I wasn’t the venturesome knight
you had hoped to see. You liked to make me humble by setting goals for
me in new fields that you knew well enough I could never reach. That
was the way of it, wasn’t it, Zee?”

“It was very foolish of me. I really never meant anything at all about
the moose--and things like that.”

“Don’t take it back! I’m still going to get the moose or his
equivalent. I’m going to do something quite large and fine before I
give up the fight, only I want you to make it worth while.”

He rested one hand on the back of a chair; the other was dropped
lightly into the pocket of his coat. His gray eyes, when she looked up
at him, were steady and kind. He had not the appearance of a defeated
man. She had once heard Mr. Carr say that Morris Leighton was a fellow
who “got things done,” and the remembrance of this did not reassure her.

“I hope--I know--you will be a successful man,” she said slowly, “and
now let us be good friends.”

She turned as though to sit down and be quit of a disagreeable topic
forever, but he drew a step nearer and took her hands.

“Zee,”--and the smile was all gone from his eyes--“there isn’t any such
easy escape for you. Your reasons are no reasons. You have said all
that there is to say, haven’t you? But you haven’t said that you do not
love me. If you will say that I shall go away, and if that is so I must
know it now.”

She struggled to free her hands, but he held them tight. She drew away
from him, her face very white.

Suddenly she raised her eyes and looked at him.

“You must let me go. I can’t tell you why; but there can be nothing
between you and me.”

“I love you, Zee,” he said steadily. “You must let me help you,--if
there is any new trouble,--if your father has met some new difficulty--”

“Oh, you don’t understand! It isn’t father--alone--I mean. I can’t tell
you--I can’t speak of it--it was my mother--and your father--their
unhappy story; but there is a fate in these things! It’s not that I
don’t believe in you; it’s because I have grown afraid of happiness!
And it is all so strange, that you and I should meet here and that I
should have hurt you last summer--maybe--as my mother hurt your father.
And that was before I knew their story.”

“We must not think of them and what they did; we must think of
ourselves. I know the story of your mother and my father. Your uncle
told me, quite recently.”

“Yes; Uncle Rodney knew.”

“And now that is all there is of that and you haven’t alarmed me a
particle, Zee.”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” she faltered.

“I love you, Zee,” he said, simply and sincerely, as a man speaks who
does not use words lightly. He put his arms about her and drew her
close to him. The tears sprang into his eyes as he saw how wholly she
yielded her girl’s heart to him and how little there remained to win.
He felt her breath, broken with happy little sobs, against his face.

“We have our own life to live, Zee; there is no fate that is stronger
than love,” he said.

Midnight had struck. The rain had ceased and the autumn stars looked
down benignly upon the world. It was very still in the Dameron house.
Zelda sat dreaming before her table, her mother’s little book lying
closed before her. A new heaven and a new earth had dawned for her
on the day just ended and in her heart there was peace. She rose and
lighted a candle and went down through the silent old house, carrying
the book in her hand. In the parlor a few coals still burned fitfully
in the fireplace and she knelt before it, holding the book against her
cheek. Then she poised it above the flames, hesitated a moment and let
it fall where the embers were brightest. She watched the leather and
paper curl and writhe until they ceased to be distinguishable, and
still her eyes rested for a moment upon the place where they had been.

She rose and held the candle close to a photograph of her mother that
stood upon the mantel and studied it wistfully.

“Mother, dear little mother!” she whispered. “Morris!”

Then with a smile of happy content showing in the soft light of the
candle, she went out into the dark hall and up the long stair to her
room.

A LIST _of_ IMPORTANT FICTION

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

LOVE, POLITICS AND PELF

THE

GRAFTERS

BY FRANCIS LYNDE

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AN ANGEL OF THE TEXAS PLAINS

HULDAH

Proprietor of the Wagon-Tire House and Genial Philosopher of the Cattle
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BY ALICE MACGOWAN

and

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THE

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THE COST

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IN THE BISHOP’S CARRIAGE

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.