dressing-room replete with every conceivable invention of the toilet,
from the patent boot-jack with its silver mountings, to the superb
dressing-case, glittering with gold and crystal, everything was perfect
in its sumptuousness. In his own house, this old man was given up to
self-worship, without a shadow of concealment. In society the graceful
hypocrisy of his deportment was beautiful to contemplate, like any other
exhibition of the highest art. If benevolence was the fashion, then
General Harrington was the perfection of philanthropy. Nay, as it was
his ambition to lead, the exemplary gentleman sometimes made a little
exertion to render benevolence the rage! His name often lead in
committees for charity festivals, and he was particularly interested in
seeing that the funds were distributed with the most distinguished
elegance, and by ladies sure to dignify humanity by distributing the
munificence of the fashionable world in flowing silks and immaculate
white gloves.

After this fashion, the General was a distinguished philanthropist.
Indeed, humanity presents few conditions of elegant selfishness in which
he was not prominent. A tyrant in his own household, he had, from his
youth up, been the veriest slave to the world in which he moved. Its
homage was essential to his happiness. He could not entirely cheat his
astute mind into a belief of his own perfections, without the constant
acclamations of society. As he grew old, this assurance became more and
more essential to his self-complacency.

The General studied a good deal. His mind was naturally of more than
ordinary power, and it was necessary that he should keep up with the
discoveries and literature of the day, in order to shine as a savant,
and belles-lettres scholar. Thus some three or four hours of every day
were spent in his library, and few professional men studied harder to
secure position in life, than he did to accumulate knowledge which had
no object higher than self-gratulation.

Still, with all his selfishness and want of true principle, the General
was, at least, by education, a gentleman, and he would at any time have
found it much easier to force himself into an act of absolute
wickedness, than to be thought guilty of ill-breeding in any of its
forms. In short, with General Harrington, habit stood in the place of
principle. He possessed few of those high passions that lead men into
rash or wicked deeds, and never was guilty of wrong without knowing it.

Unconsciously to herself, Agnes Barker had wounded the old man in his
weakest point, when she resented his question if she had read Mabel's
journal, with so much pride. This haughty denial was a reproach to the
impulse that had seized him to read the book from beginning to end. His
conscience had nothing to urge in the matter, but the meanness of the
thing he intended, struck him forcibly, and after a moment's hesitation,
he closed the journal and laid it in a drawer of his desk. Thus, by
affectation and over-acting, the girl defeated her object, much to her
own mortification. The passage on which General Harrington had opened at
random, was in itself harmless, a warm and somewhat glowing description
of a passage up the Guadalquivir in the spring months, had nothing in it
to provoke farther research, and the General seldom read much from mere
curiosity. Certainly, the book might contain many secret thoughts and
hidden feelings of which Mabel's husband had never dreamed, but it was
many years since the old gentleman had taken sufficient interest in the
feelings of his wife to care about their origin or changes, and so,
Mabel's precious book, in which so many secret thoughts were registered,
and memories stored, lay neglected in her husband's desk.

Fortunately, she was unconscious of her loss. Sometimes for months
together, she shrank from opening the escritoir in which the volume was
kept. At this period, she was under the reaction of a great excitement,
and turned with a nervous shudder from anything calculated to remind her
of all the pain which lay in the past.

Another reason, perhaps, why General Harrington was less curious about
his wife's journal than seemed natural to his tempters, lay in his own
preoccupation at the time. One of his youthful vices had grown strong,
and rooted itself amid the selfishness of his heart; all other sins had
so cooled down and hardened in his nature, that with most men they might
have passed for virtues, the evil was so buried in elegant
conventionalisms; but one active vice he still possessed, always
gleaming up from the white ashes of his burnt out sins, with a spark of
vivid fire.

General Harrington was a gambler. Understand me----it is not probable
that he had ever entered a gambling hall openly or frankly since his
youth, or ever sat down with swindlers or professed blacklegs around the
faro table. The General was altogether too fastidious in his vices for
that. No, he rather plumed himself secretly upon the aristocratic
fashion in which he indulged this most lasting remembrance of a reckless
youth.

The club life of England had always possessed great fascinations for
this fine old republican gentleman, and he was among the first to
introduce the system in New York. Here, his naturally fine energies had
been vigorously put forth, and he became not only a prominent member of
an aristocratic club, but a principal director and supporter also.

At this lordly rendezvous, the General spent a great portion of his
time, and somehow, I do not pretend to point out the direct process, for
it was generally understood that no high play was sanctioned in the
establishment, and the mysterious glances and half-murmurs which
transferred five dollar notes into five thousand, as the harmless games
proceeded, are not capable of an embodiment--but, it chanced very often,
that General Harrington found a transfer of funds necessary after one of
these club nights, and once or twice, a rather unpleasant interview with
Mr. James Harrington had been the result.

But these unsatisfactory consequences seldom arose. The General was too
cool and self-controlled to be always the loser, and up to the time of
our story, this one active vice had rather preponderated in favor of his
own interests.

But a rash adventure, and a sudden turn of fortune, reversed all this in
a single night; and General Harrington--who possessed only the old
mansion-house, and a few thousand a year in his own right--all at once
found himself involved to more than the value of his family home, and
two years income in addition. Close upon this, came that fearful
accident upon the river----and, worse still, the application of his son
to marry a penniless little girl, whose very existence depended on his
charity.

With all these perplexities on his mind, the General had very little
time for idle curiosity, and thus his wife's secret remained for the
time inviolate.

Like most extravagant men, the General, under the weight of an enormous
gambling debt, became excessively parsimonious in his household, and
talked loudly of retrenchment and home reforms. In this new mood, Agnes
Barker found little difficulty in having several of the old servants
discharged, before Mabel left her sick room. Indeed this girl, with her
velvety tread and fawning attentions, was the only one of his household
with whom General Harrington was not for the time in ill-humor.

With all his self-possession, this old man was a moral coward. He knew
that James Harrington was the only person to whom he could look for
help--and yet the very thought of applying to him, made the gall rise
bitterly in his bosom. To save time, he gave notes for the debt, and
made no change in his life, save that he was away from home now almost
constantly--a circumstance which the members of his household scarcely
remarked in their new-found happiness.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE NOTE ON THE BREAKFAST TABLE.

One morning General Harrington came forth from his bed chamber, harassed
and anxious. He had slept little during the night, and the weariness of
age would make itself felt, after a season of excitement like that
through which he had passed.

He found the Sevrés cup on his table, filled with strong, hot coffee,
and a muffin delicately toasted, upon the salver of frosted silver, by
its side. Indeed, as he entered the room, a flutter of garments reached
him from the door, and he muttered, with a smile, as he looked in an
opposite mirror.

"Faith, the little girl is very kind; I must think of this." He sat down
and drank off the coffee, rejecting the muffin with a faint expression
of disgust. As he lifted it from the salver, a note, lying half across
the edge, as if it had lodged there when the papers on the table were
pushed aside, attracted his attention. He was about to cast it on one
side, when a singular perfume came across him with a sickening
sweetness. Snatching at the note, he stared an instant at the seal, and
tore it open.

The color left General Harrington's cheek. As he read he started up,
crushing the note in his hand, while he rang the bell.

"Did you ring, General. I was going by, and so answered the bell," said
Agnes Barker, presenting herself.

"Yes, I rang, certainly I rang--but where are the servants? Where is the
woman who takes charge of my rooms?"

"The chambermaid? oh, she went away yesterday. I believe Mrs. Harrington
has not supplied her place yet."

"Who brought up my coffee? who arranged my rooms yesterday and this
morning?"

Agnes blushed, and cast down her eyes in pretty confusion. "The new cook
has not learned your ways, sir; there was no one else, and I"----

"You are very kind, Miss Agnes--another time I shall not forget it: but,
tell me, here is a note lying on my table near the breakfast tray; how
long has it been there--who brought it--where did it come from?"

Agnes looked up, with the most innocent face in the world.

"Indeed, sir, I cannot tell. A good many papers lay on the table, which
I carefully put aside; but no sealed note, that I remember."

"This is strange," muttered the General, walking up and down, stopping
to look in his coffee-cup, as if still athirst; but waving her away when
Agnes filled it again, and would have pressed it upon him.

"Remove these things, Miss Agnes, if you please--and order some one to
have the carriage ready. I must go to the city at once."

Agnes took up the salver, and moved away, hesitating, by the door, as if
she wished to speak.

"Well," said the General, a little impatiently, "is there anything I can
do?"

"The chambermaid, sir, I dare say Mrs. Harrington has no choice; and I
should be so obliged if you permitted my old nurse to have the place.
She is very capable, and I am lonely without her."

"A colored woman, is it?" asked the General, hastily.

"Yes, from the South. She is all I have left."

"Of course, let her come, if she knows her duty. I will mention it to
Mrs. Harrington."

"Thank you," said the girl, gliding softly away. "It will make me so
happy to have some one in the house that loves me."

The General answered this attack on his sympathies, with an impatient
wave of the hand. He seemed greatly disturbed--and, as the door closed,
threw himself into a chair, with something like a groan.

"Can this be true? Lina, poor little Lina, can this be real? and Ralph,
my own son. Great Heavens, it is terrible!"

He swept a hand across his forehead, distractedly. Then, starting up, as
if stung to action by some agonizing thought, he began to pace up and
down the room with a degree of excitement very unusual to him. At
length he paused by the window, and, opening the note, again read it
over and over with great anxiety. At last he went to a desk standing in
a corner of the room, and opening one secret drawer after another, drew
forth a bundle of faded letters. As he untied them, the identical
perfume that hung about the note he had been reading, stole around him;
and, turning paler and paler, as if the odor made him faint, he began to
read the letters, one after another, comparing them first with the note,
and then with a key to the cypher in which they were all written, that
he took from another compartment of the desk.

At last he drew a deep breath, and wearily folded the papers up.

"This is plausible, and it may be true," he said, locking his hands on
the table. "The persistent malice of the thing, confirms its
probability. She was capable of it--capable of anything; and yet I do
think the poor creature loved me. If I could but see her, and learn all
the facts from her own lips. Yet the note is better evidence. Who,
except us two, ever learned this cypher? How else could she have known
these particulars about poor Lina? But, this is terrible. I did not
think anything could shake me so! Ralph, my son Ralph, I must speak with
him----No, no! Let me think; it's better that Lina alone should know
it."

The old man arose--tottered towards the bell, and rang it, nervelessly,
as if the silver knob were a hand he loathed to touch.

Agnes answered the summons, but even her self-possession gave way as she
saw the General's face, pale and almost convulsed, turned upon her.

"I have ordered the carriage--it will be at the door in a few moments,
sir," she stammered forth.

"Send it back to the stables: I shall not go out. The morning has
clouded over."

Agnes glanced at the sunshine pouring its silvery warmth through the
library window, but she did not venture to speak.

"Go," said General Harrington, in a suppressed voice, "go find your
pupil, and say that I wish to speak with her a moment."

"Miss Lina--is it Miss Lina I am to call?" stammered Agnes, taken by
surprise.

"It is Miss Lina that I wish to see; have the goodness to call her."

The courteous but peremptory voice in which this was said, left Agnes no
excuse for delay; and, though racked with curiosity, she was obliged to
depart on her errand.

The General sat down the moment he was alone--and shrouding his
forehead, lost himself in painful thought.

The door opened, and Lina came in, smiling like a sunbeam, and rosy with
assured happiness. "Did you send for me, General?" she said, drawing
close the chair in which the old man sat. "Is there something I can do
that will give you pleasure. I hope so!"

The General looked up; his eyes were heavy--his face bore an expression
she had never witnessed in it till then. He looked on her a moment, and
she saw the mist melting away from his glance, and it seemed to her that
his proud lip began to quiver.

"Have I offended you?" inquired Lina, with gentle regret. "What have I
done?"

The old man arose, and laying a hand on each of her shoulders, bore
heavily upon her, as he perused her face with an earnestness that made
her tremble. He lifted one hand at last, and sweeping the heavy curls
back from her brow, gazed sadly and earnestly down into her eyes. Those
soft blue eyes, that filled with tears beneath the sad pathos of his
gaze.

"Lina!" His hand began to tremble among her curls. He bent his forehead
down, and rested it on her shoulders sighing heavily.

"Tell me--do tell me what I have done," said the gentle girl, weeping;
"or, is it Ralph? Oh, sir, he cannot have intended to wound you!"

"Ralph!" exclaimed the General, starting up, with a flush of the brow.
"Do not speak of him; never let me hear his name on your lips again!"

"What? Ralph--never speak of Ralph? You do not mean it. Indeed, I am
quite sure, you do not mean it. Not speak of Ralph? Dear General, if he
has done anything wrong, let me run for him at once, and he will beg
your pardon--oh, how willingly! Not speak of Ralph? Ah, you are teasing
me, General, because you know--that is, you guess--it would break my
heart not to think of him every minute of my life."

"Silence, girl; I must not hear this," said the old man, dashing his
hand aside with a violence that scattered Lina's hair all over her
shoulders.

"General," said Lina, lifting up her eyes, all brimming with tears, and
regarding him with the look of a grieved cherub: "don't terrify me so.
What have I done? What has Ralph done? For the whole world we would not
displease you, after all your kindness. Indeed, indeed we are too happy
for anything evil to come within our thoughts."

"And you are happy, girl?"

"Very, very happy. It seems to me that all the earth has blossomed
afresh. I thought this morning, that the sunshine never was so bright as
it is to-day, and what few leaves are left on the branches, seem more
beautiful than roses in full flower. Dear, dear General, it is something
to have made two young creatures so happy! I thought last night, for
life seemed so sweet that I could not waste it in slumber--and when the
moonbeams came stealing in around me, making the curtains luminous, like
summer clouds--I thought that you must have such heavenly dreams and
grateful prayers to God, for giving you power--so like his own--that of
filling young souls with this beautiful, beautiful joy!"

"Ah!" said the General, with a deep sigh; "all this must change, my poor
child. I thought yours was but a pretty love-dream, that would pass over
in a week."

"Oh, do not say that--do not say your consent was not real--that you
have trilled with two young creatures, who honestly left their hearts
all helpless in your hands."

"Peace, peace," said the old man, standing upright, and speaking with an
effort. "I have not trifled with you. I did hope that all this might
pass off as such love-dreams usually do; but, I have promised nothing
which should not have been accomplished, had not a destiny stronger than
my will, or your love, intervened. Lina, you can never be married to my
son!"

Lina looked in his face--it was pale and troubled; his eyes fell beneath
the intensity of her gaze--his proud shoulders stooped--he did not seem
so tall as he was, by some inches. The deathly white of her face, the
violet lips parted and speechless, the wild agony of those eyes, made
him tremble from head to foot.

"Why? oh, why!" at last broke from her lips.

"Because," said the old man, drawing himself up, and speaking with a
hoarse effort; "because, God forgive me, you are my own daughter!"

She was looking in his face. A sob broke upon her pale lips--the
strength left her limbs--and she fell down before him, shrouding her
agony with both hands.

CHAPTER XXIX.

FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

General Harrington had no power to comfort the poor creature at his
feet. More deeply moved than he had been for years, the strangeness of
his own feelings paralyzed his action. But the hand to which Lina clung
grew cold in her grasp, and over his face stole an expression of
sadness, the more touching because so foreign to its usual apathy.

"Father--oh, my heart breaks with the word--are you indeed my father?"
cried Lina, lifting her pale face upward and sweeping her hair back with
a desperate motion of the hand.

"Poor child--poor child!" muttered the old man compassionately.

"What can I do? what shall I do? It will kill me! It will kill us both.
Oh, Ralph, Ralph, if I had but died yesterday!" cried the poor girl,
attempting to rise, but falling back again with a fresh burst of grief.

The old man stood gazing to harden his heart--striving to compose the
unusual tremor of his nerves, but all in vain. Sorrow, regret, and
something almost like remorse smote him to the soul, for he had once
been a man of strong passions, and the ice of his selfishness again
broken up, the turbid waters rose and swelled in his bosom, with a power
that all the force of habit could not resist. He bent down and lifted
the girl from his feet, trembling slightly, and with a touch of pity in
his voice.

"It is useless and foolish to take any misfortune in this manner,
child."

"Child!" Lina shuddered at the word. She shrunk away from his hand,
arose without his help, and staggered backward with a feeling of
unutterable repulsion.

He saw the quiver of pain in her features, and his soul hardened once
more. She had not met the feeling of tenderness, so new, and, for the
moment, so exquisite to himself, and it withered away like a hot-house
blossom.

"This is a new and strange relation to us both," he said, seating
himself, and regarding her gravely. "Of course it involves many
important and painful questions. Up to this day you have been to Mrs.
Harrington and myself a daughter in everything but the name!"

Lina wrung her hands, wildly moaning: "That name! Oh, heavens! how can I
bear that name unless he should have given it to me. Now, now--just as
it sounded so sweet, it separates us for ever. This unholy name of
child!"

General Harrington moved in his chair with a gesture of annoyance, but
Lina, growing still more impassioned, came toward him, wringing her
small hands impetuously.

"You are my father--God forgive you! But there is yet another to curse
or bless me with her claims--where and whom is my mother? Is Mrs.
Harrington indeed the parent she has always seemed to me?"

The General waved his hand with a dissenting gesture.

"Do not question me upon a subject that must be painful to us both. This
is no time to answer you."

"No time, when you uproot every hope of my life and present a future
black with improbable things? Up to this day, that dear lady was enough.
I had no desire to ask about father or mother. They told me I was an
orphan's destiny, and overlooked by all the world, if the dear ones
under this roof only loved me. I had no other place on earth, and now,
what am I?--an impostor, cast upon the charity of the dear lady my birth
has wronged."

General Harrington arose, and advancing toward Lina, took her hands in
his. The poor little hands quivered like wounded birds in his clasp, and
she lifted her eyes with a piteous and pleading look that no human
heart could have withstood.

"Ah! you are trying me? It isn't true?" she said, with a gleam of hope
and hysterical sobs.

"No! it is all real, far too real, Lina! Do not deceive yourself. I
would not wound you thus for an aimless experiment. You are indeed my
child!"

"Your child, really--really your own child? Oh, I cannot understand it!
Ralph--my brother, Ralph!"

Lina started as if some new pang had struck her, and then drew away her
hands with a gesture of passionate grief.

"Ralph, my own brother, and older than I am, for he is older--oh, this
is terrible."

"You will see," said General Harrington, speaking in a composed voice,
that seemed like a mockery of her passionate accents--"you will see by
this how necessary it is that what I have told you should be kept secret
from my wife and child. Your peculiar relations with my son rendered it
imperative. I have intrusted you with a secret of terrible importance.
You can imagine what the consequences would be, were your relationship
to myself made known."

"I will not tell. Oh! thank God, I need not tell!" cried Lina wildly;
"but then, Ralph?--what will he think--how will he act? Ralph, Ralph--my
brother! Oh, if I had but died on the threshold of this room!"

"Be comforted," said the General, in his usual bland voice, for the
scene had begun to weary him. "You will soon get used to the new
position of things."

"But who will explain to Ralph? What can I say? how can I act? He will
not know."

"Ralph is a very young man. He will go into the world, and see more of
society. This is his first fancy--I will take care that he is more
occupied. The world is full of beautiful women."

Lina turned deadly pale. The cruel speech struck her to the soul.

The old man saw it, but worldly philosophy made him ruthless. "I will
crush the boy out of her heart," he said, inly, "to be rude here is to
be merciful."

"You must forget Ralph," he said, and his voice partook of the hardness
of his thoughts.

"I cannot forget," answered the girl, with a faint moan, "but I will
strive to remember that--that he is my brother!"

The last words came to her lips almost in a cry. She shuddered all over,
and the name of brother broke from her with a pang, as if her
heart-strings snapped with the utterance.

"Can I go away?" she said, at last, creeping like a wounded fawn slowly
to the door.

"Not yet," answered the old man. "You must first comprehend the great
necessity there is for composure and silence. Not a word of this must be
breathed under my roof now or ever. My own tranquillity and that of Mrs.
Harrington are at stake, to say nothing of your own. I have told you a
momentous secret. Let it be sacred."

"Oh! the terrible burden of this secret! Must I carry it for ever? Even
now I go out from your presence like a guilty thing, and yet I am not
guilty."

"No one was talking of guilt, I imagine," answered the General, with a
slight flush of the forehead. "The whole thing is certainly an
annoyance, and in one sense, a misfortune, perhaps. But guilt is an
unfeminine word, and I regret that you could have used it."

Lina wrung her hands in desperation.

"I could not help it. This misery has found me so unprepared."

"Misery! Indeed, young lady, it seems to me that few women would
consider it so great an evil to have the blood of a Harrington in her
veins," said the General, stung in the inner depths of his vanity by her
words, and losing all pity in his wounded self-love.

"But I am a Harrington without a name--a daughter without parent--a
beggar upon the charity of one to whom my existence is an insult! Would
you have me grateful for this?" cried Lina, with all the grief and fire
of her young nature in arms against the cold-blooded composure of the
man who so quietly called her child.

"I would have you prudent, silent, and at all events, more lady-like in
your expressions; with well-bred people, a scene is always revolting,
and it pains me that a daughter of mine can be led into the intemperance
of action and speech that has marked this interview."

The General glanced with a look of cool criticism at the excited girl as
he spoke. Her pale, tearful face, the dishevelled masses of hair falling
upon her shoulders, and the almost crouching attitude that a sudden
sense of shame had left her in, outraged his fastidious taste, and the
old habits of a life swept over his new-born tenderness. Feeling, if not
elegantly expressed, always shocked the old gentleman, and for the
moment, shame and tears had swept Lina's beauty all away. She might have
been picturesque to an artist, but General Harrington was not an
artist--only a fastidious, selfish old man, whose eyes always led what
little of heart he possessed.

"Can I go, sir? I am faint--the room is growing dark. I wish, sir,
I--I"----

The poor girl attempted to move toward the door, as she uttered this
broken protestation; but the sight utterly left her eyes--and, instead
of the entrance, she tottered toward the General, with her hands
extended as if to catch at some support, and fell forward, resting her
poor white face upon the folds of his Oriental dressing gown that fell
around his feet.

"This is very embarrassing," muttered the General, jerking the gorgeous
folds of his gown from beneath the head of his child, and scattering her
hair, in a thousand glossy tresses, over the floor. "What is to be done
now? I suppose the religious people would call this sowing dragon's
teeth with a vengeance. I wish the girl had more coolness; there is no
managing events against weak nerves and hysterics--but she must be
soothed; at this rate, we shall have the whole house in commotion. Lina,
my child, make an effort to be calm. Look up, I am not angry with you!"

The old man was so encased and wrapped in self-love, that he really
believed his own severe words had alone dashed the strength from those
young limbs, and that a little gentle encouragement would make all right
again. So, stooping downward, he laid his soft, white hand, upon Lina's
head, as the last words were uttered; and, when this failed, made an
effort to lift her from the floor. But the leaden weight of utter
insensibility rendered more effort necessary, and, at last really
frightened, he arose and lifted the insensible girl in his arms.

That moment, as her pale face lay upon his bosom, and her loosened hair
fell in floods over his arm, the door softly opened, and Agnes Barker
looked in.

"Did you ring, General? I heard a bell ring somewhere."

"No, I did not ring, young lady," answered General Harrington, sharply,
"but this young lady has been over-fatigued someway, or was taken
suddenly ill as I was speaking of her studies."

A faint smile crept over Agnes' lips, but she checked it in an instant,
and moved forward with an air of gentle interest.

"She has studied very hard of late, no wonder her strength gave way,"
suggested Agnes, softly smoothing the hair back from Lina's forehead.

There seemed to be fascination in the movement of those treacherous
fingers, for they had scarcely touched her brow, when Lina started to
life with a shudder, as if the rattlesnake of the hill had sprung upon
her unawares.

Casting one wild look upon the female, and another upon the General, she
drew from his arm, with a sensation of loathing that made her faint
again.

"Let me go to my room--I must be alone!" she said, with a hand pressed
upon either temple. "The air of this place drives me frantic: so
close--so dreary--so--so"----

She moved away wavering in her walk, but making feeble motions with her
hand, as if to repel all assistance. Thus faint, pale, and almost
broken-hearted, the poor girl stole away, to weep over her new-born
shame.

"She seems very ill," said Agnes, softly, "very ill!"

"You have allowed her studies to prey upon her health," said General
Harrington, seating himself and fixing his cold, clear eyes on the face
of his questioner. "I must hereafter more directly superintend her
education in person. You will have the goodness to inform Mrs.
Harrington of this sudden indisposition."

Agnes changed color. The self-poise of this old man of the world,
baffled even her eager curiosity. She had expected that he would desire
her to keep the whole scene secret; and when he quietly told her to
reveal it to his wife, and took a resenting tone, as if she had herself
been the person in fault, her astonishment was extreme. The General saw
his advantage, and improved upon it. After softly folding the skirts of
his dressing-gown over his knees, and smoothing the silk with his palm,
he took up a volume from the table, and adjusted the gold glasses to his
eyes with more than usual deliberation. Agnes looked at him steadily,
baffled, but not deceived, till his thoughts seemed completely buried in
the volume. As she gazed, the evil of her half-smothered passion broke
out in her glance; and, as the General languidly raised his eyes from
the book, they met hers.

"Is there anything you wait for?" he inquired, meeting that fierce gaze
with his cold eyes. "Ah, I had forgotten, my people may drive the
carriage round--please say as much."

Agnes left the room, biting her lips till they glowed again, and with
her hand clenched in impatient fury. As she closed the door, General
Harrington laid down his book with an impatient gesture.

CHAPTER XXX.

BROTHER AND SISTER.

Lina could not rest. She went to her room, but it seemed so changed, so
unlike her old home, that a terror, that was almost insanity, fell upon
her. The rich blue curtains, to her excited mind, looked sombre against
their underwaves of frost-like lace, and her bed, with its snowy canopy,
now overclouded with damask, had a deadly whiteness about it, that made
her shrink within herself, as if some leprosy had fallen upon her, which
forbade her ever again to approach a thing so pure.

Lina crept into this room sad and disheartened; looking wearily around,
she cowered down on the carpet in the farthest corner, and sat watching
the door, as if she expected some enemy to come in and drive her forth.
At the least sound in the hall she would start and shrink back with a
moan upon her white lips, but she shed no tears, and her look was rather
one of affright than of the intense grief which had overpowered her
while in the presence of General Harrington.

At that moment there was a hurried tread upon the staircase. Every pulse
in Lina's heart throbbed wildly, and she sat leaning eagerly forward
with a half-expectant, half-frightened air, as the steps paused before
her door. A low, quick knock caused her to start from the floor. She
looked wildly round, as if seeking some means of escape, then sunk
against the wall, while her whole frame trembled with agitation. The
knock was repeated, and she covered her face with her hands, uttering a
low, shuddering moan. A third time that impatient summons shook her form
as with a convulsion, and when a voice, whose lightest tone possessed
the power to move her inmost soul, reached her ear in an eager whisper,
she rose again and stood upright, transfixed by that voice, which had
never before met her ear without filling her whole being with gentle
pleasure.

"Lina--Lina--are you there?"

It was Ralph who spoke. Lina gasped for breath and wrung her hands
desperately, like one who entreats for mercy, and feels that it is all
in vain.

"Lina, answer me--are you there?"

"I am here," she replied, in a low, unnatural tone.

"Open the door, Lina--I want to speak to you."

"Ralph, I cannot!"

"Cannot! What ails you, Lina? _Do_ open the door. Let me speak to you
for a moment."

She staggered feebly to the door, then with a quick motion, the hurried
resolve of which was strangely at variance with her previous hesitation,
flung it open, and stood before the young man.

"Why, Lina, have you forgotten your promise?" he began eagerly; then,
checked himself, as he raised his eyes to her face, and marked the
wildness of her glance, and ghastly pallor of her cheek. "Lina, what is
the matter? Are you ill? Tell me, Lina, what ails you?" He took her
hands in his, with a manner in which the impetuosity of a youthful
lover, and the kind, protecting air of a brother, were strangely
mingled.

"Answer me, Lina, my own Lina."

But Lina had no words; when her eyes met his, the tears which during her
lonely vigil had refused to flow, burst forth, and she buried her head
in her hands, sobbing like a frightened child. Ralph folded his arms
about her, and drew her back into the chamber, gathering her closely to
his heart, as if to reassure her by his protecting presence. He did not
question her again for several moments, but forcing her head gently down
on his shoulder, he strove to soothe her with whispered words, until she
gathered strength to check her tears, and drew herself from him,
striving all the time to appear more composed.

"Now tell me, Lina, what does this mean?"

She shook her head sadly, murmuring:

"Nothing, Ralph, nothing."

"Do not trifle with me, Lina. Something must have occurred to cause this
agitation. Can you not trust me?"

"There is nothing the matter! I was ill, and--and cried without knowing
why."

"You cannot deceive me with an excuse like that. Has any one hurt your
feelings! _do_ tell me what has happened."

But Lina only shook her head, and choked back the despair which rose to
her lips. He would have taken her in his arms again, but the movement
and the touch of his hand roused her to the fearful consciousness that
she had no longer a right to seek consolation in his companionship. She
broke away, terrified and oppressed, with a feeling of guilt at her
momentary forgetfulness.

"Leave me, Ralph, I wish--I need to be alone."

"You wish--you _need_ to be alone! This is very strange, Lina! Will you
give me no explanation? Have I offended you--tell me what I can have
done? You know that I would rather die ten thousand deaths than cause
you a moment's pain."

"Do not speak so, Ralph; do not torture me by such fears. You have never
wounded me by word or look--you have always been kind and generous."

"Thank you! thank you! Then tell me what pains you! Darling, darling,
you cannot know how I suffer to see you in this state. I must have an
explanation. Lina, you have no right to refuse it."

"I can give none! Ralph, leave me, I must be alone. Another time I may
be able to converse, but now"--she broke off abruptly, wringing her
hands in impotent despair, while the great tears fell over them, like
the last heavy drops of a spent shower. "Leave me, Ralph, leave me!" she
exclaimed, with a gesture of insane agony.

"I cannot understand this! Can this be Lina--my own dear little Lina,
always so confiding and truthful? Since my earliest recollection have
you not known my every thought and wish--been as familiar with my heart
as you were with your own? This is the first time that the slightest
shadow has fallen upon your mind against me, yet there you stand,
separated from me by some fearful sorrow, to which I can obtain no
clue."

"Do not speak so, Ralph! I repeat that nothing troubles me much! Will
you not believe me?"

"I never doubted your word before, Lina; but now--forgive me--I feel
that you are concealing something terrible from me. When I left you,
this morning, you promised to walk with me, and I hurried here the
moment I was free, longing to take a ramble over the hills--will you not
go?"

"Not to-day. I cannot--I am ill."

"Do not seek to excuse yourself! Say at once that you do not choose to
go."

"You misunderstand me, Ralph, indeed you do."

"Forgive me, Lina; I am so maddened by the sight of your tears, that I
scarcely know what I am saying. Only confide in me--can you not trust
me, your lover, your betrothed?"

"God help me!" broke from Lina's white lips, but the exclamation was
unheeded by the young man in his agitation.

"Have you a desire to hide anything from me--can you love, when you
refuse to trust me."

"Ralph, leave me! If you have any mercy, go away, and let me be alone."
In her frenzy she threw up her arms with a gesture which seemed to him
almost one of repulsion. He looked at her for a moment, his heart
bursting with the first revelation of its woe, then muttering--

"Lina, has it come to this?" he sprang from the room, and the sound of
his flying footsteps on the stair recalled her to a consciousness of
what had befallen her.

She strove to utter his name, but it died husky and low in her parched
throat. She must fly--anywhere to be out in the air, for the atmosphere
of that close chamber seemed stifling her. She caught up a shawl which
lay on a table, and rushed from the room and from the house. A sudden
thought, which seemed instinct rather than reason, had made her start
thus madly away to search for old Ben, the honest protector of her
childhood, hoping that from him she could gather some explanation of the
secret that seemed crushing the life from her frame.

CHAPTER XXXI.

THE SLAVE AND HER MASTER.

The carriage which conveyed General Harrington, went at a rapid speed,
till it entered the city. The General seemed unconscious of his unusual
progress, and was lost in what seemed a disagreeable reverie, till he
awoke amid a crash of omnibuses, and a whirl of carriages in Broadway.
Here he checked the driver, and leaving the carriage, bade him proceed
to the club, and await his return there. He paused upon the side-walk,
till the man was out of sight, then turning into a cross street, he
walked rapidly forward into a neighborhood that he had seldom, if ever,
visited before.

The dwelling he sought, proved to be a common brick house, without any
peculiar feature to distinguish it from some twenty others, which
completed a block, that stood close upon the street, and had a dusty,
worn appearance, without a picturesque feature to attract attention.

General Harrington advanced up the steps, after a little disgustful
hesitation, and rang the bell. The door was promptly opened, and an
ordinary maid-servant stood in the entrance. The General inquired for
some person in a low voice, and the girl made room for him to pass, with
a nod of the head.

The hall was dark and gloomy, lighted only by narrow sashes each side of
the door, and the whole building so far, presented nothing calculated to
remove the distaste with which the fastidious old man had entered it.

The servant opened a door with some caution, closed it behind her, and
after a little delay, returned, motioning with her hand that General
Harrington should enter the room she had just left.

With this rather singular summons the woman disappeared, and General
Harrington entered the door she had pointed out. It was a large room,
lighted after the usual fashion in front, and with a deep long window in
the lower end. This magnificent window occupied the entire end of the
room, save where the corners were rendered convex by two immense
mirrors, which formed a beautiful finish to the rich mouldings of the
casement, and curved gracefully back to the wall, making that end of
the apartment almost semicircular.

Hangings of pale, straw-colored silk, brocaded with clusters of flowers,
in which blue and pink predominated, gave a superb effect to the walls,
and from the ceilings, a half-dozen cupids, beautifully painted in
fresco, seemed showering roses upon the visitor, as he passed under. The
carpet was composed of a vast medallion pattern upon a white ground,
scattered over with bouquets a little more defined and gorgeous than
those upon the walls, as if the blossoms had grown smaller and more
delicate as they crept upward toward the exquisite ceiling. The front
windows were entirely muffled by draperies of rich orange damask, lined
with white, and with a silvery sheen running through the pattern, while
curtains of the same warm material, fell on each side the bay window,
giving it the appearance of a tent, open, and yet, to a certain degree,
secluded, for a fall of lace swept from the cornice, hanging like a veil
of woven frost-work before the glass, rendering every thing beyond
indistinct, but dreamily beautiful.

General Harrington was surprised by the air of almost oriental
magnificence which pervaded this apartment.

This room was not only in powerful contrast with the exterior of the
dwelling, but it possessed an air of tropical splendor that would have
surprised the General in any place. Divans, such as are seldom found out
of an eastern palace, but slightly raised from the floor, and surmounted
with cushions heavily embroidered with gold, ran more than half around
it. A few pictures, gorgeous and showy, but of little value, hung upon
the walls; and there was some display of statuary, equally deficient in
ideal beauty.

The light which fell upon General Harrington, was soft and dreamy imbued
with a faint tinge of greenish gold, like that which the sunshine leaves
when it penetrates the foliage of a hemlock grove in spring. For the bay
window opened into a broad balcony, open in summer, but sheeted in from
the front by sashes, so arranged that the glass seemed to roll
downwards, in waves of crystal, to the floor. This unique conservatory
was crowded with the rarest plants, in full blossom, that swept their
perfume in through the open window, penetrated the floating lace, and
filled that end of the apartment with the glow of their blooming
clusters.

The singular beauty of this scene--the quiet so profound, broken only by
the bell-like dropping of a fountain--and the twitter of birds, hung in
gilded cages, among the blossoms, had an overpowering charm even to a
man so _blasé_ as the General. He paused in astonishment, looking around
with pleasant interest--for an instant, forgetful of the person he was
seeking. But, to a man so accustomed to magnificence, this forgetfulness
was but momentary, and with a quiet and almost derisive smile, he
muttered:

"Upon my life, the creature is either witch or fairy, if this is really
her home!"

He was interrupted by a sound, as of one moving upon a cushioned seat.

The light was so dim at the upper end of the room, that General
Harrington had supposed himself alone, till the rustle of silk drew his
attention to a lady rising from the divan, who came toward him with a
sweeping motion, like some tropical bird disturbed in its nest.

The General paused, and stood gazing upon her as she advanced,
irresolute and uncertain; for the whole place was so different to
anything he had expected to find, that for a moment he was bewildered.

The lady advanced into the light, calmly and proudly, and with a gleam
in her eyes, as if she enjoyed his astonishment. Her dress was of purple
silk, wrought with clusters of gold-tinted flowers, that scintillated
and gleamed as she moved out of the shadows; her raven hair, arranged
in heavy bandeaux on each side her face, was surmounted by a cashmere
scarf of pale green, which was carelessly knotted on one side of her
head, and fell in a mass of fringe and embroidery on her left shoulder.
The flowing waves of her robe swept the carpet as she moved, and the
undulations of her magnificent person, were like the movements of a
leopard in its native forest. There was neither fairness nor youth in
her person, and yet the large, oriental eyes, so velvety and black, had
a power of beauty in them, that any man must have acknowledged; and
there was a creamy softness of complexion, a peach-like bloom of the
cheek, dusky but glowing--that harmonized With the gorgeous richness of
her dress and surroundings. The woman stood before her visitor, her
proud figure stooping slightly forward, and her eyes downcast, waiting
for him to speak.

The General gazed on her a moment in silence, but a quiet smile of
recognition stole to his lips; and, with an air, half-patronizing,
half-pleased, he at last held out his hand.

"Zillah!"

The woman's hand trembled as she touched his; her head was uplifted for
an instant, and an exulting glance shot from those strange eyes, bright
as scintillations from a diamond.

"I was afraid you would not come," she said, gently.

"Why, Zillah?"

"Because men do not often like to meet those who remind them of broken
ties."

The General slightly waved his hand with a half dissenting gesture, and
a gratified expression stole over his countenance, answered by a sudden
gleam in that strange woman's eyes; for she read in that very look an
intimation that her former power was not wholly extinguished.

"How comes it that you are here, Zillah?" he asked, glancing around the
room. "This is a singular place to find you in."

"You are astonished to see me here? as if I were a slave yet. Was it
strange that I, a free woman, longed to leave the places which reminded
me of the past, to see and learn something of the world? But, there was
another and more important reason--had I not a child and a mother's
heart longing to behold her offspring?"

"Zillah, tell me truly, is this thing real? is the girl we call Lina
French your child?"

"Have I not said it," replied the woman, regarding him stealthily from
under her half-closed lashes. "Why should I attempt to deceive you? it
would gain me nothing."

"That is true; but how did it happen that you abandoned her?"

The woman lifted her face, with a sudden flush of the forehead--

"You sold me, made me another man's slave: me, me!" She paused, with a
struggle, as if some suppressed passion choked her; but directly her
self-possession returned; the flush died from her face, and she drooped
into her former attitude, looking downward as before. "But that I always
was--a slave, and the daughter of a slave. Your child, though unknown
and unacknowledged, better that it died than lived my life over again,
cursed with the proud Anglo-Saxon blood, debased by the African taint,
that, if it exists but in the slightest degree, poisons all the rest."

"Zillah, you speak bitterly. Was it my fault that you were born a slave
on the plantation of my friend; that your complexion was fair, and your
beauty so remarkable, that few men could have detected the shadows on
your forehead. Surely, you had no cause to complain of too much hardship
as my servant?"

For an instant, the haughty lip of the woman writhed like a serpent in
its venom, struggling to keep back the bitter words that burned upon
them. Then her face settled into comparative calm again, and she said,
in a tone of gentle reproach, "But you sold me!"

"I was compelled to it, Zillah. It was impossible to keep you on the
plantation. James Harrington became your owner on the death of his
mother, and you know how terribly he was prejudiced against you. It was
the only command that he made; everything else he left to me; but here,
here he was imperative. All that a kind and obliging master could do, I
accomplished in spite of him. You had your own choice of masters,
Zillah; that, at least, I secured to you."

"A choice of masters!" repeated the woman, turning pale with intense
feeling. "What did I care about a choice of masters, when you sold me?
Had you given me to the grave, it would have been Heaven to the years
that followed. You sold me without warning--coldly sent an order to the
agent, and I was taken away. Your own child was the slave of another
man."

"But you kept me in ignorance, Zillah; besides, I had been married
again. A northern man, I was, of course, desirous to live in the North.
What could I do?"

"But the other slaves were set free. Master James provided means for
those who wished it, to emigrate to Liberia; a few went, more remained
of choice. No servant was kept on the estate who did not desire it. I
alone was sold."

"But you know how the young man detested you; he never could be
persuaded that your presence in her sick room, had not an evil influence
on his mother. In short Zillah, after her death he seemed to think of
little else."

The woman turned deadly pale, as the sick room of her old mistress was
mentioned. A shudder ran through her frame, and she sat down upon a
neighboring divan, gasping for breath. General Harrington watched this
strange emotion with keen interest; he did not comprehend its source,
but it brought up vague suspicions that had in former years passed like
shadows across his brain, when the sickness and death of his first wife
was a recent event.

"Zillah," he said, seating himself on the divan by her side, "you turn
pale--you shiver--what does this mean?"

The woman sat up, forcing herself to look into his questioning eyes.

"I was surprised at your blindness, shocked at the duplicity of this
man, James Harrington. So he excuses his hatred of me by this pretence,
and you believe him. I will speak now--why should I be silent longer?
Listen to me, General Harrington. It was because I knew his secret, that
James Harrington hated me. He loved the woman you have married, for
whose tranquillity I was sold to a new master."

"Very possible," replied the General, with a complacent smile. "I should
have been sorry to give my name to any woman whom a man of taste could
know, without loving. Of course, the young gentleman, like many others,
was dying of envy when that remarkable woman became my wife."

Zillah's eyes flashed, and she turned pale, lip and forehead. A bitter
laugh broke away with the words, as she said,

"But she loved _him_--adored him, rather."

The General was moved now, his self-love was all up in arms; he was
evidently getting furious.

"Zillah, this is one of your jealous dreams. You have no proof!"

"Master--let me call you so once more--among other benefits which came
to me through your kindness, I was taught to read and write--that was a
key to much else that I learned afterwards. In a vellum covered book,
which Miss Mabel always kept locked with a little golden heart, I saw
more than proof of what I say. She lost the key from her watch-chain,
one night, and I found it. The book is probably destroyed now, but if it
existed, I should need no other proof of what I know to be true!"

"Indeed," said the General, prolonging the word, thoughtfully, "Indeed!"

"Are you going?" exclaimed the woman, as he arose from the divan.

"Yes, Zillah, I have left some important papers in my library that may
be disturbed. In a few days I will see you again."

Zillah smiled a soft, exulting smile, but she did not allow it to
brighten her whole face till General Harrington had left the room.

CHAPTER XXXII.

THE BOAT-HOUSE.

Down upon the shore, so built as to form a picturesque feature in the
landscape, stood an old boat-house, in which Ben Benson made his home
when out of active service at the Mansion. Here the stout old seaman
kept his fishing-tackle, his rifle, and a thousand miscellaneous things
that appertained to his various avocations, for Ben was not only a
naturalist and philosopher at large, but a mechanic of no ordinary
skill. He not only devised his own fishing-flies, wove his own
shad-nets, and game-baskets, but performed the duties of a
ship-carpenter whenever his boats got out of order, or a new one was
wanted for the river.

On the day of Lina's great sorrow, Ben was standing in front of the
boat-house, superintending a kettle of pitch that was boiling over a
fire of dried logs and bark. The boat which had been almost torn to
pieces on the night when Mabel Harrington so narrowly escaped a terrible
death, was now turned upside down, and Ben was preparing to calk the
bottom and repair the injuries it had received.

Lina saw him as she came down the avenue, and her pace quickened. The
thin shawl she had flung about her was fluttering in the wind, but there
was a fever in heart and brain, which rendered her insensible to the
blast which swept the curls back from her burning forehead, and rustled
through her light garments. The little Italian grey-hound, which had
been for months her special pet, had followed her, unperceived, striving
in vain to win some sign of attention from the distracted girl.

Lina flew down the bank, and Ben looked up as the sound of her footsteps
warned him who it was that approached.

"I knowed that it was you, Miss Lina," he said, while every feature in
his rough face softened, as he looked toward her. "Sakes alive! what
brought ye out here such a day as this--this wind is enough to snap you
right in two."

"I don't mind the cold, Ben; I wanted to talk to you."

"Wal, if there's any one thing Ben Benson kin do for you, you've only
jest to mention it, and consider it done a'ready."

"I know it, Ben, and that is why I come. I wanted to ask you something."

"Why, you're shakin' worse nor a poplar leaf, and you're as white as if
you hadn't a drop of blood in your precious little body. What on arth's
the matter with you, Lina? See that ere dog; now, ain't he a pretty
specimen of an animal exotic to be out of a hot house in such a wind as
this."

Ben gathered the shivering little creature to his bosom with one hand,
snugly enveloping him in the capacious folds of his pilot jacket, while
with the other he seized Lina's hands, and leaning back against the
boat, stood looking at her with a half-pitying, half-affectionate
glance, that was indescribably comic and touching.

"I should like to know what Mister Ralph was a-thinkin' on, to let you
come out alone sich a day as this."

That name made Lina shudder, and a sudden spasm contracted her features.

"No one knew that I was coming out. Oh, Ben! I want to ask something--do
not refuse to tell me, or I shall die! How came I here--where was I
born--oh, who am I, Ben?"

"Sakes alive! How she goes on! One question at a time, if _you_ please,
Miss Lina! What on arth's been putting sich ideas into your little head?
Now no circumwenting--speak the truth, if you be a woman."

"Oh, Ben, I have always wondered and longed to know something about
myself, and of late, this desire has increased. I can think of nothing
else. Do not put me off--I shall die if I am kept longer in this
suspense."

Ben began to hug the pretty dog more and more tenderly to his bosom, as
if it was that which needed comforting, and not the poor girl before
him. At last, turning himself uneasily about, like a man disturbed by a
sudden recurrence of painful memories.

"Now, don't go to gettin' oneasy idees into your little head; there's
nothin' wuss for the femenine constitution. When you're well enough, let
yerself alone, and be satisfied."

"Oh, Ben, don't--don't! You are my friend--you have always been kind to
me; do not turn from me, now, when I am tortured by these strange
doubts. There is no one else of whom I can ask an explanation, and you
cannot refuse it! I am so very, very, unhappy, Ben--dear, good Ben!"

"There, there, Miss Lina!" Ben muttered, hoarsely, patting her hand with
his hard palm; then, clasping it again in his huge fingers, and looking
at it earnestly, as if it had been a delicately wrought sea-shell.
"Don't say no more--now don't--when Ben Benson gives advice, 'taint
without a reason. Now, you just listen to me, and then run away, and
don't get no more tantrums in that little head o' yours. Hain't the
madam, Mrs. Harrington, always been like a mother to you--hain't she
treated you as if you had been her own flesh and blood--do you want to
make her unhappy now, little gal, do you worry her about such things?"

"You know I would rather die, Ben!"

"I do believe you would, Miss Lina, I raly do! But there ain't no
question about dyin'--you've only to be patient and good, as is nat'ral
to you--take things as they come, and that's enough. I ain't a goin' to
have you ask me no questions, and I know you won't do it."

"But, Ben."

"Hush!" said Ben, pressing her hands hard between his broad palms, and
dropping them tenderly downward. "I can't listen to another word of this
'ere. It ain't of no use," and with a gesture of stubborn sorrow, Ben
walked deliberately into his domain, and closing the door, bolted it
against Lina, leaving her shivering in the cold.

Lina looked ruefully at the closed door, and her heart sunk as she heard
the heavy bolt drawn within. The last faint hope died out then; and,
without a word, she turned and walked away into the woods, desolate
beyond comparison with any former moment of her life. The wind grew
sharp, and whistled through the light indoor garments with which she had
recklessly come forth; her lips turned purple with cold; her hands were
so numb, that they fell apart as she attempted to clasp them; the tears
rushed warm from her eyes, and dropped away, frozen, like hail: and yet
poor Lina struggled on, thinking the cold only another pang of anguish,
which it was her duty to bear.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

GENERAL HARRINGTON READS THE VELLUM BOOK.

General Harrington was alone in his library. His hat and cloak lay in a
heap on a sofa near the door, an indication of unwonted perturbation,
for with him, a misplaced article was a proof of excitement which he was
always ready to condemn. His dress was a good deal disturbed, and his
hair disordered, as if he had threaded it more than once with the white
fingers that now clasped the open covers of Mabel's Journal which he was
eagerly reading.

It was almost painful to see the excitement under which that old man
labored. The book trembled in his grasp, his lips clung more and more
firmly together, his blue eyes shone vividly from under his bent brows,
yet from beneath all, there stole out a gleam of triumph, as if he were
weaving some crafty web of underthought out from the angry tumult with
which his soul labored. There was no sorrow in his look, no feeling of
sadness or regret for the greatest loss man ever experienced, that of a
good woman's love. With him vanity was the grand passion. Touch that and
he became sensitive as a boy of fifteen. In all things else he was
invulnerable.

And yet Mabel's Journal might have touched deeper feelings than her
husband was capable of knowing. Another man would have been roused to
compassion by the fragments of thought, sometimes artless, sometimes
passionate, that seemed to have dropped fresh from her heart upon the
pages he was reading.

He opened the vellum book at the beginning, for with all his impatience,
the methodical habits of his life prevailed even then, and at first,
there was little to excite more than a strong curiosity. But as he read
on, the perturbation we have described in his countenance, became
evident. He turned over the leaves violently, glancing here and there,
as if eager to devour his mortification at a single dash. The cleft
heart, whose breaking had given him access to poor Mabel's secrets,
struck against his hand as he closed the book, and opened it again at
random. He tore the pretty trinket away, and dashed it into the grate,
and a curse broke from his shut teeth, as he saw it fall glowing among
the hot embers. Then he turned back to the beginning, and began to read
more deliberately, allowing his anger to cool and harden, like lava,
above his smouldering wrath.

Thus it was that Mabel commenced her journal.

"A letter from my guardian. This is indeed an event. A year ago he wrote
me a long letter of advice, touching my studies, and giving a world of
counsel regarding my deportment. That cold, half-dictatorial,
half-fatherly letter, seemed forced from his heart by a sense of duty.
This is brief, elegant and kind. He is satisfied with my progress at
school, and hears with pleasure, of the improvement in my person--this
means, probably, that I am not near so plain as he fancied me. They tell
him I have a sort of fire and animation of the countenance, more
effective than perfection of outline could render me. I wonder if this
be true--of course it is impossible to judge of one's self in a point
which depends so much upon the feelings. There is no animation in a
hurried or tedious toilet, and the beauty he speaks of is never given
back by the mirror. To my vision, now, this is a rather dull and
uninteresting face. I wonder if it ever does light up into anything like
beauty. Some one must have said this to my guardian. Could it have been
the young heir of Neathcote? He did not seem to look at me at all, when
he called at the school and I was frightened to death by his great,
earnest eyes; if my guardian proves half as imposing, I shall be afraid
to look up in his presence.

"There is something strange in the situation of my guardian. He is
considered one of the most eloquent men in America, and by his marriage
with the widow of a cousin, three or four times removed, is the master
of great wealth. But every dollar of it came by his wife, on whom the
son was left entirely dependent as he is now. They tell me that General
Harrington is a liberal step-father and gives the young man no reason to
complain, but it seems a little hard that all his father's great wealth
should have been swept into the possession of a comparative stranger;
for, though these two men bear one common name, and are remotely of the
same blood, they met for the first time at the wedding out of which
sprang these present rather singular relations.

"There is another strange thing about this. Mrs. Harrington can only
dispose of the property by will. She has no power to alienate it during
her life, but can bequeath it where she likes. So if the General should
outlive her, this young man may be utterly disinherited; a hard case it
seems to me, for the lady is very gentle and yielding, so devoted to her
handsome husband, that his faintest wish is a law to her. All this has
been told me from time to time, leaving such an impression of injustice
on my mind, that I fairly began to pity the young man before I saw him.
But after that, the idea of pity never entered my mind. Millions could
not enhance the nobility of his presence, or make him one shade more
interesting. His mother is said to be very beautiful. She should be, she
should be! But how foolishly I am writing about a person whom I have
never seen but once, and who seemed to have taken no interest in that
meeting, except to give me a letter from his Step-father, which will
alter my whole course of life. The young gentleman himself is only
passing this way on his travels westward.

"So, I am to start at once, now that my education is
completed--completed; I like the term--as if education were not always
progressive, rounded off by death only. Well, at least, I am grateful to
leave this tiresome routine of lessons, and yet there is something of
mournfulness in this abrupt entrance into life.

"I have just opened the window, and would gladly look forth upon the
morning. But this screen of Cherokee roses hangs before me like a
curtain, shedding fragrance from every fold. In parting its clusters
with my hands, tenderly--for to my fancy, flowers are sensitive and
recoil from a rude touch--the dew that has been all night asleep in
their heart, bathes my hands with its sweet rain, and through the
opening comes a gush of odor from the great magnolia that reaches out
its boughs so near my window, that I could lean forth and shake the
drops from those snowy chalices, as they gleam and tremble in the bright
air.

"What a beautiful world is this. The very breath one draws leaves a
delicious languor behind it, a languor that falls upon the senses and
gives back to the whole being a dreamy quietude that makes the mere
effort of existence an exquisite enjoyment. And yet there is a feeling
of strange loneliness in it all. It is pleasant to be happy, but oh! how
more than pleasant to have some one near, to whom all these charming
sensations can be expressed. I think one is never quite content alone,
but then who ever is really content?

"How exquisitely pure every thing seems; my little chamber here, with
its delicate matting and snowy draperies, looks like the nest of a
ring-dove, it is so white and quiet. The sweet visions which visit me
here are melodious as the warbling of the young bird, when the early
morning wakens it, as the dawn has just aroused me.

"I have been now three days beneath my guardian's roof. Dear Neathcote,
I love it already for its singular beauty! I shall never forget the
strange feelings which crowded my bosom, as the carriage passed through
the park gates and rolled slowly up the broad avenue. I threw open the
window and leaned out with the eagerness of a child to catch a sight of
my new home. When, as a sudden turn in the road brought the front of the
mansion in full view, I shrunk into my seat again, trembling from a
vague fear, which had as much of joy as pain in it.

"I grew fairly dizzy and faint with excitement, as the carriage paused
before the entrance, and I saw my guardian waiting on the steps to greet
me, standing up so stately and proud, with his wife by his side, her
sweet face lighted up with a sort of friendly curiosity, to see what her
unknown visitor would be like.

"It was not embarrassment that I felt, it was a deep, strange emotion
for which I could not account. It seemed as if in crossing that
threshold I was to bid an eternal farewell to the repose of my past
life. Like a flash of lightning those thoughts swept in a tumult through
my brain as I descended from the carriage, and went up the steps to meet
my guardian, and his wife, who came forward to welcome me.

"I shall always love to look back upon that arrival!

"Everything was so homelike and comfortable, in spite of the
magnificence which reigned around! My guardian's rather cold face
brightened into a smile that rendered him very handsome, and his wife
greeted me as if I had been indeed her child, returning home after a
long absence. Then I caught sight of a woman's face at the window--a
servant evidently, yet there was a singular look in her great black
eyes, as she raised them boldly to my face, which almost terrified me.
Neither my guardian nor Mrs. Harrington appeared to see her, but I
wondered how she ventured to thrust herself forward in that manner, on
the arrival of a stranger.

"It was she who followed me to my chamber, when Mrs. Harrington
conducted me there, yet she offered no assistance, until her mistress
bade her attend to my toilet; then she obeyed, searching my face all the
while from under her black eyelashes. Yet her singularity was probably
an exaggeration of my own fancy, for she seems quiet and well-behaved,
though a little sullen. I am glad she is not to be my attendant, for
there is certainly an evil look in her eyes, whenever she regards me,
and I could never feel quite comfortable at night if I knew that she
were any where near.

"The girl had just left my rooms after arranging the toilet, which was
already in order, as if for an excuse for the intrusion. She cannot be a
slave, for though a little dark, I can trace nothing of the African
blood in her face; there is a glossy ripple in the blackness of her
hair, but that is a beauty which any woman might envy. No, no, she
cannot be a slave. Her singular style of beauty forbids the thought;
besides, she is not an uneducated person, and there is a certain subtle
grace in her movements that I cannot resist admiring, and yet loathe.
This is strange. Why is the girl so constantly in my thoughts? Yesterday
I spoke to Mrs. Harrington about her, for my curiosity became
irresistible. She is a slave, a new purchase of Gen. Harrington's, and
the personal servant of his wife. Mrs. Harrington smiled in her usual
contented way, and gently complained of the girl's uselessness and
studied inattention, but she seems unused to opposition of any kind, and
languidly allows even her servants to control her wishes. This fiery
slave--for, with all her stillness, she _is_ fiery--overpowers the
gentle nature of her mistress, and really seems to drink up her strength
with the glances of those great black eyes.

"How indifferent proud men sometimes are to the beauty of their
inferiors! now, this girl Zillah is constantly charming even my
half-repulsed admiration by her rare loveliness, yet I have scarcely
seen General Harrington turn his eyes upon her face during the whole
time that I have been in his house, but then, his devotion to Mrs.
Harrington is so perfect, he evidently has no eyes for any one else.

"How long is it since I opened my journal? Three months, I really
believe, and not a word of record. Even now, when the world becomes more
real, I feel like one aroused very softly from dreaming among the
angels. How would I write and see emblazoned upon paper, doomed,
perhaps, frail as it is, to outlive me, thoughts that even yet are so
intangible, that, like the butterflies that I used to run after when a
child, they are constantly eluding my grasp, and as constantly
brightening all the atmosphere around me. Is it possible that so many
weeks have gone by since _he_ came home? It seems like a prolonged
sunset, when the summer is in prime, and one trembles to see a single
tint fade from the sky, or a single flower overshadowed, lest it should
depart forever. Can it be this heavenly atmosphere which imparts to the
whole being a languor so delightful, mingled with that sweet unrest
which only wakes you to a keener relish of existence? I have been
striving to interrogate my own heart, and ask many questions which it
cannot answer, because the whole world here is so new and strange, that
it is impossible to discriminate between the luxurious sweetness of
material life and those quieter impulses that I have known hitherto.

"I remember the delight with which I first looked out upon this lovely
scene, but with all the novelty and perfect freedom of a heart ready to
enjoy the beautiful, I never before felt enjoyment so intense. I come to
my room at night and lie down to rest, jealous of the sleep that
swallows up so many hours of happiness. I am fond of dreaming no
longer, for visions that the angels send are no compensation for the
lost thoughts that sleep steal from me.

"I sat down with a determination to write of events, and as ever dwell
only upon feelings. After all, what has happened? Another member has
been added to the family circle, that is all, and yet, what a change his
coming has made. His presence seems to pervade the whole house. The
servants look more cheerful when he speaks to them. His mother brightens
up, and throws off her languor as she hears his tread upon the veranda.
Even the General's courtly politeness is toned down into something like
affection, and all his artificial stateliness takes its natural level,
when contrasted by the simple dignity of this young man's nature.
Indeed, until James Harrington came, I had no idea how superficial and
untrue was the character of my guardian. But now, with the pure gold of
this fine heart as a test, I can more clearly see the entire selfishness
which lies under his elaborate manners.

"'James will be here to-day,' he said one morning, while we all lingered
around the breakfast table, 'and his company, I trust, will render your
new home more pleasant than we have been able to make it.'

"'He will be like an elder brother to you,' said Mrs. Harrington,
smoothing the lace ruffles over her fair arm, and turning her soft eyes
upon me with a look of gentle affection, 'and you--oh, he cannot help
liking you.'

"Why did the blood rush into my face so hotly? Why did the lashes droop
over my eyes, and the tears spring up beneath them? Was it that I am so
completely an orphan, that this loving hint of brotherly companionship
made me more lonely than harshness could have done? I cannot tell; but
at this word 'brother'--utterly strange to my life hitherto--my heart
made a sudden recoil, and I could scarcely keep from weeping outright.
General Harrington lifted his eyes to mine, with evident surprise, while
the little white hand of his wife crept into my lap, and softly pressed
mine. That moment a horse dashed up to the door, and young Harrington
came into the breakfast-room; his fine eyes full of eager affection; his
cheeks in a glow, and with the most beautiful smile I ever saw on mortal
lips breaking over his mouth.

"'Mother, mother!' he said, coming toward Mrs. Harrington, with both
hands extended. 'I rose at midnight, and have ridden fast ever since, in
order to surprise you at the breakfast-table.'

"Mrs. Harrington started up; a flush stole over her face, and for once
her eyes sparkled before they filled with pleasant tears. This arrival
was, indeed, a surprise to her.

"As he was about to release her hands from his clasp, she drew him
towards me, and said pleasantly:

"'This is Mabel Crawford--the General's ward.'

"He took my hand, and an expression of surprise or interest rose to his
face as he felt my poor fingers quiver in his; while my face was burning
with a consciousness of feelings more tumultuous by far, than the
occasion could warrant. He held my hand a moment longer than was
necessary to a cordial welcome, and, for an instant, seemed to wonder at
my perturbation; then his features relaxed into the most kindly
expression I ever saw, and some words of welcome fell upon my ears, but
to this hour I cannot recollect what they were; the sound entered my
heart, and that was enough.

"General Harrington seemed to watch us closely, for I saw a smile creep
over his face, as if my awkwardness rather amused him; while his lady
stood by, regarding us with her soft, brown eyes, which were beaming
with a thousand affectionate welcomes.

"I think it was from that moment this strange happiness of heart
commenced, which has made Neathcote seem so much like a pleasant corner
of paradise to me. I never knew what companionship was before. If I
wish to read, he seems ever to have the book uppermost in his mind that
meets my own thought. If I am restless--and this mood grows upon me of
late--he is ready to gallop by my side down to the quarters, where I am
never weary of watching the queer little negroes at their play, or
through the magnolia groves that envelope us with a cloud of perfume as
we sweep beneath their branches. In fact, I have no wish from morning to
night, which Harrington does not either share or anticipate; no brother
could be more kind; and yet it gives me a strange pang to feel that all
this----

CHAPTER XXXIV.

AMONG THE WATER LILIES.

"I left off with a half-finished sentence. Mrs. Harrington's maid broke
in upon me at the moment with a message from the young master, as she
calls him. In a hollow among the hills he has found a pond of
water-lilies, and I must hasten to see them unfold their snowy hearts to
the morning sun, after sleeping all night upon the lake.

"Will I go? Surely one of those lotus flowers never thrilled a more
grateful response to the wave that sways it, than my heart gives back to
his wish--will I go? Those sleeping buds will not answer the sunbeams
that kiss them into another day of bloom, more gladly than I take the
happiness he offers. I have been restless and sad all night, and my
heart leaps to this new prospect of pleasure, as a bird flutters forth
from the shadowy leaves where it has spent the dark hours.

"The lotus pond was like a fairy lake, when we reached it; the banks
were festooned and garlanded with wild vines, prairie roses, and yellow
jessamines, overrunning whole hedgerows of swamp magnolias, whose
blended odor floated like a mist over the waters. Here and there an oak,
with long, hoary moss bearding its limbs, lifted whole masses of this
entangled foliage into the air, and flung it back again in a thousand
garlands and blooming streamers, that rippled dreamily in the waters of
the lake. As we came up, an oriole had lighted on one of these pendant
branches, and poured a flood of song over us as we passed down to the
boat, which lay in a pretty cove ready to receive us.

"An old negro sat in the boat, lazily waiting our approach, with his
face bowed upon his brawny bosom, and the sun striking through the
branches upon a head that seemed covered with crisp frost, age had so
completely whitened his hair. A word from the young master roused the
slumbering old man; and, with a broad grin of delight, he proceeded to
arrange the crimson cushions, and trim his sails, making haste to put
forth on our cruise along the shore, which was starred with opening
lotus blossoms, and green with their broad-floating leaves.

"It made my heart thrill with a sort of pain, as our boat ploughed
through this exquisite sheet of blossoms--for, as I have said before, it
has always seemed to me like uprooting a tender thought when a flower is
torn from its stem. I said something like this, as Harrington laid a
handful of the open flowers in my lap. He looked at me steadily for a
moment--muttered that it was a strange fancy--but plucked no more
water-lilies that day. After a time, when the old man, thinking to
please us, commenced to tear them up by the roots, Harrington rebuked
him for his roughness, and bade him trim the boat for a sail across the
lake.

"I wonder why it is, that, when we feel deepest, a disposition to
silence always holds the senses in thralldom. I did not speak half a
dozen words, as our boat sped like a bird across the lake; and yet my
heart was full of happiness, for Harrington had his dark eyes fixed
with a sort of dreamy earnestness on my face all the time. A
consciousness so strange, and almost delirious, seized upon me, that I
could neither look up nor speak, but bowed my head over the blossoms in
my lap, whispering to them what had never been uttered in words, and
never perhaps, may be.

"While we sat thus in mute happiness, with nothing but the ripple of the
boat to break the exquisite joy of our silence, the oriole began to sing
again, and his mate answered back the song from across the lake. I
looked up, and met his eyes: a flush came to his forehead, and I felt
the warm blood burning over my cheeks and forehead. His lips parted, and
for one instant he took my hand, but only to drop it among the cold
water-lilies again, as if some distressing thought had aroused him to
painful consciousness. Why was this? how came it that he relinquished my
hand so abruptly? Was he shocked with my upward glances--did he think my
recognition of his thoughts unmaidenly?

"The orioles ceased to sing just then, and a sullen cloud came sweeping
over us, which broke upon the pond in a sudden squall of wind. Before
the old man could reef his sail, it gave way, and fluttered out, like
the wounded wing of a bird, bearing our boat with it. The first plunge
cast me forward at Harrington's feet; he caught me to his bosom,
pressing me there with one arm, while he drew in the sail with the
other.

"The wind rose high, tearing in a tornado across the pond; but, I am
sure--sure as I am of the beating of my own heart, that Harrington
trembled from other causes than the danger we were in. Twice he bent his
lips to my face, but checked himself with murmurs which the cruel wind
carried from me.

"I do not know how we reached the shore, or why it was that we walked in
such profound silence homeward--but this I do know, another hour like
that would have broken my heart with its wealth of happiness.

"I could not sleep last night, but lay quietly, with my hands folded
softly over my bosom as had been a childish habit, thinking over that
sail upon the lotus pond. The moonbeams stole into my room, penetrating
the roses that hung around the casement, and bringing their odor softly
around my couch. This rendered my happiness complete.

"The morning found me wakeful, but when it brightened into day, I closed
my eyes, and turned my head upon the pillow, ashamed that the broad
light should witness my happiness.

"How sudden this is. Mrs. Harrington has been fading away for a month.
Her physician recommends change of climate, and in ten days we all start
for Madeira, or perhaps, Spain. _He_ goes with us, and I am content.

"On shipboard at last! Here I sit in my little cabin and listen to the
heaving of the waves against the vessel, as it ploughs proudly along, as
if full of the consciousness of its own strength, and defying the very
elements to impede its progress.

"The past ten days have been one continued fever of excitement, and I
have scarcely opened my journal. This trip to Europe was finally decided
upon in such haste, that we have known hardly a moment of rest.

"We were on board this morning at ten o'clock, and two hours after, New
York lay stretched out behind us on the shore of its beautiful bay, like
some enchanted city asleep in the sunlight.

"All that was dear to me stood by my side, so I had no sorrow at my
departure, beyond the natural feeling of regret that all must feel on
quitting their native land. I could not understand Mrs. Harrington's
burst of grief, so unlike her usual quiet demeanor. She has not seemed
much in favor of this voyage, although she made no opposition when
certain how greatly her husband desired to go. There has been a strange
unrest about her for days, that I could not comprehend, but from a few
words she unthinkingly uttered this morning, I imagine her to be haunted
by one of those morbid fancies, which at times seize upon the strongest
mind, in the eve of a long journey--the idea that she will never again
behold the land she is leaving behind.

"She has been laying down in her cabin all day, for she suffers greatly,
and I spent several hours with her, but at sunset James called me on
deck. We stood side by side at the stern of the ship, and saw the sun go
down behind a mass of clouds more gorgeous than I ever beheld. The
western sky seemed alive with molten flame--great billows of crimson
rolled up against the amber waves of light the sun had left behind,
streaming down over the waters, like a torrent of rainbows, until one
could scarce tell which was sea and which sky.

"We stood there until the latest glories died, and then the moon stole
slowly up, with only one star beside her, like the one bright hope of a
human heart. We conversed but little. My soul was too full of the home
we had left, and I knew, by the expression of Harrington's face, that he
understood and shared my feelings. It was late when I left him, and I
cannot write more. My hand is tremulous with the strange feelings which
thrill at my heart; the excitement of these last few days has been too
much for me, but in the quiet of this new life I shall grow calm again,
perhaps. Just now something of Mrs. Harrington's fears seems to oppress
me.

"A month has passed. Our voyage is almost at an end, for to-morrow the
captain promises that we shall be safely anchored in the harbor of
Cadiz. The sun went down this evening in an embankment of clouds,
shedding pale, watery gleams upon the sea, that threatened rough
weather. As the darkness came on, the clouds spread upward, blackening
the whole sky, and flashes of lightning now and then tore through them,
like fiery chain shot through the smoke of a battle. There was
consternation on board, for we were nearing the coast, and a storm like
this threatened danger.

"I remained on deck till the rising wind almost swept me over the
bulwarks. James Harrington was with me, and as the lightning gleamed
athwart his face, I saw that it was anxious and very pale. He strove to
appear unconcerned, and went down to the cabin, with a strong effort at
cheerfulness, which neither deceived me, nor checked the terrible fears
of his poor mother. General Harrington had retired to his state-room,
where he sat in moody silence, wrapped in a large travelling cloak. When
his invalid wife joined him, trembling with nervous terror, he only
folded his cloak the tighter around himself, and muttered that she need
apprehend no danger.

"Young Mr. Harrington wrung my hand with more of warmth than he had ever
exhibited before, when he bade me good night. He has gone on deck, while
I am cowering in my state-room, unable to seek rest, and striving to
write, though the storm is howling louder and louder, and every lurch of
the ship flings the book from my lap."

CHAPTER XXXV.

AFTER THE STORM.

"Alive and on land. In the country, back a little from the coast, we
have found a shelter from the shipwreck. That we live at all is owing to
the bravery of a seaman who superintended the making of a raft after the
ship struck, and almost forced us to save our lives by risking them
upon it. The other passengers refused to go, and for a long time we
hesitated, but Ben Benson was so determined, that at last we trusted
every thing to his frail craft, which, alas! was all of our brave vessel
that ever reached the shore.

"I shudder even now, as I remember the fearful rush of waters around us
when our craft was cut loose from the sinking vessel. A hundred ghostly
forms looked down upon us from the crowded stern, dreading the death for
us, which too surely fell on them.

"It was a terrible venture. The storm still raging, the sea rising high,
and breakers howling on either hand, like hungry tigers tearing at their
chains. It all seems like a hideous dream to me now, but I remember one
thing that kept the life in my heart, when it seemed turning to stone.
In the midst of the storm, as the raft reeled and plunged over the
lightning-stricken waves, I found myself gathered to his bosom, and
while the warmth of that embrace reached my heart, I heard such words as
sent the blood thrilling like a gush of wine, back through all my veins.
In the rage and whirl of the storm, while we were quivering in the very
jaws of death, James Harrington uttered in many a wild word, the love
that I had felt to be mine before. He seems to have forgotten it now,
for since we have been housed safely on land, with the breath of a dozen
orange groves awaking nothing but sweet emotions, he seems to have lost
the passion of those delirious words, but that they are burned like
enamel on my heart, I might fancy them a dream and nothing more.

"Why is this? What makes him so reserved and yet so gently courteous.
There is no impediment to free speech. Are we not equals in birth--and
as for fortune, thank Heaven, I am rich enough for both. Why should he
almost shun me then, and spend so much time wandering along the coast,
looking upon the waves that have almost proved fatal to us? These
thoughts make me very sad. Does he repent, or has a passion that seemed
so strong when death was nigh, gone out with the storm that witnessed
its first utterance."

CHAPTER XXXVI.

MISTRESS AND MAID.

"We had no particular object in touching the coast of Spain but the
health of Mrs. Harrington. Strange enough, the shock and tumult of the
storm seems to have done her good. She looks stronger and brighter day
by day. I never saw such a change. But Zillah, that wild beautiful
slave, has been ill from that terrible morning, and keeps her room. They
are all very good to her. Mr. Harrington, James, and even the lady, vie
with each other in offering kindness to her. These things seem to affect
her greatly; last night, when Mrs. Harrington sat down by her bed, and
took the feverish hand which she seemed unwilling to extend, the girl
turned from her suddenly, and burst into a passion of tears that shook
the bed.

"Mrs. Harrington tried to soothe her. She passed her delicate hand over
the waves of purplish black hair, which was all afloat from her head,
and asked in her sweet, gentle way, 'What the girl was crying for. Was
she homesick?'

"Zillah turned suddenly and looked into that sweet face. Her lips
parted, and some strong resolve came into those almond-shaped eyes;
through her inky lashes, laden down with tears, I saw a gleam of true
feeling that made me almost like the girl. But she closed her lips
again, and the noble expression died out of her face, leaving it full of
dusky shadows.

"'No, I am only sick,' she said, 'something struck me as I flung myself
down to the raft. All had left but me. But what does it matter whether a
poor slave lives or dies? It is a thousand dollars gone--two, I
remember, for a pretty slave like me--and that is all.'

"She spoke with bitterness, and her eyes gleamed angrily under the tears
that still trembled on their lashes.

"'But you have scarcely been a slave, Zillah,' said Mrs. Harrington. 'It
would be a shame to look upon you exactly in that light with this face,
fair almost as my own, and this hand soft, and shapely as a child's.
Surely no girl ever had lighter duties.'

"Zillah gave one quick glance at her mistress, and I saw the faint
dimpling of a smile around her lips. She drew her hand away and hid it
under the bed clothes.

"'You--you are making fun of me, searching for purple marks around the
nails. There is no need of that. But for the black blood I could not
have been bought and sold. That is proof enough.'

"The girl spoke bitterly, and her lips trembled with passion. Then I
saw, what had never presented itself to me before, sure signs of her
race. Temper brought the black blood uppermost, and stamped it for a
time on the features. The lips seemed heavier, the nose flattened, the
forehead lowered and grew dusky, a strange vitality stirred the waves of
her hair. No serpent, disturbed in its nest, ever gave out its colors
more vividly. These were thoughts to bring great repulsion with them. I
never had liked the girl; now, this upheaving of the dark blood, from
which all that made her kin to me revolted, even in her own system,
shocked and humiliated me.

"Mrs. Harrington, born and bred in the south, felt all this less keenly,
she still smoothed the young creature's hair and attempted to comfort
her.

"'You have no cause for trouble,' she said. 'Have I not always taught
you that a faithful servant had all the claims of a friend, else why am
I here in your sick room, Zillah?'

"'Oh, I am worth full two thousand dollars,' answered the girl,
bitterly. 'General Harrington takes excellent care of his horses. Is it
for love?'

"'Zillah, this is unkind, remember it is not my fault that you are a
slave.'

"'Mrs. Harrington arose; the insolent ingratitude of the girl had
wounded her greatly. For my part, indignation forbade me to pity the
creature. As we left the room I saw that she followed us with her eyes,
and the African stamp grew broader and plainer on her face, till all
beauty left it. As we closed the door she started up and called out with
sudden dread,

"'Mistress, mistress.'

"Mrs. Harrington hesitated a moment, with her hand on the latch, but
went back into Zillah's room murmuring,

"'Poor thing, poor thing, she is sorry already.'

"'Mistress, don't tell him, don't tell the master. I--I did not mean to
say such things. It was the black blood burning in my heart. Don't tell
him, or he will send me back.'

"Mrs. Harrington smiled.

"'No, I will not tell him,' she said kindly, 'for I think he would send
you home at once if he knew how perverse you have been. You ought to
remember that he never will forgive disrespect to his wife.'

"I was looking at Zillah. She half covered her face with the bed
clothes, and her form writhed under them as if in pain. It might have
been a sudden pang, but the look of a rattlesnake, before it springs,
was in those eyes.

"Mrs. Harrington was thinking of her husband, and observed nothing.

"'That is one great proof of his love,' she said addressing me, 'and I
think he does love me as few men love their wives. Have you not
observed how cheerful and happy he is since I am so much better? It was
only last night he told me that no woman, living or dead, ever had or
ever could touch the heart entirely mine, not even if God had taken me
from him. I know it seems foolish to repeat these things, but when the
heart is full, one cannot always help being boastful and silly.'

"Zillah turned rudely in the bed, and I saw her hand clench itself into
the blanket, tearing at the tough fabric. Mrs. Harrington, with that
feeling of household trust which has no consciousness of the
intelligence listening, went on as if the girl were a thousand miles
off.

"'You will not mind if I am a little egotistical. It is so pleasant to
be held supreme in the one heart, to feel sure that no other woman ever
has or can share your influence. If there is a woman on earth that I
pity, it is one who doubts the love of her husband. Thank God I have
never, never had reason to know that pang. If ever two people adored
each other it is us.'

"Perhaps it was a little singular that this lady should talk of the most
sacred domestic relations thus freely before her own servant, but it did
not seem strange to me. A child-like, affectionate woman like her, may
be excused many things that persons prouder and more reticent might
properly avoid; besides, the domestic habits of the south admit of very
close relationship between the mistress and her servants, unknown to
other regions even of our own country. I could only smile an answer to
this wifely enthusiasm, but it seemed to me genuine and so sincere, that
all my sympathy went with it. As for the maid, she lay perfectly still,
listening, and apparently half asleep, for she had gathered the bed
clothes around her, and it was only by a quick glitter that broke
through her eyelashes now and then, that I could detect the interest she
took in this singular conversation.

"'No, no,' said Mrs. Harrington, 'I would not tell the General for the
world, how really perverse Zillah has been. She has never quite met his
approbation I know, and the least thing would set him against her.'

"'Hush, she is listening,' I said.

"Mrs. Harrington turned and saw that Zillah was looking at her with a
strange expression. Something like a mocking smile parted her full lips.

"'You must believe me, Zillah. It was in spite of the General's wish to
leave you behind, that I brought you here.'

"Again Zillah smiled, this time with more of mischief than malice.

"'I know, myself, the General never liked me much. It was master James
that got him to buy me; the General would do anything to please him.'

"'Yes indeed,' replied Mrs. Harrington, addressing me, 'no step-father
was ever so indulgent. James has been a fortunate boy, though he does
not always seem to think so. It was he who took a fancy to Zillah, and
insisted that we should bring her with us, so the General gave up his
prejudice against her and consented. James thinks no one can take proper
care of me but Zillah.'

"I was still watching the girl. All the frowns had left her face and she
was almost laughing; something seemed to amuse her very much. I said
nothing of this, but the girl puzzled me greatly, and so did the
conversation of Mrs. Harrington. Somehow I had got the impression that
James Harrington had been opposed to Zillah as an attendant for his
mother; that he had suggested an older person, and regarded this one
with distrust. But surely Mrs. Harrington, his own mother, knew best."

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE SLAVE WE LEFT BEHIND US.

"Zillah was really ill, and for her sake we were detained in that little
hamlet on the coast for three weeks. Even then she was unable to travel,
and General Harrington resolved to move on without her. The barren
little village had no attractions for him, and he certainly was not a
man to sacrifice much time or convenience to a slave against whom he had
prejudices.

"Why had I become so painfully interested in that girl? Why was it that
my heart grew heavy, when James Harrington expostulated with his father
so earnestly against the abandonment of that poor girl, as he called
her, in a strange place and among people whose language was unknown to
her.

"But the General was resolute. The girl could follow them to Seville, he
said, when she became well enough to travel, no harm need come to her
and she could be well spared. Mrs. Harrington had improved so much in
her health that Zillah could have plenty of time to get well without
much inconvenience to her mistress. Miss Crawford's little maid was
always at her disposal.

"James Harrington did not seem satisfied with this reasoning, but he
said nothing more, and the next day we went up to Cadiz, leaving Zillah
behind.

"The girl was greatly distressed, and protested that she was well enough
to travel anywhere with her mistress, that everything would go wrong if
she was left behind, that the people were strange and would not know how
to direct her. She attempted to leave her bed and put on a traveling
dress, but fainted as her foot touched the floor. I was sorry for the
poor creature, and my heart ached at the necessity of leaving her
alone; but like her I was powerless in the hands of my guardian.

"Just before we left, General Harrington went in to speak with her. She
was acting very unreasonably, he said, and deserved chastisement for her
folly. Did she expect his whole family to wait in that dull place till
it was her pleasure to get well? The truth was, James had spoiled the
girl.

"He must have been harsh with the poor thing, though that was not at all
like him, for she was sobbing as if her heart would break ten minutes
after, when I went into her room, and said many bitter things of her
master's cruelty, which in common charity I shall never repeat.
Certainly the girl does seem to be terribly spoiled. I wish her no harm,
poor wretch, but if she were going back home a free woman my heart would
be lighter. I wonder if they would let me purchase her and give her the
freedom which belongs to every one of God's creatures. She has managed
to pick up a tolerable education, and in a country where hundreds of the
blue blood are darker than she is, might do well; for she certainly is
beautiful and has bright native talent enough to carve out a happy
future for herself. As for the money, a year's income would be nothing
compared with the relief of seeing her happy, free, and of all things,
away from us. I will speak of this to Mrs. Harrington; no woman ever had
a kinder heart or a keener sense of justice; the difficulty with her is
that she spoils her servants with too much kindness. That is a thing
which people just out of barbarism are apt to mistake for weakness.

"I think this girl has been made unhappy by the education which lifts
her out of the common herd of slaves. She feels the disgrace of caste
with terrible acuteness, and in no strata of society can find a place
for herself. In order to make the slaves useful or happy, they must be
educated in masses. It does not do to lift one from among his fellows
as a specimen of what they can possibly become. Open a future for the
slaves, give them intelligence and freedom at the same time; but I need
not go on. How many times has all this been said. But the day will come
when justice shall be brought about.

"We are leaving Cadiz for Seville, where General Harrington proposes to
spend the holy week. I have had no opportunity to speak with Mrs.
Harrington yet, but the fate of the poor girl we have left behind hangs
heavily on my spirits. James Harrington, too, seems depressed. Is
it--can it be? No, no, no! A thousand times no! How dare I form it in
thought? Still, she is beautiful, clever, elevated by her intelligence
far above some of my own order. She has caressing ways, too, when it
pleases her to assume them, and a look out of those almond-shaped eyes
when she is pleased or grieved, that troubles even me with painful
admiration. No, if money can buy her she shall be out of her thraldom,
and happy as a bird, but only on condition that she flies away to her
own country, or stays in this after we leave it. Strive as I will for
charity, nothing on earth, I do think, will ever make me like that girl
even as a servant.

"Our steamboat is just now turning into the mouth of the Guadalquiver.
What strange, barren-looking things are these Spanish castles! Their
walls, of a dull, yellowish red, seem more like an upheaving of the soil
itself, than massive stone piled up by the labor of man. They are bare,
too, of the rich vines and tremulous leafage which makes the ruins of
Italy so picturesque, and those of England so grand in their decay. Here
is a massive building on our right, full of historic interest, I dare
say, and it may be rich in Moorish embellishments if I could see the
interior; but at this distance it looks bleak and barren as a prison. My
own vague 'castles in Spain' are ten thousand times more beautiful.

"I said this to James Harrington as he came and stood beside me on the
deck.

"'Oh,' he answered with a sigh, 'Who of us does not build air castles
only to see them vanish into mist. As you say, mine have been more
beautiful than that heap of stones. After all, architecture is severely
perfect, which Nature does not claim after it leaves the hand of its
constructor. The struggle which she makes to draw art back into her own
bosom, is always beautiful.'

"Thus he will talk to me for hours, but never of himself. What have I
done that we are driven so far apart,--that he so studiously turns his
eyes away when mine question him with unconscious
earnestness,--unconscious till some look of his reminds me that for a
moment I have been off my guard. Then I grow angry with myself, and
avoid him with what must seem to him childish caprice. Does he
understand all that I think and suffer? Does he know how that day among
the water lilies haunts my memory?"

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

THE EATON FAMILY.

"There is an American family on board--some persons whom the Harringtons
have met before in the South, and who have attempted to renew the
acquaintance. The old people seem to me very coarse, common-place
persons--planters from the interior of Louisiana--rich and vulgar; but
the daughter is beautiful--a blonde, with lovely hair, full of sunshine,
and eyes of that deep purplish blue which one seldom sees after
childhood. Her figure is petite but finely rounded. She has all the
health and freshness of a child, with the sweetest graces of womanhood.
Yes, I can say this, and acknowledge the charm of her beauty, though she
has given me the most wretched day I ever passed in my life.

"James Harrington had known her before, and was rejoiced at the meeting.
When he saw her across the deck my hand was on his arm, for we were
walking together. The start he gave shook off my hold and, with both
hands extended, he went to meet her, glad as I had never seen him
before.

"The girl blushed like a rose, and came forward to meet him, quite half
way, smiling up in his face as I had never dared to smile through all
the months of our domestic intercourse. My heart turned cold. I felt a
strange contraction about my mouth as if all the blood were retreating
from the lips, which would not syllable a word when he brought the young
lady towards me and presented her.

"She looked at me earnestly, like a child who felt itself repulsed, and
stood silent as if expecting me to come out of my reticence and receive
her as every one evidently did.

"At last I spoke with an effort, and I dare say brusquely, for I felt
that my voice sounded forced and cold.

"'You are an old friend--you have known Gen. Harrington and his family
before?' I said.

"'Oh yes,' she answered, smiling up at James. 'We are old friends. How
long is it, Mr. Harrington, since you taught me to ride? Indeed, Miss
Crawford, I think he has taught me almost everything worth knowing that
I can boast of.'

"I made an effort to smile, and answered in the insincerity of my pain,
that it must have been a pleasant task to instruct so lovely a pupil.

"She laughed sweetly, and replied in her childish fashion, 'He used to
say as much, but I am sure it was only to encourage me.'

"Just then her father crossed the deck, radiant with pleasure, and
shouted a greeting as he came. He was a large, heavy man, robust and
genial, overshadowed by a broad Panama hat, and flourishing a large
white handkerchief in his hand, as if it had been the star spangled
banner, which was to open the heart of every American he met.

"'Hallo! We have overtaken them at last, have we, Miss Lucy? Now I hope
you are satisfied. How are you, Harrington? Did not expect to see us in
this part of the world, I dare say? Is the General and Mrs. Harrington
on board? Of course I might have known as much from a sight of this
young lady. The General's ward, I suppose.' Here Mr. Eaton took off his
Panama hat and made an elaborate bow, which I returned, striving to meet
his cordiality, with some show of interest.

"'Well, this is comfortable,' he said, fanning himself with the broad
rim of his hat, 'of all countries in the world Spain is the one where an
American likes to meet an American best. I don't understand one word of
their lingo, and our courier isn't much better off--hates the Spaniards
so that he never would learn their language, in hopes that it might keep
any one from bringing him here. But he is a good fellow, can be trusted
with untold gold. Language or no language, I wasn't going to do without
him. But it is awkward work trying to make these Spaniards understand.
Ask what you will and they answer all alike, Kiem Sabe, as if that was
the answer to an honest question. Oh my boy, I'd give twice the money we
got for her, that I hadn't sold you that girl Zillah. When we took her
to Cuba she pitched in and learned the language right smart; wonderful
girl that; have you got her yet, Harrington?'

"'She came with us to Spain,' said Harrington, looking a good deal
disturbed, 'but you forget she was General Harrington's purchase. I
believe my mother took a fancy to her.'

"'Your mother! Why bless your soul, she never saw the girl till General
Harrington took her home. He said that _you_ had urged him to buy her;
come, come, don't blush up like that, what the deuce do I care who
fancied the girl, she was a great bargain to any one.'

"'Are you speaking of Zillah?' said Miss Eaton, languidly. 'What a
pretty creature she was. It seemed a shame to keep her with the other
negroes. I remember often and often visitors mistook her for me.'

"'But that was before they had seen you, Lucy. The girl is well enough,
but no one could mistake her for you. Such coal black hair, eyes like
velvet. Yes, yes, the girl was a beauty,--one good reason why I was
willing to sell her.'

"James Harrington was so annoyed by the conversation, that he walked
away frowning. I had never seen his noble face darken so unpleasantly
before.

"Miss Eaton laughed, and followed him with a pair of sparkling eyes,
that had a world of mischief in them.

"'Something wrong I see. That girl will keep things stirring wherever
she is; knows a heap, and far too handsome for my plantation; glad to
get rid of her, if the truth must be told. Women folks were fools enough
to teach her to read and write, after that she took the bits into her
own mouth, and learned every thing. What do you think I would do with a
fancy slave like that?'

"'Father, you cannot see, but General Harrington is coming,' said Miss
Eaton.

"'Oh, ho! my old friend, how is the lady?'

"'Mrs. Harrington is quite well, the voyage has done her a world of
good, long enough for a chance at health you understand. That is why we
selected a sailing vessel. It isn't going to sea at all when you get
into the steamers. Where is James? I thought he came this way, his
mother wants him.'

"'Oh, I am to blame, I drove him off talking about that girl Zillah.'

"'Come this way,' said the General hastily, 'I wish to surprise Mrs.
Harrington, she will be rejoiced to know that you are here.'

"They went away together. I saw General Harrington stop his friend after
they got out of hearing, and talk with him earnestly as if expostulating
about something. Then I saw Mr. Eaton clap his hand on the General's
shoulders, nod his head half a dozen times, and move on as if some
matter had been amicably settled between them. From that day, I never
heard Mr. Eaton mention the girl Zillah again. Was it because James
Harrington seemed so displeased with the subject?

"I was left alone with the young lady, who seemed so sweet and good that
it was impossible to look upon her with anything but kindness. Yet I
never turned towards her without a nervous thrill that almost held my
breath; every line of her face, and graceful curve of her form, seemed
burned on my memory from the first moment I saw her. Was this jealousy?
What had I to be jealous of? A fair girl whom he had known well, and was
pleased to see in a strange country, where friends are few and unusually
welcome, surely I am not so weak or wild as to give myself up to an
unreasonable and unreasoning fancy like that."

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THAT SPANISH NOBLEMAN.

"Miss Eaton was enthusiastic about the scenery of the river, as the boat
swept over its amber-hued waves, and the scenery became more and more
Arcadian. She was a little romantic too, and fell into some childish
affectations, that gave me a fair excuse for not thinking her perfect.
Upon the boat was a tall, powerful looking man, with bold black eyes,
and the carriage of a person used to power of some kind. His dress was
remarkable,--the short jacket of the country, buttoned and ornamented
with quantities of round golden buttons, that rattled and tinkled as he
walked up and down, was ornamented with a very rich embroidery, in which
gleams of crimson and brown were enwrought on the blue ground with
delicate effect; a traveling cap, also richly embroidered, sat
jauntingly on the side of his head. Everything about him was apparently
new, and if too gorgeous, effective.

"Miss Eaton watched this man with her furtive blue eyes, as he passed us
ever and again, each time fastening his gaze on her face with a look of
audacious admiration that made the blood come hotly into my cheek.

"'What is he, have you any idea?' she whispered, as he passed us for the
fifth time, 'some nobleman I am sure. Don't you think so, Miss
Crawford?'

"I answered pleasantly, that as this was the first country of Europe
that I had seen, it was impossible for me to judge what particular trait
distinguished its nobility. While I was saying this, a little fussy
woman, wearing a showy dress and lace mantilla, came up to us and called
Miss Eaton by name.

"'My dear,' she said, giving Lucy's bonnet a jerk forward. 'Have you
seen him?'

"'Who, mamma?'

"'Why that duke, he passed here just now, and I saw him looking at
you--with that bonnet stuck on end, dear me!'

"Lucy began to re-arrange her bonnet, entering into her mother's
anxiety. 'Was it--was it the gentleman with the buttons, mamma. How is
it now? too far forward I think,--with the buttons?'

"'Such buttons!' interrupted the mother, 'solid gold every one of 'em,
blue blood, every drop in his veins--any one could swear to that without
telling. Did you see him, Miss?'

"'Miss Crawford, mamma,' said Lucy, 'General Harrington's ward, whom we
have heard so much about.'

"The woman looked at me keenly through an enamelled eye glass, which she
carried fastened to a chain of gold, twisted around her wrist.

"'Glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Crawford,' she said, dropping the
glass after a full survey of my person. 'James has told us so much about
you. Indeed, we were getting almost jealous, weren't we, Lucy? There,
there he comes again. Drop your parasol, Lucy, carelessly, you know.
Hush, hush!'

"The Spanish traveller came by us again, with his long sweeping walk and
bold eyes, which he kept on the blushing face of Miss
Eaton--impertinently, I thought.

"Mrs. Eaton gave me a little punch with the point of her parasol, after
he had passed.

"'Struck! undoubtedly struck. Don't you think so?'

"'Oh, mamma, how can you! I'm sure it was Miss Crawford his Highness was
admiring.'

"'But how do you know it is his Highness,' I inquired.

"'How? Why, look at him. His very tread has nobility in it. You have not
been travelling abroad long enough to distinguish at a glance. In order
to know the aristocracy of a nation one must have mingled with it on
equal terms. Now that gentleman is a royal duke, I take it. Lucy, dear,
if you could manage to be speaking French when he comes this way again.
Perhaps Miss Crawford knows enough to give you countenance. I am a
little--just a little--out of practice since my passion for the Spanish.
Noble language, isn't it, Miss? Something so dignified--so rolling--so
rich in sound. Here comes Mr. James Harrington, handsome as ever, but
wanting, as I may suggest, in the grand air. See with what modest
appreciation he passes the duke.'

"The vulgarity of this woman did more to lift the cloud from my heart
than a hundred arguments could have done. I knew young Harrington well
enough to feel that he was safe with a woman like this, though the
mother of an angel. A sense of amusement stole over me, and I awaited
his approach, cured of the anxiety that had, for a time, made me so
wretched.

"If I had calculated on a second exhibition of snobbery after Harrington
joined us, Mrs. Eaton disappointed me. I think she held the young
gentleman in too much awe for a free exercise of the vanity that was in
her. She did not even mention 'the duke,' and I remarked that this
personage kept on another portion of the deck while James was with us.

"How beautiful are the banks of this river, as we go nearer and nearer
its source! It is strange that I, an American, born in a land which
spreads the broadest prairies on earth to the breeze and the sunshine,
should have caught my first glimpse of one in the heart of Spain. Here
mile after mile, the Guadalquiver, spread through vast plains of tall
grass and wild flowers, which sweeps away from you on either hand in a
sea of billowy green touched with purple and crimson, gleams now and
then where the tall flowers grow thickest, and swayed by the wind till
the waving grass seems to heave and roll like the ocean itself.

"I had left my companions, and stood by the bulwarks admiring the beauty
of this scene with a sense of keen pleasure. Its vastness, its soft
wave-like undulations charmed me into forgetfulness of all that has made
the trip unpleasant. There was no habitation in sight, yet those
prairies gave one an idea of infinite life.

"'It is here,' said a voice at my elbow, 'where the people of Seville
come for the wild bulls that form the great feature in their bull
fights. Wandering about in that long grass are thousands of splendid
animals that probably never saw the face of man.'

"It was James Harrington. I felt that he was there before he spoke. A
quick throbbing of my heart had warned me of his presence.

"'I see nothing of them,' was my answer. 'It seems one broad sea of wavy
grass, more still and lonely than the ocean itself, because no ships are
to be seen.'

"'Look,' he said, pointing to a long, undulating ripple in the grass,
which seemed like the flow of some brook, 'a drove is coming toward the
shore.'

"As he spoke, the thick wall of grass that hedged in the river was
parted, and the fiery head and broad chest of a wild bull, black as jet,
came into full view, while the rest of his body was still concealed.

"Rosa Bonheur would have gloried in a study like that. The great wild
eyes, burning with angry fire--the long, slender horns, black as ebony,
and sharp as steel, which curved out from the proud symmetry of that
head, would have inspired lower genius than hers. The furious toss of
those horns, the swelling nostrils, blood red with angry heat, the
vehement pawing of his hoof upon the bank, were enough to terrify a
bolder person than I am. But the river was deep, and our boat far enough
from the shore to silence any fear of danger. Besides, the creature was
so magnificent in his wild rage, that admiration overwhelmed all other
feelings.

"As the boat came opposite this bull, there was commotion in the tall
grass all around him, and out from the dense covert broke half a dozen
kindred beasts, all drawn to the shore by the rush and sound of the
steamboat. Superb animals they were, one and all; perfect creatures,
fresh from the hand of Nature, untouched by fetter or lasso, untamable
as the lion in his jungle. Some were ready for fight with the monster
beast that had seemed to challenge combat, with its rushing wheels and
the defiant snort of its engine. Others looked gravely at the passing
phenomenon, and stood motionless, with the long grass closing over
their backs, evidently wondering what terrible thing had come among them
to torment the waters so. While we were looking, these grave old
animals, who had doubtless been within sight of human beings before,
wheeled slowly and were lost in the long grass which closed over their
backs, as sea waves cover a victim. But the black bull came farther out
from his covert, tearing the bank with his hoofs, erecting his tail like
a banner, ripping up the earth with his sharp horns, and bellowing a
defiance after us, that made me tremble where I stood. Heaven help the
matador, whom fate should throw into the path of that terrible creature.

"The banks of the Guadalquiver are Arcadian, after the prairies are
passed. As we approached the beautiful basin in which the old city of
Seville is built, villas and country houses were seen here and there
along the shores; clumps of gnarled old olive trees wound down to the
water; orange and citron trees in full blossom, and fruit, perfumed the
air; sometimes a single tree stood out alone large and symmetrical as a
New England pear tree; then whole orchards sloped down to the river,
with great golden piles of fruit heaped on the grass underneath, and the
blossoms showering down so thickly, that it seemed as if a squall of
snow must have swept by only an hour before. I think in the whole world,
there cannot be found trees so large, so perfect, and so vivid in their
greenness, as those we saw in the orange orchards, just before we came
in sight of Seville. How I longed to go ashore and bathe myself in their
perfume, and taste their delicious fruit!

"James Harrington was standing near, and he too must have felt the
influence of all that subdued me; for the scent of the orange blossoms
swept over us both, the rich amber-hued waves of the river whispered the
same music to him that I had listened to. We had conversed but
little,--a climate like this induces reverie, rather than speech; all
the sensibilities of one's nature exert themselves unconsciously, a
harsh word or bitter thought would melt into forgiveness, before either
could be spoken. Was he affected in this way? I cannot tell; my heart
deceives me if there was not unusual tenderness in his voice, a tremor
as if he feared to say what my heart paused to gather in. I dared not
look at him. In my soul there lay thoughts he might shrink from reading,
and I should perish with shame if he but guessed that they existed."

CHAPTER XL.

THE MANOEUVRING MOTHER.

"We come in sight of Seville, the high tower of the Giralda, cutting
against the blue of the sky, first won my attention; then a portion of
the old city came in view, backed by one of the finest cathedrals in the
world.

"It was just before holy week; the steamboat brought many passengers
from Cadiz, who had come to witness the ceremonies in this the second
city of Spain.

"Many persons, mostly ladies, were on the shore when our boat came up to
its landing place. Dressed in their light flowing muslins and lace
mantillas, they had a picturesque appearance quite in harmony with the
place. The moment we came in sight, a hundred pretty hands gave out
signals of welcome from the twinkle of their delicate fingers. There was
no bustle, no confusion, but a world of welcoming smiles, and soft
murmuring words, which would have filled me with a sense of loneliness,
had not all that I loved been close by. How could I miss those wreathing
welcomes, when the wealth of my whole existence went with me?

"'You are pleased. You like Seville. I can read it in your face.'

"He had not spoken to me during the last ten minutes, and I started from
the dreaming observation into which I had fallen, to answer him.

"'I was wondering if all the world could produce another spot more
lovely.'

"'And I was thinking pretty much the same thing. In a scene like this
the hard cares of life seem impossible. It is a place to live, love, and
die in.'

"I could not answer him. Indeed, his words were spoken so dreamily that
they required no response.

"We were on shore then, waiting for General and Mrs. Harrington. The
Eatons joined us, full of some important intelligence, which I saw the
elder lady was dying to communicate.

"'I told you so--never was mistaken in my life,' she whispered. 'The
captain speaks French almost as well as I do.'

"To have saved my life I could not have helped smiling. The woman had
given me a specimen of her French that day, and I could imagine how
perfect any information must be conveyed to her in that language.

"'I asked him who the gentleman was, and he told me he was the greatest
man in Seville, just then. No wonder I admired him--all the ladies did,
not excepting the Infanta herself, who would present him with a golden
key next week, in token of her high appreciation! She must be some
member of the royal family--master of the wardrobe, I suppose, by the
key. They never give such offices to anything less than a duke, you
know.'

"The little woman was all in a flutter of excitement. Again she made a
motion that I should bend my head to listen.

"'Would I oblige her and ride or walk with Mr. James. She would rather
that the duke should not see Lucy with him just now. He might understand
an engagement, and the Spaniards were so proud and particular. That was
a good soul! She could trust me with all her little secrets.'

"The silly thing did not dream how willing I was to oblige her, but
General Harrington broke up our plans. He had engaged a carriage, and
called on me to get in with Mrs. Harrington. My maid was already seated
there, so James walked to the shore alone. The Eatons had their way, for
he did not offer to go with them. They lingered at the landing till the
duke drove off. Mrs. Eaton told me that he had absolutely waved a kiss
to Lucy from his carriage window. Of course it was not returned, 'but
straws show where the wind lies,' she said. 'So many people told us
before we came away, that we ought to look higher for a girl like our
Lucy. I wonder if a duke would meet the ideas of our friends.'

"The woman's fussy vanity wearied me--so puerile, so ridiculous, yet
there was a sting in it. Look higher for their daughter! Higher than
whom? But why should I let the talk of this silly woman annoy me? The
daughter is wonderfully beautiful, but what of that? Still I have heard
it said that the most brilliant men often choose such women for their
wives. There is repose in this companionship it is said, and so it may
be for a time, but men do not live for repose. When a man wants rest for
his intellect, let him sleep, not marry a pretty idiot.

"Dear, dear! how bitter I am becoming! How unhappy I am! What possesses
me to think of this poor girl as an enemy? Is it because he took her to
the cathedral yesterday and left me to General Harrington.

"We went to the cathedral again this morning. I saw General Harrington
talking earnestly with James just before we started. He seemed a little
angry. I could not hear a word, but they both looked towards me, and I
saw the blood rush into James' face when he saw that I was regarding
them. He hesitated a moment after the General left him, and advanced a
step towards me, then wheeled suddenly and went away. A few minutes
after I saw him walking towards the cathedral with Lucy Eaton. We
followed them after a little, General Harrington observing, with a
laugh, that we must give the young people their chances."

CHAPTER XLI.

THE CATHEDRAL AT SEVILLE.

"The cathedral was magnificent. All its rich properties in velvets,
silver and gold, had been brought forth for its adornment. The altar was
one blaze of light--tapers of snow-white wax rose in crowds from golden
candlesticks, garlanded with flowers which sent their sweetness through
the pungent smoke of the censers, and clothed the altar with a sacred
whiteness. Reliquaires flaming with jewels, flashed out through all this
noonday splendor, and two enormous tapers, six feet high, stood like
sentinels on each side the altar. Yet all this was insufficient to light
up the vast edifice or penetrate the chapels in the side aisles. Here
all was shadowy and full of religious gloom, where any weary soul might
pray in solitude, notwithstanding the priests were saying high mass at
the great altar, and a grand choir of fresh, young voices filled the
whole edifice with music which seemed born of Heaven.

"The gloom along the centre of the building was heightened by draperies
of warm crimson velvet, which, banded at each seam with gold, swept down
the vast stone pillars and fell in massive folds over the great entrance
doors.

"I could not understand all that was said, for the service was in Latin,
but I did feel the solemn swell of the music in every fibre of my being,
and the devotional feeling which impressed the crowd touched me with
holy sympathy.

"I do not know what caused the impulse, but Mrs. Harrington took my hand
tenderly in hers. Then we stole to a side altar gleaming snow-white
through the shadows, and kneeling down together asked that help and
blessing from God which both of us thirsted for. The whispered prayers
we uttered that solemn hour, undoubtedly sanctified a friendship which
has been growing deeper and stronger from the first hour of my meeting
with this lovely woman. She wept that day, and I saw, for the first
time, that under her soft and gentle exterior, lay feelings and passions
which the world would never dream of.

"I did not appear to notice the singular emotion she betrayed at that
altar, but it recurred to me afterwards, and my mind was filled with
conjectures about its cause. Surely it could not be her husband. No
human being was ever more attentive and kind to a wife than General
Harrington was to his. There was something almost chivalric in his
devotion to her wishes. Was it her son? There my heart stood still. With
only these near relatives in the world, she could have no grief which
did not relate to them or one of them at least.

"That night Mrs. Harrington came into my room, which opened upon the
same verandah with her own. She sat down on the sofa I occupied, and
began to talk to me of the ceremonies we had witnessed that day in the
cathedral. From that she glided gradually to other subjects, and dwelt
with a touch of sadness on the impolicy of early marriages. 'Her own,'