ignoring all those impassioned inquiries with which he had interlarded
the severer measures of corporeal punishment, she remarked in a spirit
of meekness and a very faint voice:

"Jerome, let me go, please; you are hurting me."

"But how much more you are hurting me," said Jerome, harshly.

He released her, however, and felt ashamed. No man with real manliness
in him, but does feel ashamed after he has hurt a woman. She may have
deserved it, and yet he feels ashamed.

One would think that now after this ungentlemanly conduct on Jerome's
part, Mell the high spirited will not only be full of a tremendous
indignation, but be willing, and more than willing, to give him up for
good and all.

How little you know a woman, you who think that! A harmless man never
does anywhere so little harm as in a woman's affections. The rod of
empire sways the world and a woman's mind--all women, to a great or
less degree; all women are sisters.

In other words, it is very necessary for a man to be capable of
shaking up a woman for past offences, and present naughtiness, when
she needs it, or else he must make up his mind to take a back seat and
give up the supremacy. Some of the fair sex never come to terms
without a shaking--there may be one or two, here and there among them,
who never come to terms, even with a shaking!

Mell did not belong to this small minority; she was completely
subdued. Contrite, and submissive, she now approached her audacious
antagonist; approached him timidly, where he stood a little apart, and
with his back turned to her, feeling, as we have said, quite ashamed
of himself, and said gently:

"Jerome, I will break with Rube if you will break with Clara."

"An honorable man cannot leave a woman in the lurch," answered he, in
a manner indicative of a strong protest under the existing law.

"And how about an honorable woman?" interrogated Mell.

"She can lie, and lie, and still be honorable," he informed her with
fierce irony.

"Then you expect me to----"

"I do! I confidently expect you to do it, and at once. Break with him,
and have a little patience with me, until Clara gets the Honorable
Archibald taut on the line, and awakens to the fact that she loves me
still--but only as a brother! It is coming--it is sure to come, and
before long."

"In the meantime," remarked Mell, with a peculiar expression, "what's
the use of hurting Rube's feelings?"

"Gods and angels, listen!" exclaimed her companion, in overwhelming
indignation. "The question then has narrowed down to the getting of a
husband without regard to any body's feelings--save Rube. His are not
to be hurt until you can hurt them with impunity! You are bound to
hold on to _him_ until you secure _me_, beyond a peradventure! That is
your little game, Mell, is it? Out upon you! Oh, unfortunate man that
I am, to have fallen into the hands of a woman who is particular as to
the fit of her ball dress, but has no preference when it comes to a
husband; who has the aspect of a goddess, but the easy principles of a
Delilah; who is, in fact, not a genuine woman at all, with a heart and
a soul in her, but a man-eating monster, seeking prey--a shark in
woman's clothing, ready to take into the matrimonial clutch, and
swallow at a single gulp, me, if you can get me; if not me, Rube; if
not Rube, any other eligible creature in man's guise, whether
descended from a molecule in the coral, or a tadpole in the spawn:
whether a swine of Epicurus, or an ape just from Barbary! Shame upon
you, woman! Shame! Shame!"

Restive under these severe strictures, Mell had made several
ineffectual attempts to put a stop to them, but her appealing gestures
implored in vain. Finding he would not desist, she bit her lips in
great agitation, and crimsoned violently.

"You are the most impertinent man in existence!" she informed him
petulantly, when he had done.

"That's right, Mell," he answered. "Turn red--turn red to the tips of
your eyelashes! It is the most hopeful sign I have yet seen.
Mellville, look at me."

She raised to him wonderingly her wondrously beautiful eyes.

"I have been asking myself how I could love you so well, a woman who
could condescend to sail under false colors; who knows how to stoop
from her high estate, and trick, and juggle, and blind; who has set a
trap to catch a mouse, and victimizes her prey; who has spread her
toils to obtain a husband under false pretences. I have asked myself
many times, 'how can you love that woman?' I have wished that I loved
you less--that I loved you not at all! And I would crush it out--this
unspeakable tenderness, which shields and defends your image in my
heart--crush it out, beat it down, tear it into tatters, grind it into
dust under the heel of an inexorable resolve, but that I believe, but
that I _know_, Mell, that there is something within you deeper,
better, worthier! 'Truth is God,' and the woman who is true in all
things is a part of Divinity. But what of the woman who is false where
she ought to be true? Let her hide her head in the presence of devils!
Be true, then, Mell, be earnest! This frivolous trifling with life's
most serious concerns shows so small in a being born to a noble
heritage! It is only excusable in a natural _niais_, or a woman
unendowed with a soul."

Jerome here paused. After a moment spent in thought, he approached his
companion very near, and in a voice of passionate tenderness resumed:

"My darling! you can never know what hours of torment, what days of
suffering, this conduct of yours has cost me. But I believe you have
erred more through thoughtlessness, and a pardonable feeling of
resentment--more through love turned into madness, than any settled
determination to do wrong. But now let it go no further. Hasten to set
yourself right with Rube. No matter whether you and I are destined to
be happy in each other's love or not; at all hazards be true to the
immortal within you. Promise me to undo the mischief you have done;
promise me to be a good, true, useful woman, thinking more of duty
than your own interest and pleasure. The world is overstocked with
butterflies, but it needs good women, and I want you to be one of
them--the best! My darling, you will promise me?"

Mell was much affected; she hung her head and her bosom heaved.

"Do you hesitate?" cried Jerome, mistaking her silence. "Promise me,
Mell, I implore, I beseech you!"

"Theatricals?" asked a voice in the doorway.

It was Rube.

"Rehearsing your parts?" he again inquired, coming in.

"Yes," replied Jerome. "For are we not all players upon a stage?"

"And what play have they decided upon?" next questioned the
unsuspecting Rube, who, carrying no concealed weapons himself, was
never on the lookout for concealed weapons on others.

"I don't recall the name," said Jerome. "Do you, Miss Creecy? It is
'Lover's Quarrel,' or some such twaddle, I think."

Mell thought it was something of that kind, but she furthermore
expressed the opinion that it would be well-nigh impossible to get it
up in time for the delectation of the Honorable Archibald.

"Which is no great pity," declared the off-hand Rube; "I wish he'd
take himself elsewhere to be delectated."

There was no doubt as to Rube's preferences for a brother-in-law;
which, however, did not take away from the awkwardness of this remark.
Not suspicious, neither was Rube obtuse; he noted a singular
contraction on Jerome's brow, he noted a strange confusion in Mell's
manner, and he put it all down to his own blundering tongue, which was
always placing his best friend either in a false or in an annoying
position before Mell. Out of these considerations he made haste to
subjoin:

"Ah, Mellville, you should have seen Devonhough how splendidly he
acquitted himself in our class plays at college!"

This was a pure offering from friendship's store. Honest Rube, with
his fine open countenance all aglow with enthusiasm for his friend and
joy in the presence of the woman he loved, looked the archetype of
hopeful young manhood, untouched, as yet, by sorrow or mistrust.
Regarded from an architectural standpoint, he had the sublime
simplicity and dignity of the Doric, which was just wherein he
differed from Jerome, who was a Corinthian column, delicately
chiselled, ornately moulded.

Mell remarked, in reply to this expression of lively admiration from
Rube, that she wished she could have seen Mr. Devonhough--or
something. Mr. Devonhough, with the expression of a man whose
self-respect will not admit of his bearing much more, said with an
impatient "Pshaw," that she needn't wish to have seen him, that this
good acting of his was all in Rube's eye, and nowhere else; that he
hated an actor, and that he never would act another part himself, as
long as he lived, not to oblige anybody, and so help him God!

After which, shadowed by clouds, beleaguered with dark thoughts, with
sombre fires of jealousy smoldering in his eye, and war-hounds of
anxiety gnawing at his vitals, he abruptly turned and left the
room--not with his usual deliberation.

And still Rube saw nothing.

"He's real cut up," said the sympathetic Rube, looking commiseratingly
after the friend of his bosom. "And all for what? Because a woman
never seems certain of her own mind. When judgment overtakes you women
what is to become of you all, anyhow--eh, Mell?"

Mell could hardly say; and Rube, dismissing Jerome from his mind for
the present, found other occupation. He had never seen Mell before in
full dress. He addressed himself _con amore_, and exclusively, for a
time, to the study of structural feminity and those marvels of nature
presented to the eye of the earnest investigator, in the shape of a
well-formed woman on the outside of a ball dress.

During this process Rube's sensations were indefinable.

Mell, preoccupied in thoughts of her own, hears, at length, his voice
dreamily, as a sound from afar, and looks up irritably to see, for the
hundredth time, how coarse of fibre Rube is compared to Jerome.

She resents the unpalatable fact. She resents something else, and
makes a very vigorous but unavailing effort to gain her freedom.

"I cannot understand," playfully remonstrated Rube, and with arms
immovable, "why so simple a matter disturbs you so much. You are as
white as a sheet, you are quivering like a leaf, your hands are icy
cold, and what is it all about?"

"I told you never, _never_ to do that!" cried out Mell, in an agony of
passionate protest.

Even the most cold-blooded among mortals finds the caress of a person
not dear to them offensive; but take the woman of emotional nature,
exquisitely sensitive in all matters of feeling, and to such the touch
of unloved lips is worse than a plague spot.

"Don't you hear me? I cannot bear it! I am not used to it!"

There was something more than maidenly coyness in her tone; there was
mental anguish, and a downright shade of anger. We wonder Rube did not
detect it. But you know, gentle reader, how it is. There are so many
things all around and about us which we do not hear and see, because
we are intent upon other matters, and are not looking for them. With
such feelings, in that dreadful moment Mell would rather have
submitted to a dozen stripes from Jerome, than one single caress from
Rube--her future husband, bear you in mind! the being by whose side
she expected to pass the rest of her days. Poor Mell! If getting up in
the world requires self-torture, self-immolation such as this,
wouldn't it be better, think you, not to get up? Wouldn't it be
better, in the long run, for every woman, situated as you are, to use
a dagger, and thereby not only settle her future, but get clean out of
a world where such sufferings are necessary? There can't be any other
world much worse, judged by your present sensations.

But Rube, as we have said, did not hear that piteous wail of a woman
coercing her flesh and blood, the frame of her mind, the bent of her
soul. She was his own, and no words could tell, how he loved her. If a
man cannot lawfully kiss his own wife, or one so near to being his own
wife, it is a hard case, truly. That one little slip "'twixt the cup
and the lip," which has played such havoc in men's expectations, from
the first beginnings of time to the present moment, did not enter into
Rube's calculations, or his thoughts.

He was in a playful and a loving mood. He tightened his clasp upon
her, he chucked her under the chin, he pinched her cheek, he patted
those sunny locks of hers and smiled down into that fair face, _faire
les yeux doux_, and babbled to her in lover-language, not unlike the
"pitty, pitty ittle shing" upon which we linguistically feed helpless
infancy, as little witting the possible sufferings of the child under
such an infliction, as Rube did Mell's.

"Now truly, Mell," asked Rube, "did you never let any other fellow
kiss you--never? not once?"

"No!" said Mell, emphatic and indignant. "_Never!_ And _you_ shouldn't
now, if I could help myself! Do go away! I tell you I'm not used to
such as this!"

She was almost ready to cry.

The whole thing was immensely amusing and entertaining to Rube, and
while he laughed, he could also understand how it might come hard on a
girl, at first, to feel the bloom despoiled on her chaste lips.

"But you will get used to it after awhile," he assured her, with a
quiet smile. "My word for it, you will! I will see to it that you do.
There now, my pretty one (just what Jerome called her) sweet,
frightened bird, why ruffle your beautiful plumage against these bars?
They are made of adamant; but only be quiet and take to them kindly
and they will not derange a single feather. You are exquisitely lovely
to-night! You will intoxicate all beholders! And have you been
thinking of that blissful time when we are going to get married?"

She had, of course; but what made him so impatient? Couldn't he wait
until she got back home? Rube could, certainly; but only on
conditions, and those conditions would come very hard on a girl not
used to a lover's kiss, and who objected to a lover's fondling, unless
she managed well.

Fortunately, Mell could manage well. She could have managed the
diversified attractions of a dime museum if necessary.

"And before he shall desecrate my lips again," Mell vowed to herself,
under her breath, "I will perish by my own hands!"

Ah! Mell, Mell, you should have thought of that before you sold
yourself!

At daylight she crawled upstairs and into bed. The ball had been a
great success and she its reigning belle. Women like her, with such a
form, with such a face, with such glory of hair and wealth of high
spirits and physical exuberance, work like a spell in a ball-room.
There was something bewildering in the gleam of her eye; something
intoxicating in the turn of her neck, the flow of her garments.

She had danced, to please Rube, more than once with Jerome. It was
while the two were floating together in that delirious rapture of
conscious nearness, to which the conventional waltz gives pretext
and the stamp of propriety, and while their senses swayed to the
rhythmic measure of the sweetest music they had ever heard, that
Mell looked up meltingly into her partner's face--a face absorbed,
excited, yet darkly set with a certain sternness which Mell fully
understood--looked up and said to him: "Only wait until I get back
home." Simple words indeed, and holding little meaning for those
who heard; but they gave a new lease of life to Jerome. He answered
back in a whisper, certain words. And now it only remained for
Clara Rutland to accept the Honorable Archibald Pendergast and the
happiness of two loving hearts would be assured.

The ball is over, gone, past, never to come back again, with its waltz
melody, its ravishing rhyme without reason, its sweet smelling
flowers, its foam-crested wine, its outlying joy, its underlying
pathos, its hidden sweetness, and its secret pain. For, there never
was a ball yet which had its lights and not its shadows; which did not
have some heavy foot among its light fantastic toes; some heavy heart
among its gallant men and beautiful women.

Mell lives it over in the pale dawn. It made her blood curdle and her
flesh creep to think of those two men. What was she going to do with
them--Rube and Jerome? How was it all to end?

Horrible it would be to break off with Rube, more horrible still not
to do so. Fearful it would be to tell him the truth--the whole truth.
But that was what Jerome expected her to do, what she ought to do.

Those words of his were burned into her memory with fire. He wanted
her to become a good, true, useful woman, and be no longer a
butterfly.

He had called her 'my darling.' He had called her so twice. He loved
her just as much as ever. In fact, he loved her more; for the man is
not living who does not love a woman more when he finds out somebody
else loves her as well as he.

She was quite decided, and Jerome was undeniably right; there was but
one honorable course for her to follow. Even if Jerome married Clara,
and she herself never had another offer of marriage (she never would
have another such as Rube) how sweet it would be, even in a life of
loneliness, to be free, to be able to maintain the dignity and the
probity of her womanhood, to be able to throw aside the despicable
part of a double-dealer and a deceiver, to be able to feel that she
had been worthy of Jerome though never his.

Thus Mell felt when she stretched her weary limbs on that silken couch
of ease in the dim morning light, and turned her face to the wall, and
closed her eyes, and thought of that exquisite moment, when from
Jerome's shoulder, conventionally used, she had proffered to him the
olive branch of peace and had caught the heavenly beams of that smile
which restored her to his favor. With the bewitchment of this smile
reflected upon the fair lineaments of her own face, Mell fell into
that sweet rest, which remains even for the people who flirt.

But how different everything always seems the day after the ball!

It must be the gas-light in the ball-room, it must be the sunlight in
the day-time, which makes all the difference. Sunlight is the
effulgence of a God, and lights up Reality; gas-light is a ray kindled
by the feeble hand of man to brighten the unreal--a delusion and a
snare.

The absurd fancies of a ball-room hide their fantastic fumes in the
broad daylight.

Coming down to a six o'clock dinner--finding Rube at the bottom of
the stairs to attend upon her--finding the assembled company,
including the Honorable Archibald, half-famished and yet kept
waiting for their dinner, until the future mistress of the Bigge
House put in an appearance, Mell began more clearly to estimate her
own importance--her own, but through Rube. Her beauty, her wit,
they were her own; but they had availed her little before her
betrothment to Rube. Especially was she impressed with this aspect of
the case, when, hanging upon his arm, she entered the brilliant
drawing-room to become immediately the bright particular star of the
social heavens, the cynosure of all eyes; to be immediately
surrounded by flattering sycophants; to be pelted with well-bred
raillery for her tardiness and sleepy-headedness; to be bowed down
to and reverenced and waited upon and courted and admired by these
high-born people--she, old Jacob Creecy's daughter, but the future
wife of the young master of this lordly domain.

And Jerome expected her to give all this up--did he? And to give it up
whether he gave up Clara, or not? Jerome was simply crazy--and she
would be a good deal crazier herself before he caught her doing it!
Mell still has an eye to the main chance. Mell still "tuck arter her
ole daddy!"

The summer wanes. The ripened grain is harvested and the chaff falling
from the sheaves on the threshing floor; the patient teams sniff the
first cool breeze and put their shoulders to the wheel; the wagons are
heaped in corn; the fields grow white for the picking. In the windings
of green valleys yellow leaves and red play fast and loose amid the
green, and go fluttering to the ground; the deer stalks abroad; glad
hunters blow their horns, and the unleashed hounds are joyful at the
scent of noble prey.

Twice has the moon changed, and Mell is still at the Bigge House,
showing up amid its polished refinements, as a choice bit of Corian
faïence contrasted with cut-glass. Every day she spoke of going, but
every day there was some reason why she should not go and should stay.
Mrs. Rutland wanted her to stay; and Mell herself, whatever her
misgivings, whatever her struggles, whatever her trials, wanted, too,
on the whole, to stay. Here was a congenial atmosphere of style and
fashion, congenial occupation--or the congenial want of any, endless
variety of amusement, the hourly excitement of spirited contact with
kindred minds, and no vulgar father and mother to mortify her tender
sensibilities. Here, too, she was in the presence of the one being on
earth she most loved, and even to see him under cold restraint, was
better than not to see him at all. Sometimes it happened they sat near
each other for a few blissful seconds; sometimes it was a stolen look
into each other's eyes; sometimes an accidental touch of the hand when
Jerome was initiating the ladies into the ingenious methods of a
fore-overhand stroke or a back-underhand stroke, or the effective
results of skillful volleying--such casual trifles as these, unnoticed
by others, but more precious to them than "the golden wedge of
Ophir."

So the days passed on; rainy days, dry days, clear days, cloudy days,
bright days, dark days, every kind of day, and every one of them a
day's march nearer the imperishable day.

"There's a messenger outside, Miss Mellville, to say that your father
is sick and wishes you to come home."

Jerome, it was, who spoke.

"Father sick!" exclaimed Mell. "I will go at once."

"How provoking!" broke in Mrs. Rutland. "I wanted you particularly
to-day. Rube, too. Don't you remember he wants you to go to Pudney?"

"Yes, yes," interrupted Mell hastily. She did not wish Mrs. Rutland to
say before Jerome what Rube wanted her to go there for. It was to have
her picture taken. "I am very sorry, but if father is really sick I
ought to go."

"Rhesus is under saddle," said Jerome. "Shall I ride over and find out
just how he is? I can do so in a very few minutes."

"No!" said Mell, with quick speech and restrained emphasis. Whom would
he see there? What would he hear? Her mother in an old cotton frock,
talking bad grammar. And Jerome was so delicate in his tastes, so
fastidious and æsthetic.

"No," said Mell, decidedly. "I'm much obliged, but--"

"Yes," interposed Mrs. Rutland, "I wish you would go, for Rube is not
here and I've no notion of letting Mell go unless it is necessary."

"Did you say I must not?" inquired Jerome, addressing Mell and not
moving.

"Go, if Mrs. Rutland wishes it," stammered Mell, furiously angry with
herself that she could not utter such commonplace words to him without
getting all in a tremor. They were all blind, these people, or they
must have seen, long ago, how it stood with Jerome and herself.

He was back in an incredibly short space of time.

"I saw your mother," Jerome reported. (Great heavens! in her
poke-berry homespun, without a doubt!) "Your father is quite sick, but
not dangerously so. He only fancied seeing you, but can wait until
to-morrow."

While the old man waited, Mell had her pretty face photographed for
Rube.

He drove her home in the buggy the next morning. Coming in sight of
the quiet and shade of the old farm-house and recalling, as a
forgotten dream, its honest industry, its homely manners, its sweet
simplicity, Mell marvelled at her own sensations. Could it be
gladness, this feeling that swept over her at sight of the old home?
Yes, it was gladness. Perplexed in mind, heavy at heart, and fretted
to the lowest depths of her soul by this struggle within her, which
seemed to be never ending, Mell was glad to get back into the quietude
of the old farm house after the continuous strain and excitement of
the past few weeks. The flowers in the little garden stirred gently in
the breeze; there was a gleam of blue sky above the low roof; birds
chirped softly in the euonymus hedge under the window of her own
little room, and the tranquillity and serenity and staidness of the
spot soothed her feverish mind and calmed her feverish spirit. It was
lonely, desolate, mean, and poor, but none the less a refuge from the
storms of a higher region; from the weariness of pleasure and the
burden of empty enjoyment; from the tiresomeness of being amused, and
the troublesomeness of seeming to be amused without being; from an
ecstasy of suffering and an agony of transport; in short, a hoped-for
refuge from herself and Jerome.

"Hurry up, Mell! Hurry up! He's mos' gone!"

"What, mother! You don't mean--?"

"Yes, I does, Mell. He was tuck wuss in the night. He won't know ye,
I'm 'fraid."

But he did, and opening his eyes he smiled faintly, as she hung over
his ugly face--uglier now, after the ravages of disease, than ever
before; dried up by scorching fevers to a semblance of those
parched-up things we see in archæological museums; deeply lined and
seamed and furrowed, as if old Time had never had any other occupation
since he was a boy but to make marks upon it; uglier than ever, but
with an expression upon it which had never been there before--that
solemn dignity which Death gives to the homeliest features.

"Father! father!" sobbed Mell, "don't die! Don't leave your little
Mell! Don't leave me now, when I've just begun to love you as I
ought!"

Ha, Mell! Just begun! He has reached a good old age, and you are a
woman grown, and you have just begun to love your father! It is too
late, Mell. He does not need your love now. He is trying to tell you
that, or something else. Put your ear a little closer.

"What did you say, father! Try to tell me again."

And he did; she heard every word:

"Good-bye, little Mell! I ain't gwine ter morteefy ye no mo'!"

CHAPTER VI.

A DEAL IN FUTURES.

"Why do you fret so much about it?" asked Rube, sitting beside his
promised wife about a week after the old man was laid to rest. "You
loved your father, of course, but--"

"There's the point!" exclaimed Mell. "I did not love him--not as a
child ought to love a parent. What did it matter that his looks
were common and his speech rude? His thoughts were true, his
motives good, his actions honest, and now I mourn the blindness which
made me value him, not for what he was, but what he looked to be. In
self-forgetfulness and sacrificing devotion to me he was sublime. He
went in rags that I might dress above my station; he ate coarse food
that I might be served with dainties; he worked as a slave that I
might hold my hands in idleness; and how did I requite him? I was
ashamed of him; I held him in contempt. Oh, oh! My, my!"

"Come, now," remonstrated Rube, trying to stem the torrent of this
lachrymatory deluge, and wondering what had become of all the
comforting phrases in the English language, that he could not put his
tongue upon one of them. "Do try to calm yourself, dearest. I know you
are exaggerating the true state of the case, as we are all prone to
do in moments of self-upbraiding. I never saw you lacking in respect
to him."

"There's a great many bad things in me you never saw," blubbered Mell,
breaking out afresh.

"Dear, dear!" said Rube, "I never saw such grief as this!"

"You--are--disgusted, I know?"

"Not a bit of it!" declared Rube; "just the contrary! I fairly dote on
the prospect of a wife who is going to cry hard and cut up dreadful
when anything happens to a fellow. It kind of makes dying seem sort of
easy. But, come, now; you've cried enough. Let me comfort you."

"No, no!" cried Mell, shrinking away from him. "If you only knew, you
would not want to comfort me. I do not deserve a single kind word from
you. I am unworthy your regard. I am a weak woman, and a wicked one.
Oh, Rube! I have not treated you right. That day at the picnic I was
angry with some one else; I was piqued; I did not feel as I made you
think I felt. I--that is--"

Here Mell broke down completely in her disjointed arraignment of self,
thoroughly disconcerted by the young man's change of countenance. His
breath came quick, a dark cloud overspread his features, and he lost
somewhat of his ruddy color.

"Do you mean, then, to say I was but a tool, and the whole thing a lie
and a cheat?"

Rube's thoughts sped as directly to their mark, as the well-aimed
arrow from the bent bow.

"Don't be so angry with me," prayed Mell, "please don't! You don't
know how much I have suffered over it. I say, at that time I thought I
cared for some one else, and so I ought not, in all fairness, to have
encouraged you; but, it is only since father died, that I have been
able to see things in their true light. I have had a false standard of
character, a false measure of worth, a false conception of human aims
and human achievement. Out of the wretchedness of sleepless hours I
have heard the under-tones of truth: Knowledge is great, but how much
greater is goodness without knowledge than knowledge without
goodness!"

Rube made no reply. He left her side, and, crossing the room, folded
his arms and looked moodily out of the window. He was very simple in
nature, somewhat slow, sometimes stupid; but loyal and true--true in
great things, and no less true in small ones, and as open as the day.

Mell dried her eyes, and glanced at him anxiously. The worst part of
her duty was now over. She began already to feel relieved; she began
already to know just how she was going to feel in a few minutes more,
the possessor of a conscience, void of offence before God and man.
There's nothing like it--a good conscience.

"This beats all!" soliloquized Rube, at the window; "I'll be hanged if
there's enough solid space in a woman's mind to peg a man's hat on!
Now, just as things have panned out all right for Devonhough, here's a
tombstone in my own graveyard!"

"Ha!" thought Mell, hearing, considering.

"_Just as things have panned out all right for Devonhough._"

What did that mean? Her throbbing, panting, bursting heart knew only
too well. Clara had come to a decision--she would marry Jerome, and
not the Honorable Archibald.

Rube had scarcely ceased to speak when Mell raised her head.

"Rube!"

Very soft that call!

Unheeding, Rube still looked out of the window and into the past. That
day at the picnic--that beautiful day, that day of days; a pure,
white, luminous spot in memory's galaxy of fair and heavenly
things--that day she had not felt as she had made him think she felt;
hence, he had been a cat's-paw, a puppet; and she--oh, it could not be
that Mell was a dissembler, a hypocrite, a serpent!

"Rube!"

A little louder was this call.

He turned, he obeyed--no more able to resist the beckoning hand, the
dulcet voice, the luring glance, than you or I the spells of our own
individual Sirens and Circes.

He came back to her, but stood in gloomy waiting, his brow so dark,
his expression so hard and cold and stern, that the girl on the sofa
felt herself wilting and withering before him, as a frail flower in a
deadly blast.

She did not say a word.

She only used two eyes of blue, and two big tears which rolled out of
them, and down upon her velvet cheek, and splash upon her little white
hand, with crushing effect--not upon the hand, but the beholder.

"Mell," said he, hoarsely, "what is all this? What is the meaning of
it? I do not see your drift, exactly. Do you wish to be free?"

"I thought that would be _your_ wish," floundered Mell, "perhaps, when
you heard of that other--other fancy--you know, Rube; if I had not
told you anything about it, and it had come afterwards to your
knowledge, you would have thought I had not acted squarely towards
you."

"So much, then, I understand; but what are your leanings now? Don't
beat about the bush; speak out your wishes plainly. I am not a brute.
I would release a woman at the very altar, if her inclinations leaned
in another direction. Do you imagine I would care to marry a woman,
however much I might love her, whose heart was occupied by another?
Where would be the sanctity of such a marriage? I would be the worse
defrauded man of the two. So, Melville, if there is any one you like
better than you do me, speak it now. Tell me plainly, do you care for
me--or some one else?"

Now, Mell, here's your chance; hasten to redeem your past. He has put
the whole thing before you in a nutshell. You know just how he thinks
and how he feels. After this, you dare not further betray a heart so
noble, so forbearing, so true! Tell him, Mell; tell him, for your own
sake; tell him, for his sake; tell him, for God's sake! Come, Mell,
speak--speak quick! Don't wait a second, a single second! A second is
a very little bit of time, the sixtieth part of one little minute;
but, short as it is, if you hesitate, it will be long enough for you
to remember that you may live to be a very old woman, and pass all
your life in this old farm-house, utterly monotonous and wearisome;
that you will be very lonely; that you will be very poor; that you
will be very unhappy; that you will miss Rube's jewels and Rube's
sugar plums and Rube's hourly devotions, to which you have now become
so well accustomed;--short, but long enough to remember all this. So
speak, Mell, quick! quick! The second is gone before Mell speaks.

It was a long second for Rube.

"O Mell, Mell! can it be that you care for him and not for me? At
least, let _me_ hear it--let me hear the truth! I can bear anything
better than this uncertainty."

Even this bitter cry brought forth no response. The dumbness of
Dieffenbachia lay upon Mell's tongue.

"I see how it is," said Rube, turning to go.

"No, you don't!" exclaimed Mell, pulling him back. She was now
desperate. Her tear-stained face broke into April sunshine. "I do not
care for that other. How could you think so? Once I thought so myself;
it was a delusion. A woman cannot love a selfish, tyrannical,
overbearing creature like that!--not really, though she may think so
for a time; but you, Rube, you are the quintessence of goodness! you
are worth a dozen such men as he!"

"So it's me!" ejaculated Rube. "I am the lucky dog! I am the
quintessence of goodness!"

He drew a long breath; he sank comfortably back into the old seat and
into the old sense of security, and addressed himself with a joyous
air and renewed enthusiasm to the old rôle of love-making.

Just like a man--the very man who thinks he has such a deep insight
into dark matters, who thinks he knows so much about everything in the
wide world, especially women!

"You are the most conscientious creature alive!" declared Rube,
happier than ever, over a nearly lost treasure. "The whole amount of
your offence seems to be that you once thought you cared--"

"Yes--that's it! I once thought so."

"But _I_ once thought that I cared for another girl. You would not,
for that reason, wish to send me adrift, would you?"

"No. Only I wish you hadn't!"

"Just the way I feel about it."

He laughed uncontrollably.

"Pretty one! Soul of honor! What other girl would have opened her lips
about such a trifle? And now I will not be put off another moment.
Name the day which is to make me the happiest of men."

The day was named, and Mell really felt more composure of mind and
less disquietude of spirit than she had known for many a day. She had
eased, to some extent, her guilty conscience. She had shed many
bitter, if unavailing, tears over Rube and her dead father; and now,
convinced that she could not help herself, and determined to make the
best of it, her mind drifted complacently over the long stretch of
prosperous years before her, wherein she would be neither lonely, nor
poor, nor unhappy, nor unloved; with sugar plums to her taste and
jewels in quantity--for there are just two things in this world every
young woman is sure to love--tinsel and taffy.

A healing balm now poured itself, so to speak, into her life and
future prospects.

Of Jerome she saw no more. He had gone home before her father's
funeral. He had seemingly passed out of her life forever. She never so
much as mentioned his name, even to Rube, and she even thought of him
less frequently than of yore. How could she be expected to think of
him with the wedding trousseau demanding all her thoughts and time?

But one day Rube came to the farm-house, worried, and told Mell, of
his own accord, that it was about Jerome and Clara. There had been a
row between them.

The Honorable Archibald Pendergast, as she well knew, was no ordinary
man--neither, it seemed, was he an ordinary lover. Notwithstanding his
late rejection, he had been paying Clara such marked attentions in
Washington that a society journal had publicly announced their
engagement; whereupon Jerome had delivered his ultimatum--she would
marry him at once or else they were quits.

"And I don't blame him," declared Rube, "not one bit! He stood as much
at her hands, and stood it as long, as a man _can_ stand. I never
could have taken the same from you."

Ah, Rube, we little know, any of us, just what we are taking at any
hour in the day and at the hands of our own friends!

It is well for us that we do not.

"And now," inquired Mell, scarcely able to articulate, so great was
her agitation, "what is Clara going to do?"

"She is going to marry the Honorable Archibald," replied Rube, adding,
with the breezy disgust of a sunny temper: "It's a confounded shame!
He's old enough for her father, and I don't believe she cares _that_
about him! But he's a great statesman, and there's a good prospect of
his getting into the White House some of these days; and some women
love social eminence better than they do their own souls! I am glad
you are not one of that kind, Mell--you will be content with your
planter husband, won't you, Mell?"

"I have written him to come to our wedding," pursued Rube. "I like him
as well as ever--even more! He's a splendid fellow! I hope he will
come, but I think it hardly probable."

Mell thought, too, it was hardly probable. After this, things went
wrong again with Mell. Her trousseau ceased to occupy her time and
attention; her wayward thoughts waged internecine strife in regions of
turmoil and vain speculation.

Meanwhile, Jerome made no sign.

"Woe is me!" wept Mell. Much had she wept since her father died; but a
dead man is not half so sore a subject of weeping as a living woman's
unworthiness, when it falls under her own judgment.

"To do right is the only thing," moaned the unhappy girl--"to do right
and give no heed to consequences. I have learned the lesson at last.
It has been a hard one. Henceforth I am going to do right though I
slay myself in the doing."

She prayed that night as she had never prayed in all her life before.
She asked for divine help in doing right by Rube. And she arose from
her knees strengthened to do her duty, as she then conceived it.

CHAPTER VII.

THE LAST STRUGGLE.

And the quiet days pass one by one--each one very like the other--until
the last sun has set, and the evening lights gleam in the old
farm-house on the last night before the wedding-day--that wedding-day
which she had, to the very last, put off to the latest possible time.
Under the hush of evening skies, in the flower-decked garden, in the
dreamy grey air, in the sight of fallow fields glistening in the
moonlight, Rube is saying good-night.

"To bed early," was the parting injunction of Mell's future lord; "we
have a long journey before us."

"Yes," answered Mell, solemnly, "a very long journey. The journey of
life."

"However long, all too short," was Rube's fond reply. He stroked her
lovely hair. "Mell!

                  'May never night 'twixt me and you
                  With thoughts less fond arise!'"

After he was gone Mell repeated those words, "a very long journey."
Then she sighed.

It would have to be a very long journey, indeed, to correspond with
this sigh of Mell's--a very long sigh.

Well, there is no better time for a woman to sigh than the night
before she is married. Nor are tears amiss. Not one in ten knows what
she's about; for, if she did, she would not--

On the brink of the Untried there is room enough to stop and look
about one, to think better of it, to turn around and go back; only no
man or woman was ever yet gifted with brains enough to do it. The
things unknown, which loom up so temptingly into sight upon the brink
of the Untried, look far more desirable, infinitely more tempting,
than all the known blessings of the past. And so Mell sighed--but
lifted not a finger to save herself.

She went back into the little parlor to finish packing some
favorite trifles in a box to be sent to the Bigge House ere she
returned--school friend's mementoes and some of Rube's presents.

Thus engaged, outside was heard the noise of stamping hoofs and the
rumbling of wheels--some vehicle stopped at the gate--somebody came up
the sanded garden path, ascended the steps, crossed the little porch
and gave a hasty rap upon the front door.

Mell sprang to her feet. It thrilled her strangely, that footstep on
the porch, that knock upon the door.

Who could be coming there at such an hour--and the night before her
wedding?

Rube, perhaps; something he had forgotten to do or say. She would go
to the door; she started, and came back. She listened again.

It was not Rube's step--it was not Rube's knock.

Her senses were ever alert; she always noticed such things.

But the man outside had no time to lose, and did not propose to wait
there all night. He cleared his throat impatiently and knocked again.
This knock was louder than the first and more peremptory. It had a
remarkable effect upon Mell--a startling effect.

She sank upon the nearest chair, she trembled from head to foot; wild
thoughts whirled through her anarchical brain with the swiftness of a
whirlwind, and it was not until the persistent intruder knocked the
third time that she succeeded, through breath coming thick and fast,
and half-palsied lips, faintly to call out, "Come in!"

And the man came in, and the girl, crouching upon the chair, as if she
would fain hide herself down in depths of concealment where he would
never find her, felt no surprise, knowing already the late comer was
Jerome.

Jerome--but not at his best. He had been sick--or, so she thought, her
affrighted eyes sweeping over him in one swift glance. Pale was his
face, and careworn; physically, Jerome had never appeared so ill;
spiritually, he had never appeared to better advantage.

There are perplexed and ethereal truths in the heart of human things
which no bloom of health ever yet expressed. The sweetness pressed out
of suffering by the operations of its own nature, clothes itself in a
subtler and more irresistible charm than was ever yet discovered in
the hues of a pearly complexion, or the rays of a brilliant eye. From
under the potent spell of its attraction, we soon forget a countenance
merely beautiful; we never forget the one made beautiful through
suffering.

Our sainted mother, who went through rivers of fire and a thousand
death agonies ere death itself came; who died, at last, with a joyful
smile on her face, bidding us meet her on the other shore--we do not
forget how _she_ looked!

Our heroic father, borne home from the battle-field, with his death
wound; who bade us with his last breath to serve God and our
country--we do not forget how _he_ looked! These are the images
indelibly fixed in the sensitized slide of memory, while the
peach-bloom face upon the boulevard, the merry face in the dance, fade
as fades the glory of a flower.

Jerome has suffered. Some of his youth he has left behind him. But
with that youth he has left, too, much of his suffering. At this
moment every feature in his facial federation of harmonious elements
was lighted up with a kindling spirit of its own. Whatever the
inspiration, whether intrinsically noble, or ignoble, it is to its
possessor a glorious inspiration. We say noble, or ignoble; for, one
man's glory may be another man's shame, and both true men. So,
perhaps, no cause is great in itself, but only great in the conception
of the soul who conceives it and who fights for it.

Out of Jerome's presence, Mell had branded him as a being selfish,
tyrannical, and incapable of long retaining a woman's love; in his
presence she only knew he was the embodiment of life's supreme good.

But worse than a flaming sword was now the sight of the man she loved.
She dreaded the sound of his coming voice as she dreaded the trump of
Doom. What would he say--he who handled words as a skilful surgeon
manipulates cutting-instruments, to kill or cure--what would he say to
the woman who had been untrue to her word?

He said absolutely nothing.

No formal salutation passed between the two. Drawing a chair directly
in front of the hostess, by whom his coming was so little expected,
Jerome sat down upon it and regarded the agitated face and the almost
cowering form of the woman before him, in profound silence.

She had dreaded his words, had she? Heavens! This wordless arraignment
of her guilty self at the bar of her own conscience, her silent
accuser both judge and jury, and only two wretched hearts, which ached
as one, for witness, was worse than a true bill found in a crowded
court of justice. A storm of angry words, a typhoon, a sorocco, a
veritable Dakota blizzard of sweeping invective, would have been easy
lines compared to this.

She would die--Mell knew she would--of sheer shame and self-reproach,
before this awful silence, which threatened to continue to the end of
time, was ever broken.

Would he never open his mouth and say something, no matter how
dreadful?

He did, at last.

"Mellville," said Jerome, gently, "are you glad to see me?"

"No!" passionately.

"Not glad? Then you are the most ungrateful, as well as the most
faithless, of mortal beings. I have travelled long to get here. My
reaching here in time was uncertain, well nigh a hopeless matter; but
nothing is hopeless to the man who dares. What did I come for? Do you
know?"

"To load me with reproaches. Do it and begone!"

"No, Mell; I have not come for that! There's no salvation in abuse,
and I have come to save. Perhaps, Mell, there is no one in the whole
world who understands you--your nature, in its strength and in its
weakness--as well as I. You are not a perfect woman, Mell; you have
one fault, but even that fault I love because I so love you! And I see
so plainly just how and why your love has failed me in my utmost need,
and I know so well just how and why the conditions of existence, amid
such surroundings as this, must be utterly unendurable to a girl of
your temperament and aims. And so, through all my anger and all my
sorrow and all my wounded affection, I have made excuses in my heart
for my pretty Mell, my faithless Mell, whom I still love in spite of
all her weakness; who in that weakness could find no other way of
escape from a poor, bald, common-place, distasteful life, except
through the crucifixion of her own heart, the ruin of her own
happiness. Weak, you are nevertheless far dearer to me than the
strongest-minded of your sex; false in act but not at heart, you are
still the sweetest to me of all sweet womanhood; and I have come to
save, not to reproach you! Here is what I bring. It goes fittingly
with the heart long in your possession."

He reached forth his hand to her. Mell inspected it with those dark
and regretful looks we bestow on the blessings which are for others,
but not for us.

This was the hand whose touch conferred happiness; a hand so strong,
so firm, so steady, perfect in every joint and finger-tip, endowed
with all the intellectual subtlety and effective mechanism of which
the hand of man is capable--the only hand, among thousands and
ten-thousands of human hands, she had ever wanted for her own--and now
here it was, so near, and, alas! farther than ever before! She
clenched her own hands convulsively together, and closed her eyes to
shut out the sight of it and the entreating tenderness of its appeal.

"Take it," said Jerome, seductively; "it is now mine to give, and
yours to accept."

"Too late," returned Mell, in sadness; "to-morrow I wed with Rube."

"_To-morrow?_ Yes, I know. But have you ever reflected what a long way
off to-morrow is? and how little we need to dread the coming of
to-morrow, if we look well after to-day? And, my dear Mell, how many
things occur to-night ere to-morrow ever comes! That's another thing
you have not thought about. In your plans for marrying Rube to-morrow,
you have neglected to take into consideration"--the rest he whispered
into her ear, so low, so low she could scarcely catch it, but the
sudden crash of brazen instruments, the sharp clash of steel, a
thunderbolt at her very feet could not have made her start so
violently or convulsed her with such terror--"_the fact that you are
going to marry me to-night!_" With a gesture of instinctive
repugnance, with a look of supplicating horror, she pushed him away.

"Only devils tempt like that!"

"No devil ever yet tempted a woman to right-doing."

"It could not be right to treat Rube so."

"It is the only way to right a wrong already done him."

"No. I am going to make that wrong up to Rube. I have sworn to do it!
I am going to stick by Rube through thick and thin. You go away! What
did you come here for? Dark is the fate of the woman who breaks her
plighted vows."

"Darker still the fate of the woman who seals false vows. Such are
untrue to the high instincts of the immortal within them."

"But think how infamous! how base such an act! how scandalous! I
cannot do it!"

"Yet, you will do worse--far worse. A loveless marriage is worse than
a broken vow. Such a marriage may pass current for legal tender in the
courts of the world, but when some day, you come to square up
accounts, you will find fraudulent bonds and unholy speculation in
married estate the worst investment a foolish woman ever made.
Dishonesty never pays, but it pays less in a marriage without love
than anywhere else. And where's the use of trying to deceive Rube and
the rest of the world, when God knows? You can't very well hoodwink
_Him_, Mell. And how will you be able to endure it; to be clothed in
marvellously fine garments and ride in a chariot, and envy the beggars
as you pass them in their honest rags; to be a Jonas in every kiss, a
Machiavelli in every word, a crocodile in every tear; Janus-faced on
one side, and mealy-mouthed on the other; to be a fraud, a sham, a
make-believe, an organized humbug, and a painted sepulchre? That's the
picture of the woman who marries one man and loves another. Is it a
pleasant picture, Mell? You will chafe behind the gilded bars, and
champ the jewelled bit. You will feel the sickening thraldom of a
cankering memory, a rankling regret, a sullen remorse, a longing after
your true self, with every breath a lie, every act a counterfeit,
every word a mincing of the truth. God only knows how you will bear
it!"

God only--she did not. Her head drooped lower in unspeakable
bitterness and humiliation. Amid all the darkness she could see but
one ray of light.

"But if I do my duty--" began Mell.

"A woman's first duty to her husband is to love him," said Jerome,
gravely; "failing in that, she fails in all else."

"But love comes with the doing of duty, everybody says. I must do my
duty by Rube."

"Very well. Do your duty, Mell, but do it now. That is all I ask.
Manifestly it is not your duty to marry him. With every throb of your
heart pulsating for me, you will not be worth one dollar to Rube in
the capacity of a wife. He would tell you so, if he knew. Can't you
see that, Mell?"

She could see it distinctly. Jerome's words burned with the brilliancy
of magnesium, throwing out this aspect of the subject in glaring
light. Rube stood again before her, as he had stood on the morning of
that day upon which she had undertaken to fulfil her promise to Jerome
and failed so ignominiously--stood, and was saying: "_I_ would be the
most defrauded man of the two," and "where would be the sanctity of
such a marriage?"

Not one dollar would she be worth to him--_if he knew!_ He would know
some time; everything under the sun gets known somehow, the only
question is--when?

Seeing the impression made, Jerome spoke again, in words low,
impassioned:

"Save yourself, for the love of God! Save yourself and Rube from such
a fate!"

Mell glanced about her in terror and confusion, turning red and pale.
Gladly would she save herself; but how can a respectable member of
good society accept salvation at such a price--the price of being
talked about?

"It is too late," she told her companion, in tones as sorrowful as the
wail of a wandering bard in a strange land; "too late! Why, man, the
bridal robes are ready, the bridal cake is baked, the bridal guests
are bidden; and would you have me, at this last minute, turn Rube
into a laughing-stock, a by-word on every idle lip, a man to be
pointed out upon the streets, a man to be jeered at in the crowd?
Would you have me do that?"

"Yes. That is not a happy lot, but it soon passes, and is better than
being duped for life and wretched for life."

Mell averted her face. She seemed striving for words:

"I don't see why Rube should be so unhappy as you seem determined to
make him. Even granting that he knew that I do not feel romantically
towards him, as I have felt towards you--"

"Have felt?" interposed her listener.

She waived his question aside and proceeded:

"Still there is a love born of habit and propinquity, and that will
come to my rescue. Rube is a splendid fellow! I respect him. I honor
his character, and I could be happy with him if--"

"Well," said Jerome, huskily, "go on."

"_If it were not for you._"

"Ha!" exclaimed he, "has it come to that? That alters the case
completely. I will take myself off, then! I will get out of your way!
Had I suspected the existence of one drop of real affection in your
heart towards the man you are about to marry, I would have cut off
this right hand of mine rather than come here to-night. In coming I
was sustained by the belief that I would not defraud my friend--not in
reality--not of any thing he could value; not of a wife, but of an
empty casket. This belief, on my part, is all that redeems my coming
from being an act of diabolism. And now it turns out that there is a
very good reason why the bridal cake cannot be thrown to the dogs, and
the bridal robes cannot be committed to the flames, and the bridal
guests cannot upon any account be robbed of their bride upon the
morrow--_you could be happy with him if it were not for me!_"

Bitter in tone was this repetition of her words--words which wounded
him so keenly. They were calculated to wound the tender sensibilities
of any lover, most of all a lover of Jerome Devonhough's stamp. He
could condone any weakness on her part, except that which touched his
own dominion over her--the sceptre of his love, the yoke of his power.
Under a pacific exterior, there seethed in Jerome, volcanic masses of
self-will and unchangeable purpose; hemmed in, held in bounds, seldom
breaking forth in violent eruption, but always there. He was totally
unprepared for any change in the feelings of the woman upon whom he
had lavished the arbitrary tenderness of his own strong nature.
Jerome, you perceive, is no more of a hero than Mell is a heroine. He
is the counterpart of the man who lives round the corner, who sits
next you in church, whom you meet not unfrequently at your friend's
house at dinner. This man loves his wife, not because she is an
artistic production, elaborately wrought out in broad, mellow,
triumphant lines, grand in character, but rather because he recognizes
good material in her for his own moulding. We must never approach the
contemplation of any man's requirements in a wife with our minds full
of loose generalities. There is so much of the fool in every man, the
wisest man, who falls in love. He falls in love, not so much with what
is ideally lovable in a woman, but what is practically complemental to
his own nature. Jerome, being strong, loved Mell, who was weak, and
weak in those very places where Jerome was strong. She needed him. He
felt that he was a necessary adjunct to her perfect development in the
sphere of womanhood; he felt that she was necessary to him in the
enlargement of his manhood. For, does not a man of his type need some
one to guide, to govern, to lord it over, and to get all the nonsense
out of? But he would love her, too, notwithstanding all this, with
that sheltering devotion which a woman needs--all women, with one
exception. A strong woman in her strength is not dependent upon any
man's love.

"So it has come to this," pursued Jerome, brooding in low tones over
the matter, "there is but one impediment to your happiness--the man
whom you have professed to love, whom you have so basely resigned.
With me safely out of the way, you and Rube are all right. You do, it
seems, know your own mind at last. And Clara Rutland knows hers at
last, and everybody is about to be made incontinently happy--everybody
but me! I am left out in the cold! I am left, between you all,
stranded on the lonely rock of unbelief, either in a woman's word or a
woman's love; and must eat alone, and digest as best I may, all the
sour grapes left over from two marriage-feasts. A pleasant prospect,
truly! Would to God I had never seen either one of you!"

Mell was dumb. She was dumb from conviction. Clara Rutland _had_
treated him badly, and so had she; and she could think of nothing to
say which would put in any fairer light that ugly treatment. She
marvelled at his patience through it all; she was bewildered that he
had thus far, during this trying interview, remained

                 "In high emotions self-controlled."

She knew a change must come. She saw through furtive eyes and without
raising her head, that a change had already come. Not even a strong
will can regulate a heart's pulsations--a heart which has been sinned
against in its most sacred feelings. As the storm-clouds sweep up from
the west and mass themselves with awful grandeur in battle array, so
lowered dark and tempestuous thoughts, pregnant with danger, on the
young man's brow. Across his frame there swept a convulsive quiver of
emotion; his features took on that hard, stern look of repressed
indignation and passion which Mell so well knew and so much feared.

With that look upon his face, Jerome was not a man to be trifled
with.

But what was he going to do? Shake her again?

She said nothing when he took hold of her two hands with a grasp of
iron. Silently she awaited her fate; tremblingly she wondered what
that fate would be.

He was only telling her good-by. He knew not how hard he pressed upon
those tender hands; he only knew he might never clasp them in his own
again. It was a terrible moment--terrible not alone for Mell.

One would have thought, seeing how he suffered in giving her up, that
she was the last woman in the world; whereas, we know there are
multitudes of them, many more estimable in character, some equally
desirable in person, with just such wondrous hair, just such
enchanting eyes, just such shapeliness of construction, enough in
itself to inspire mankind with the most passionate love--plenty of her
kind, but none exactly Mell!

Sensible of that detaining clasp; knowing his keen eyes scanned darkly
and hungrily every quivering feature in her unquiet face; hearing his
labored breath and the low sobs wrung from a strong man's agony, Mell
felt first as a guilty culprit.

If only he would stab her to the heart, and then himself.

We little thought, any of us, when we saw him lying in the meadow on
the grass at her feet, that out of the joyous inspiration of that
glorious summer weather, out of two young lives so beautiful, out of
young love, a thing so full of poetry and romance, would come such
wretchedness as this.

After a little while, the touch of those rose-leaf palms, the
whiteness of her face, the appeal for mercy in those eyes seeking his
own, had a soothing effect upon Jerome. He would now put forth all his
strength and quietly say good-by.

Softly he pressed to his lips one of those imprisoned hands; softly,
in a heart-sick rapture of despairing renunciation, he was about to do
the same with the other, when the glint of Rube's solitaire, the
pledge of her hated bondage to another, the glaring witness of her
treachery towards himself, flashed into his eyes and overcame all his
good resolutions. With a look of unutterable reproach, with a gesture
of undying contempt, he tossed the offending hand back upon her lap.

"Think not," he broke forth, in vehement utterance, "that no thought
of me will embitter your bridal joys! I leave you to your fate! I go
to my own! Dark it may be, but not darker than yours!"

And this was the quiet way in which he bade her good-by.

The words pierced Mell to the very soul, and, combined with the
blackness of his countenance, filled her with indefinable, but very
horrible imaginings. He had almost reached the door, when with a
smothered cry of pain, she followed him.

As irresistibly as ever he drew her.

"Jerome! Jerome! Where are you going?"

"To ruin!" exclaimed he, turning upon her with that barbaric
fierceness which seems to underlie everything strong in nature--"to
ruin, where you women without principle, have sent many a better man!
To ruin, and to hell, if I choose," he added, with fearful emphasis.
"My going and my coming are no longer any concern of yours!"

"Yes, they are, Jerome," she assured him, deprecatingly. "Don't leave
me in anger, Jerome!"

"Not in anger? Then, how--in delight?" There was now a menacing gleam
in his eye which more than ever alarmed her. "My cause is lost. You
have done me all the wrong you could, and now that I am dismissed, set
aside, told to begone, debased, and dethroned, you expect me to be
delighted over it, do you?"

"No, Jerome; but do not leave me feeling so. Promise me to do nothing
rash."

"I will not promise you anything! You have not spared my feelings, why
should _I_ spare yours? Since your affection for me has moderated into
that platonic kind, which admits of your happiness in union with
another, I will do whatever I please to do, knowing no act of mine,
however dreadful, will affect you."

"Oh, Jerome, do not say that! You must see, you must know in your
heart, that I do still care for you--Oh, God! more than I ought."

"And yet not enough to make you do what is right!"

"But to right you, will wrong Rube," she answered in confusion.

"Enough, then; you know your own feelings, or ought to. Since Rube is
the one dearest to you, marry him!"

He turned again upon his heel. Obeying an impulse she could not
resist, Mell once more detained him. It is hard to die, everybody
says; but to die yourself must be easier than to give up the one you
love.

"Jerome, wait a moment! Come back! Jerome, you do not realize what a
dishonorable thing this is you are persuading me to do?"

"Don't I?" he laughed wildly. "God Almighty! Mellville, what do you
take me for? Wouldn't I have been here a week ago, two weeks ago, but
for the battle I have had to fight with my own scruples--but for the
war I have had to wage with my own soul? I have said to myself, again
and again, 'I will not do this thing though I die!' But when I started
out upon this journey, it had come to this: 'I must do this thing or
else--die!'"

Shaken as a storm-rifted tree bending in the blast, she was not yet
uprooted.

"It is hard, hard," she murmured, wringing her hands in nervous
constraint; "but time, you know, Jerome, time softens everything."

"It does!" he said, harshly--"even the memory of a crime!"

"What do you mean by that?" exclaimed Mell, every word of his filling
her with indefinable fears.

"I mean what I say. Once out of the way, you and Rube, the two beings
most dear to me on earth, could be happy together; you have told me
so. Then, how selfish in me--"

"Oh, Jerome, you would not! Surely you would not do such a thing!"

"I do not say that I would, nor that I would not. A desperate man is
not to be depended on either by himself or others. I only know that in
this fearful upheaval of all my life's aims and ends, any fate seems
easier than living. But Mellville--" his tones were now quiet, but
they were firm; his lips were set in angles of immovable resolve; his
brow bent and dark with the shadows of unlifting determination. It
would be difficult to imagine a more striking figure than Jerome in
the rôle of a man who had made up his mind--

"But Mellville, this struggle must end. It must end _now_, or it will
put an end to us. I did not come here to-night to submit to the
humiliation of begging a woman to marry me against her will. I came to
rescue a being in distress from the painful consequences of her own
rash act. Now, then, you love me, or you do not? You will marry me, or
you will not? Which is it? Answer! In five minutes I leave this house,
with or without you!"

He dropped upon his knees at her feet; he snatched her to his breast.
Reason was gone, his soul all aflame:

"Mell, listen: Love is more than raiment, more than food, more than
the world's censure or the world's praise. It is sweeter in life than
life itself! But time presses; the other wedding comes on apace; we
have no time to spare. An hour's hard driving will bring us to Parson
Fordham's, well known to me. There we will be married at once, and
catch the early train at Pudney. Our names will be an execration and a
by-word for a little time, but what of that? What though all friends
turn their backs upon us! Together we will enter hopefully upon a new
life, loving God and each other--a life of truer things, Mell; a life
consecrated to each other and glorified by perfect love and perfect
trust. Will you lead that life with me?"

"No, I will not!"

"What, Mellville!" he cried. "You will not! I thought you loved me,
loved me as I loved you?"

"Once I loved you," she said. She spoke now as much to her own soul as
to his perceptions. "Once--or was it only that I thought I did? For
long weeks I struggled against deceiving Rube, and out of that I must
have drifted by slow degrees into deceiving myself. For, to-night,
even to-night, when I parted from Rube I thought it was you I loved,
not he! But the mists have lifted from my vision, and now, at this
moment--never fully until this moment--I see you both in your true
light; I weigh you understandingly, one against the other; I set your
self-seeking against his unselfishness, your improbity against his
high sense of honor. And how plainly I see it all! Just as if a moral
kaleidoscope were exhibiting by spiritual reflections, to the eyes of
my mind, the difference between one man and another, at an angle of
virtue which is the aliquot part of three hundred and sixty degrees of
real merit! Upon this disk of the imagination appears your own image;
and what are you doing? Passing me by as an unknown thing, a thing too
small to know in the presence of mighty magnates at a county picnic!
There is another manly form; what is he doing? Lifting me up from the
bare earth where the other's cruel slights have crushed me; feeding me
with his own hands; even then loving me. How different the pictures!
Shift the scene. Some one is crowning me: I am a queen before the
world. Whose hand has held a crown for me? Not yours--Rube's! You had
not the courage. He had. I love courage in a man. I love it better
than a handsome face or an oily tongue. A man without courage--what is
he? He isn't a man at all--not really. Jerome Devonhough," here she
turned her lovely face, grown so cold, and her exquisite eyes, grown
so scornful, full upon him, "were you the right sort of a man, would
you be here to-night? Will a man, false to his friend, be true to his
wife? I can trust Rube Rutland; can I trust you? No! For, even while
loving, I could not keep down a feeling of contempt. Beginning with
respect for Rube, that sentiment of respect has ripened into
love--real love--not the wild, senseless, mad, unreasoning passion of
an untutored girl, which eats into its own vitals, and drains its own
lees,--as mine for you,--but that deeper, better, higher, more
enduring, and well-nigh perfect affection of the full-lived woman, who
out of deep suffering has emerged into an enlightened conception of
her own nature's needs, her own heart's craving for what is best,
truest, most God-like in a man! That love, which will wear well, nor
grow threadbare through time, which will take on a more wondrous glow
in the realms of eternity, is the love I feel for Rube!"

"Bah!" he exclaimed, not yet quenched, not yet hopeless. "Eternity is
a long word, and all your fine talking cannot deceive _me!_ Oh, woman,
woman, what a face you have, and what brains! I do not know which
holds me tighter. That face so fair, that mind so subtle--together
they might well turn the head of the devil himself, but they cannot
deceive _me!_ The string which draws you is golden. It is not Rube you
love so much, so purely, so perfectly; oh, no, not Rube! Not Rube, but
his possessions. Not the man--the man's house! Its beautiful turrets
and gables, its gardens and lawns, its lovely views, and spacious
luxury, and abounding wealth. For that you give me up. Still loving
me, Rube's pelf is dearer still!"

"Not now--not now! Now I love _him_--the man! Not for what he has, but
for what he is. For his truth, his nobility, his honor; and, as that
honor is in my keeping, I bid you go and return no more. Your power to
tempt me from my duty _and my love_ is over! My faith is grounded, my
purpose unalterable. Go!"

"This is folly. Come with me!" he cried, striving to draw her towards
the door.

She resisted.

"Come!" he urged.

She broke from him, crying:

"No, by heaven! Were it the only chance to save my own life, I would
not go! I have done with you now, forever!"

"Good-night, then," he told her, with a bitter sneer and a low,
mocking bow. "Good-night; but you will be sorry for this! You will
regret this night's work all the days of your life. Its memory will
darken the brightest day of your life!"

She did not speak, or move, as he turned upon his heel and left her.

There sounds his foot upon the stair, and next upon the gravelled
walk! And now the garden-gate swings open, and the carriage-door bangs
shut, after which the wheels grate upon the pebbles, and the clatter
of horses' hoofs rings out upon the midnight air. Gone! Gone!

Her head reels; all her senses seem benumbed. Not even a heavy tread
through the dark entry did she hear. It was the clasp of strong arms
around her which woke her from her trance.

She turned, exclaiming in alarm: "Rube! You here! You--you have
heard?"

"Every word. I was up; I could not sleep. Does any man sleep the night
before he is married? _I_ could not. I lighted a cigar and went out
upon the lawn. At the gate I stood, puffing away and looking up in
this direction, wondering if my sweet wife that is to be had obeyed my
parting injunctions and gone to sleep, when presently a carriage came
tearing along, going in the very direction of my own thoughts. A man
sat within; I cannot say that I exactly recognized that man in the
moonlight, but I saw him move quickly back when he saw me, and that
aroused my suspicions. I followed; I could not help following.
Something told me my happiness was menaced, my love in danger. I was
determined to know the truth, Mell. I listened."

"And you do not hate me?"

"Hate you, Mell? Dearer to me than ever you are at this moment! I
know how you have been tempted; I realize all you have overcome. Never
could I doubt such love! Comforted by it, I can bear up even under
so heavy a misfortune as the treachery of a friend. But the hour is
late; we must not talk longer; you must snatch a little rest.
Good-night once more, dear love. To-morrow, Mellville, you will be
mine--to-morrow!"

"Aye, Rube! To-morrow, yours! Upon every day and every morrow of my
life, always yours!"

THE END.

Transcriber's Note:

  Authors' archaic and variable spelling and hyphenation is mostly
  preserved.

  Authors' punctuation styles are preserved.

  Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.

  Passages in bold indicated by =equal signs=.

  Typographical problems have been changed and are listed below, as
  are changes made to standardise some hyphenation.

Transcriber's Changes:

  Page 169: Was 'territores' (nullify the results of the war by
            converting the Southern States into conquered =territories=,
            in order that party supremacy)

  Page 169: Was 'acquiesence' (The hint was taken, the contest of 1868
            was fought under a seeming =acquiescence= in the views of
            Stevens and Morton;)

  Page 194: Was 'imperturable' ("No, indeed! I have pledged my word to
            _her_ never to touch a drop!" protested Andy, with
            =imperturbable= good nature.)

  Page 221: Was 'anymore' ("W.," she said, "you don't know =any more=
            about it than Horace Greeley did.")

  Page 225: Was 'contemptously' (Mrs. W. spoke of them
            =contemptuously= as "nasty black worms.")

  Page 245: Was 'in' (which is much better, and come to the reader =in
            the= shape of love-stories, odd adventures,)

  Page 248: Was 'of' (and if she were in the company =of one= whom she
            trusted intimately, she would laugh those popular virtues
            to scorn with her warm,)

  Page 254: Was 'pleasant, sounding' (Mell's rather strained gayety
            found an agreeable echo in his =pleasant-sounding=
            laughter.)

  Page 263: Standardised hyphenation: Was 'pic-nic' (Not on Wednesday,
            for there's a confounded =picnic= afoot for that day.)

  Page 263: Standardised hyphenation: Was 'pic-nics' (I wish the man
            who invented =picnics= had been endowed with immortal life
            on earth and made to go to every blessed one)

  Page 269: Standardised hyphenation: Was 'pre-occupied' (They were
            fine young fellows, and very pleasant, too, but Mell
            continued so =preoccupied= in the vain racking of her
            brain)

  Page 270: Was 'omniverous' (It was altogether as much as she could
            do to keep from sobbing aloud in the faces of all these
            =omnivorous=, happy people.)

  Page 273: Was 'inate' (to a simple country girl, who, destitute of
            fortune, had nothing to commend her but =innate= modesty
            and God-given beauty.)

  Page 276: Was 'It' ("You mean it? =It is= a solemn promise! One of
            those promises you always keep!")

  Page 278: Was 'repentent' (I don't know who feels most idiotic or
            =repentant=, the girl who wears 'em or the fellow who won
            'em.)

  Page 278: Was 'juvenality' (Jerome, as soon as he could again command
            his voice, "unless it be Miss Josey's =juvenility=.")

  Page 281: Was 'It' ("But I don't wonder you feel a little frightened
            about it. =It is= such a wonderful thing for Rube to do:
            but Rube has two eyes in his head,)

  Page 282: Was 'How--do' ("=How-do=, old fellow?" said Jerome, by way
            of congratulation.)

  Page 287: Was 'bran' (She must take an airing with him in his
            =brand= new buggy)

  Page 289: Standardised hyphenation: Was 'farmhouse' (And so it came
            about that on a certain day Rube came as usual to the
            =farm-house=, but not as usual, alone.)

  Page 291: Was 'it' (The visit was long and pleasant, and at =its=
            close Mell accompanied her guests to the very door of
            their carriage.)

  Page 293: Was 'wont' (Only Clara =won't= announce, because she wants
            to keep up to the last minute her good times)

  Page 298: Was 'fiercy' ("She can lie, and lie, and still be
            honorable," he informed her with =fierce= irony.)

  Page 299: Was 'tortment' (you can never know what hours of
            =torment=, what days of suffering, this conduct of yours
            has cost me.)

  Page 301: Was 'exquisively' (but take the woman of emotional nature,
            =exquisitely= sensitive in all matters of feeling, and to
            such the touch of unloved)

  Page 302: Was 'it' (The ball is over, gone, past, never to come back
            again, with its waltz melody, =its= ravishing rhyme
            without reason)

  Page 303: Standardised hyphenation: Was 'gaslight' (It must be the
            =gas-light= in the ball-room, it must be the sunlight in
            the day-time, which makes all the difference.)

  Page 304: Was 'forgotton' (the quiet and shade of the old farm-house
            and recalling, as a =forgotten= dream, its honest
            industry)

  Page 305: Was 'euonyms' (birds chirped softly in the =euonymus=
            hedge under the window of her own little room)

  Page 305: Was 'ecstacy' (from an =ecstasy= of suffering and an agony
            of transport; in short, a hoped-for refuge from herself
            and Jerome.)

  Page 313: Was 'ignominously' (upon which she had undertaken to fulfil
            her promise to Jerome and failed so =ignominiously=--stood,
            and was saying)

  Page 313: Was 'ques-is' (He would know some time; everything
            under the sun gets known somehow, the only =question
            is=--when?)