at the costs of its rearing and education, and would, besides, liberally
repay Miss Joe for the trouble she might be put to in taking care of it.

General Garnet was there to indorse her promises. He approached them;
and taking the feverish hand of the invalid, and turning to Miss Joe,
said:

“The husband of this young woman was a soldier under my command; he
fought under me during the whole course of the war. Once he saved me
from death. Once he saved me from dishonor. He received his
death-wound—for, years after, it caused his death—in the same battle in
which I won my present military rank. I am under eternal obligations to
him; and while I have an acre of ground, or a dollar at my banker’s, I
will never see this child want!”

The invalid died the next morning, immediately after being placed in her
chair, where she had insisted upon sitting.

General Garnet arrived within an hour after, and took the direction of
the humble funeral.

Within four days from this Miss Joe found herself at home with her
grandnephew, little Hugh, her ward, Garnet Seabright, the old negress,
who had fallen to little Garnet’s possession, along with the personal
effects of her mother, and, lastly, with old Pontius Pilate, who had
complained of great loneliness during his mistress’ absence.

Little Hugh Hutton was a proud and happy little man the day of Netty’s
arrival. He tried to multiply himself into a train of attendants to wait
upon the little girl. He first proposed to give up his cot bed, his
chair, and his little chest for her use. He brought her all his
playthings, his bows and arrows, and guns and traps, and hammered all
day at what he fondly supposed to be a boat, that he was making for her
benefit.

When General Garnet had taken leave of Miss Joe at Huttontown, just as
she was about to cross over to her island, he had begged her to apply to
him in any emergency, and to call on him for anything her young charge
might want. The child of the soldier who had served under him throughout
the Revolutionary war, who had once interposed his body to save his
life, should never suffer for the necessaries or comforts of existence
while that life was spared. And this he had said with that earnest and
fervent tone, and with that benign and beautiful smile that never failed
to fascinate the love and trust of all who heard and saw him. And Miss
Joe felt assured and comfortable.

But now, as days slid into weeks, and weeks grew into months, Miss Joe
heard no more of General Garnet and his promises, nor did she like to
take him at his word and apply to him. He ought to prevent that and save
her feelings, she said.

As years passed away, however, Miss Joe occasionally wrote to General
Garnet in behalf of her little protégée. For the most part, her letters
would remain unanswered, but when one did elicit a reply, General
Garnet’s epistle would be full of kindness, blessing, encouragement,
good advice, and—nothing else.

At last, during a bitter winter, their main dependence, their faithful
servant, poor old Pontius Pilate, caught the pleurisy and died. In the
midst of this trouble Miss Joe wrote again to General Garnet, and once
more, and for the last time, invoked his promised assistance. After the
lapse of several days she received a letter from the benignant general,
full of condolence, sympathy, and exhortation to hope and patience,
and—nothing else! The letter concluded with the assurance that she had
nothing to fear—that God never made a mouth for which he had not also
provided food. To this letter the long-suffering old lady was
exasperated to reply—that though it was true God had made both the
mouths and the food, yet the mouths had fallen to her lot, and the food
to his.

The general never replied to this last letter, and here the
correspondence ceased.

                              CHAPTER XVI.
                                 ELSIE.

                                      Oh! the words
              Laugh on her lips; the motion of her smiles
              Showers beauty, as the air-caressed spray
              The dews of morning.
                                              _—Milman._

                                         But ever still,
               As a sweet tone delighteth her, the smile
               Goes melting into sadness, and the lash
               Droops gently to her eye, as if she knew
               Affection was too deep a thing for mirth.
                                               _—Willis._

General Garnet was certainly not a parsimonious man; perhaps his
interest in his little godchild had died with her mother; perchance,
being a very wealthy man, he could not appreciate the strait to which
poor Miss Joe and her little family were reduced; possibly, he did not
wish to give his personal attention to little Garnet’s necessities;
probably, he intended that Miss Joe should get what was needed at the
village store, upon his account; certainly, if Miss Joe had liberally
interpreted his letters, and done so, he would, without demur, have
settled the bill. But Miss Joe was far too cautious to put a doubtful
construction on his letters, and run in debt. I never clearly
comprehended the difficulty between them, but I believe they each
misunderstood the other, and so General Garnet remained with the stigma
of cruelty and ingratitude resting upon him, when, perhaps, he could be
justly accused of indifference only.

Just about the time of Miss Joe’s last application also, General Garnet,
like Martha, was troubled with many things. He was a candidate for the
Senate, and all his thoughts engaged in the secret, intriguing,
vexatious, multifarious business of electioneering; or if he had a
thought or a moment to spare, it was divided between the negotiation
with his neighbor, Mr. Hardcastle, of a marriage between Magnus
Hardcastle and Elsie Garnet, or in preparations for the return of his
daughter—having his house repapered, repainted, and newly furnished.

Magnus Hardcastle had obtained his diploma, and was getting into some
little practice, despite the grumbling, growling, and swearing
objections of his uncle, who could see no necessity for his nephew
“making a slave of himself for nothing.”

Yes, absolutely for nothing! Let Magnus show a dollar that he had ever
earned by all his practicing of medicine. Let him show even a dollar
that he had ever got back for the medicines that he had dispensed along
with his attention and advice!

It was true, Magnus’ receipt-book, if he owned one, was an unwritten
volume. His practice was mostly among poor people, who had no dollars to
spare.

Well, then, what did he do it for? What good did it do him? There he
was, rapped up out of his warm bed in the middle of the winter’s night,
in the midst of a snowstorm, to ride five or six miles to some old woman
in a cramp colic, or some child with the croup! What good did it do? And
this was not the case once or twice, but five or six times in a month.
And what good did it do him?

Lives were saved!

Yes, but what did he get for his trouble? Thanks, maybe. Pooh! he knew
very well that half the time he got nothing but ingratitude and coarse
abuse. He had better remember that Irishwoman, with an inflammatory
fever, who took her powders every hour in a gill of whisky, and, being
near death, swore the d—— doctor’s stuff had murdered her. He had better
remember how the other woman cursed him for cutting off her husband’s
mortified leg to the saving of his life. Pooh! Let him give up the dirty
profession. He did not adopt him, did not intend to give him a fortune
for the sole purpose of enabling him to be a poor doctor without even
parish pay!

Sometimes Magnus would answer to this effect:

“Nonsense, my good uncle! If I can do any good in my day and generation,
let me do it. Though I do sometimes get abuse from some poor, ignorant
man, or, more frequently, a blowing up from some poor, nervous,
overtasked woman, who, by the way, would defend me, to the death, the
very next hour, if anyone else attacked me—why should I care? I am quite
as well liked as I deserve to be. Most people are, in fact. Some day the
people around here will send me to Congress in my own despite, I am so
popular.”

“Send you to Congress! I expected that—I was only waiting for that. It
only wanted that to complete my despair and your ruin.”

“Dear uncle, be easy—I shan’t go,” Magnus would reply, laughing.

Yes, Dr. Magnus Hardcastle was very popular, and could have carried as
many votes as any man in the county. He was the constant companion of
General Garnet, by what sort of attraction and association the reader
cannot fail to know. Never was such a zealous partisan as Magnus! Never
was such a stump orator,—earnest, eloquent, impassioned, large-souled,
great-hearted, full of human sympathies,—he could sway a crowd to and
fro in a manner that might have been amusing, if it had not been sublime
in its exhibition of power. It was his personal appearance, as well as
his temperament, that was the cause of much of this power over others.

But it is time to give you some idea of Magnus Hardcastle at
twenty-three. He was a fine illustration of the beauty of the vital
system. He had the tall, athletic form that distinguishes the men of the
Western Shore; a face rather square, by reason of the massive forehead
and massive jaws, both indicating intellect and strength; but it was in
the fullness of the beautifully rounded chin and cheeks, in the fullness
of the large, but beautifully curved lips, that the fine, genial
serenity, and joyous temperament was revealed; the line of the nose and
forehead was nearly straight, and the eyes were clear blue, the
complexion was clear and ruddy; and the face was surrounded by the
darkest chestnut hair, and whiskers that met beneath the chin. The
prevailing expression of this fine countenance was confidence and
cheerfulness.

Magnus had been corresponding with Elsie for the last three years, and
looked forward to her return with more of joyful anticipation than
anyone else in the world, perhaps, except her mother. A year before
this, two miniature portraits of Elsie, in her young womanhood, had been
forwarded from England. One of them had been retained by her mother; the
other was presented by General Garnet to Magnus. He wore it in his—vest
pocket. It was his charm, his talisman, his abracadabra. When, if ever,
he would become, for the instant, lazy, stupid, hopeless, or impatient,
he would take that miniature out, touch the spring so that the case
would fly open, and gaze upon that handsome, wholesome, happy face until
energy, inspiration, hope, and patience came again; and he would close
it, and replace it in his pocket with a joyous faith in his coming life,
that not all the powers of evil could have shaken.

I told you that Magnus was the zealous, active, and most efficient
partisan of General Garnet; he was also the dear friend and confidant of
Mrs. Garnet. Many and long were the confidential talks they would have
in Alice’s dressing room; and the subject of these conversations was
Elsie—still Elsie.

One day, after reading with Mrs. Garnet Elsie’s last delightful letter,
and discussing with her Elsie’s expected arrival, he exclaimed joyfully:
“This makes me gladdest of all!—that our fresh, dewy, charming Elsie
will come at once to us. Well!—at once to me—that she will not have had,
as most young ladies have, many other lovers; that the sun of the world
will not have stolen the bloom and the dew from our beautiful Maryland
rose.”

But Magnus “reckoned” his future without destiny, his “host.”

Elsie had been withdrawn from school, indeed, and was quite ready and
anxious to get home. She was to return with General A——’s family, who
were soon expected to sail for the United States. But one circumstance
following another, and connected with his diplomatic business, had
deferred his departure from time to time, until six months passed
away—during which time Miss Garnet had been presented at court, and was
moving in the best society in London. Yes; and, though still impatient
to come home, enjoying her happy self to the utmost, as every letter
testified.

Now, you would think that after having congratulated himself so upon the
unsunned freshness of this beautiful Maryland rose, that Magnus would
lament that she was blooming in the very blaze of the sun of fashion, in
the very conservatory of a court.

By no means; her letters reassured him, every one.

“It is well, very well, upon the whole,” he said. “She has now an
opportunity of forming an acquaintance with one order of society that
may never occur again—of getting an insight into one phase of human
nature that nothing but this experience could afford her.”

And time sped on, and brought the day when a letter came to them, dated
at Liverpool, and announcing that General A——, with his family, and Miss
Garnet, would sail within a few days, in the ship _Amphytrite_, bound
from that port to Norfolk. Therefore, it was expected that within a few
days after, if not before the arrival of the letter, the _Amphytrite_
would be in port.

General Garnet, accompanied by Dr. Hardcastle, left Mount Calm
immediately for Norfolk, to welcome his daughter, if the ship had come;
to wait for her if it had not.

Mrs. Garnet remained at home to receive her, in fond, impatient
expectation.

She had Elsie’s bed chamber decorated, and a fire made in it every day,
and the parlors lighted and warmed, and the tea table set for the whole
party every evening.

At last, one night,—a week after they had left home,—while she was
standing before the parlor fire, trimming a lamp on the chimney-piece,
and wondering sadly if she were not merely imagining that her long-lost
daughter was expected home, a carriage drove rapidly up the shaded
avenue, steps were let down, people came, a little bustle ensued, hasty
steps and joyous voices were heard. Alice ran out, and, in an instant,
the mother, weeping, laughing, exclaiming, had caught, and was hugging
her daughter laughing to her bosom. Yes, Elsie herself!—Elsie, warm,
alive, real, and such an armful of bright, rosy, joyous life, and love
and reality! I leave you to imagine the joy of the party around the
tea-table that night, where all were too joyful to eat—or the late hour
at which they separated for the night and retired to their several
rooms, where each one was too happy to sleep.

The next morning, happy, joyous Elsie had to hold a sort of levee for
the benefit of the colored folks. Every negro in the house, or on the
plantation, who had known her before she went away, had to come and
shake hands with her, and welcome her back. And every little one that
had grown from infancy to childhood during her absence, and to whom she
was a sort of fabulous demigoddess, or, it might be, one of the angels,
had to come and stare at her and be patted on the head, and get its
paper of sugar-plums or its toy.

And then, later in the day, when her trunks and boxes arrived in the
wagon, and were unpacked, she had to distribute her presents and tokens
of remembrance to all and each of the colored people.

And in the course of the second day, when the news of her arrival began
to be rumored about, the companions of her childhood, now grown up to be
young men and women, flocked in to see her. And it was from their sly
hints and innuendos that Elsie was taught that it was expected of her
father to give a ball, and that, indeed, a great many people would be
very greatly disappointed if he did not. And good-natured Elsie, in
order to make so many young folks happy, named the matter to her father,
and begged him, as a personal favor to herself, in consideration of her
recent arrival home, to give a party. So General Garnet, willing to
please his child, and believing, besides, that a large party might
forward his electioneering prospects, gave his consent. He consulted
Mrs. Garnet and Dr. Hardcastle, and fixed the time of the ball for that
day two weeks. Magnus was with Elsie every day. She perfectly
understood, though she could scarcely have told why, for no one had as
yet hinted the subject to her, that she was at no very distant period of
time to be married to Magnus. She considered her marriage, like her
leaving school, her presentation at court, and her coming-out ball, a
part of the programme of her happy drama of life, and was content. She
loved Magnus. During her absence in England, she had remembered and
loved him as she had remembered and loved her father and mother—as one
of the elements of her life’s joy.

When she returned, she had met him with the fond and free affection of a
sister for an only brother.

And when she had been at home a week, and Magnus had found opportunity
and courage, and led the beautiful and happy girl to a shady nook in the
twilight parlor, and told her with the burning eloquence of passion how
long, how deeply, how greatly he had loved her; how she had been at once
his one memory and his one hope—his incentive, his dream, his
inspiration, his guiding star, Elsie heard him with undisguised
astonishment at his earnestness and enthusiasm, and wondered to herself
where it all came from. And when he, full of doubt and fear, for her
free and unembarrassed manner discouraged him, begged her to give him
answer, she replied, without the slightest hesitation or
embarrassment—nay, even in her native, gladsome, confident manner—that
he need not have given himself so much anxiety; that of course everybody
knew they were going to be married; didn’t their lands join? and, of
course, she had never even thought of retreating.

Now you may think from that speech that Elsie was a sadly heartless and
mercenary and calculating little baggage. She was as far as possible
from being that. She was a fresh, innocent, totally inexperienced girl,
who repeated, parrot-like, the sentiments of those around her.

Magnus knew that, and caught her, strained her to his bosom, pressed
kisses on her brow, her cheeks, her lips, in the delirious joy of “first
and passionate love.” And Elsie broke from his arms and ran from the
room suffused with blushes, trembling with a strange, painful, blissful
tumult. All that evening Elsie wandered about upstairs, or sat dreaming,
half in terror, half in joy, until her mother came in and asked of what
she was thinking so deeply?

Elsie started, and blushed violently.

Alice took both her hands and gazed deeply into her face.

At that earnest and tender mother’s gaze, the tears sprung into Elsie’s
eyes, and then, as struck by something ludicrous in herself or her
position, Elsie laughed.

Alice pressed her hands, and released them, saying:

“It is time to dress, my dear Elsie, your father expects you in the
parlor. Let me fix your hair; it is in sad disorder.” And she smoothed
and twined the rich ringlets around her fingers, letting them drop in
long tendrils of golden auburn.

And then she arranged her dress of purple cashmere, and they went below
to the lighted parlor, where General Garnet and Magnus awaited them. The
general and Magnus were engaged in a political discussion, but Magnus
broke off and came at once to meet them.

Elsie, with a bright blush, turned away and walked to a distant table,
where she ensconced herself with her tambour frame.

But from that day Elsie gradually changed. She kept out of the way of
Magnus most sedulously. The courtship became a regular hunt. All Magnus’
ingenuity was employed in devising how he could circumvent Elsie’s arch
and saucy prudery, and entrap her into a little lover’s talk or walk.
And all Elsie’s tact was engaged in devising means to avoid without
offending Magnus.

And so days went on, until one day it fell like ice upon the warm heart
of Magnus, that Elsie might not love him except as a brother; and oh! he
thought of her first, free, fond, sisterly affection for him, until the
evening upon which he first declared his passion, and then of her calm
agreement to marry him because their lands joined, and her cold
avoidance of him ever since. “Yes,” he said to himself, “it is too true.
Elsie does not love me. I am wooing an unwilling bride. Shall I continue
to do so? Shall I marry her and seal her misery? No, my God! No, though
she is the first and last hope of my life, I will resign her if that
will make her happy.” And so Magnus suddenly abandoned the pursuit of
Elsie, and grew thoughtful, sorrowful, pale, and weary-looking.

Then he absented himself from Mont Calm for several days. Elsie did not
grow pale or thin; she was too sanguine for that; but she became uneasy,
then anxious, then restless, and would walk about looking silently from
the windows, particularly the back windows that overlooked the forest
road leading down to the Hollow; or looking into her father’s or her
mother’s face with an anxious, appealing look of silent inquiry. If the
door-bell were rung, she would start violently, pause breathlessly, turn
very pale, ask eagerly of the servant who returned, “who was that?” The
answer, “Judge Jacky Wylie,” or “Marse Roebuck” caused her to sink back
in her seat, disappointed and blushing with mortification. And yet only
two or three days had passed; but then Magnus had been in the habit of
coming twice a day, and staying over night; and two or three days seems
to a young, impatient heart like two or three eternities.

At last General Garnet, in the blackest rage and the brightest smile,
put a pair of pistols in his pocket, mounted his magnificent black
war-horse Death, and rode down to Hemlock Hollow, with the deliberate
intention of courteously inquiring into Dr. Hardcastle’s motives of
conduct, and blowing his brains out if the answer should not prove
satisfactory. Not that he sympathized with Elsie, or believed in broken
hearts, but that he had a saving faith in the junction of estates, and a
high respect for the “honor of his house.”

He found Magnus looking sallow and haggard, and immediately surmised
that he had been ill, reproached him in a polite, gentlemanly way for
not having informed his friends of his indisposition, and finally hoped
that he had recovered.

Magnus pleaded guilty to illness, and much care and anxiety, and spoke
of the pain that enforced absence from Elsie gave him. Not for the world
would Magnus have hinted that Elsie’s coldness had driven him away, and
that despair had made him ill; he knew too well that such a
communication would be visited with great severity by her father upon
the head of Elsie. And he judged rightly—General Garnet’s heart was set
on the marriage of those two joining plantations. If Magnus had backed
out, he would have shot him like a dog. If Elsie had retreated, he would
have turned her out of doors. If both had broken off, by mutual consent,
he would have—Satan only knows what he would not have done.

As it was now, he was perfectly satisfied with Magnus, insisted that he
should come over the day of the ball, if not before, received his
promise to do so, and took leave.

                             CHAPTER XVII.
                     THE BALL—THE UNEXPECTED GUEST.

        There was a sound of revelry by night.
                                ... and bright
        The lamps shone o’er fair women and brave men;
        A thousand hearts beat happily, and when
        Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
        Soft eyes looked love to eyes that spoke again,
        And all went merry as a marriage bell!
        But hush! hark!
                                                      _—Byron._

The day of the ball arrived. People had been invited for twenty miles
around. Apartments had been prepared for the guests who, coming from a
distance, would be likely to remain all night. From an early hour in the
afternoon carriages began to arrive, and the men-servants had enough to
do in stabling the horses and putting away the vehicles; while the
maid-servants were employed in showing the company to their dressing
rooms, and attending upon them there.

Magnus came early in the afternoon, in order to have a private
conversation with Mrs. Garnet, to whom he intended to open his heart
fully.

He asked for her as soon as he arrived, and was immediately shown up
into her bed chamber, into which both Alice and her daughter had been
crowded by the incoming of their guests. As he entered, Alice came
forward with a smile to meet him. Elsie started violently, colored
brightly, and, ere anyone could prevent her, even if they had wished,
flew from the room.

As she flew by him, Magnus fixed one passionate reproachful look upon
her, and said, in a hurried voice:

“Fear nothing, Elsie! I will never trouble you.”

Alice, still smiling, pointed him to a chair. He sat down, dropped his
forehead upon his hands for a moment, sighed heavily, looked up, and
opened his story. He told Alice that he had discovered, to his eternal
sorrow, that Elsie did not love him, that though to resign her was like
resigning his hope of heaven, yet every principle of justice and honor
obliged him to do so; he concluded by asking her opinion as to the best
manner of breaking this affair to General Garnet, so as to shield Elsie
from his indignation.

“And so you wish to give Elsie up?”

“Wish!” and Magnus dropped his forehead into his palms with a groan that
might have started all the house, had they been listening. Then, lifting
his head up again, he said sternly, almost fiercely:

“Listen! If Elsie loved me, not all the power of earth or of hell—or—God
forgive me!—I had nearly said of heaven—should sever her from me! not
you—not her father—not herself—if only she loved me! But she does not,
and it is all over.”

“And who told you she did not love you?” inquired Alice, smiling at his
vehemence, and sighing as her thoughts flew back to the past, when she
was resigned in spite of herself. “Who told you that Elsie did not
return your love?”

With a gesture of despair Magnus recounted all that had passed between
himself and Elsie, and ended, as he had begun, with a groan, dropping
his head upon his hands.

                  “Puir human bodies are sic’ fules,
                  Wi’ a’ their colleges and schules,
                  That when nae real ills perplex ’em,
                  They mak eno’ themsel’s to vex ’em,”

sang Alice; then said:

“Oh, Magnus! with all your knowledge—with your classic, and mathematic,
and philosophic, and metaphysic learning—with all your knowledge, not to
know a young girl’s heart better than that! Oh, Magnus! ‘with all your
getting, get wisdom, get understanding.’”

“Alice, Cousin Alice! Do you mean to intimate what sometimes I have
madly hoped—that I have been mistaken, that Elsie does——”

“That Elsie loves you a thousandfold more now, that she avoids you, than
she did while she laughed, and talked, and romped with you. Oh, man! you
should have found this out for yourself, and not have put me to the
shame of betraying my child. And now, never let me hear another word of
your self-sacrificing resignation of Elsie’s hand, or I shall take you
at your word, as she would do now, for I don’t believe in it. I have
more faith in the cruelest demonstrations of a downright, honest,
sincere, human passion than in all the self-martyrizing resignation in
the world!” said Alice, with a strange asperity, for her thoughts flew
back again to the past. “Go, Magnus! You will find Elsie in the
ballroom. Go, Magnus; I love you, or I never would have said all that I
have said to you.”

Magnus seized the hand of Alice, pressed it to his heart, to his lips,
and darted from the room in search of his betrothed.

He found her in the large saloon, described in the beginning of this
story as occupying the whole of the righthand wing of the house. She was
standing at a table, arranging a large bouquet in a marble vase. He
stole softly up behind her, and, restraining the impetuous force of his
emotions, passed his arm gently around her waist, and drew her—so
gently!—to his heart. And Elsie’s head sank upon his shoulder. He raised
her chin and kissed her—still so gently!—as fearing to startle her shy
trust and again frighten her away. So gently, and trembling all over,
for in his bosom he held a young tornado in check. At last she moved to
withdraw herself from his arms; he pressed her once more to his bosom,
printed one more kiss upon her lips, and let her go. So quiet and so
silent was their reconciliation.

He stood there where she left him in a happy trance, until the company
began to drop in one by one, and in couples, and trios, and in small
parties.

And then he wandered on by himself. He strolled down the shaded avenue,
and through the gate, and over the burnished hills, now brown with the
sear wind of November, under the cold deep-blue starlit skies, wrapped
in a blissful dream, until the sudden peal of music from the house awoke
him.

He turned to retrace his steps, and now saw the whole south wing blazing
with light, and the sprite-like figures of the dancers as they flitted
by the illuminated windows. He hastened back, entered the house, hurried
to the little room always kept sacred to his use, arranged his toilet,
and went below.

He entered the ballroom, which was resplendent and joyous with light,
and music, and gay and brilliant company. Magnus slowly made his way
through the crowd in search of his ladylove, but nodding, smiling,
shaking hands, according to the degree of his acquaintance with the
individuals that made up the company.

Judge Jacky was there in great force—superb in a blue velvet coat, white
satin vest, and smallclothes.

And Ambrosia Wylie was there, too. Miss Ambush, as the colored folk
perverted her pretty name. Oh, well named both ways, for she had grown
up the most alluring _ignis-fatuus_ that ever drew men on an elf chase
through brambles and quagmires.

She had already drawn General Garnet on to ask her to dance! General
Garnet, the proud, the stern, the majestic, the unbendable, is actually
bending over her with his most seraphic smile, and a gaze that might
melt all the icebergs in the Northern Ocean—and she has raised her
languishing eyes, with the look of a gratified angel, and she has given
her hand, and he, still shining upon her with that sunlike smile, is
leading her to the head of the cotillion.

In the meantime, Magnus found his ladylove. She was sitting at the
farthest extremity of the room, the center of a circle of sprightly
young people, who were eagerly engaged in asking her questions
concerning her residence abroad, London, the court, the king, etc.,
etc., and as eagerly listening to her replies. As Magnus gently broke
through this circle, and approached her side, with a smile, her eyes
fell and her color rose.

Her young friends, with a smile, a laugh, or an arch glance, dropped
off, one by one, leaving the lovers alone.

And now Elsie’s eyes were dropped to the ground, and her color mounted
to her temples.

At the same moment a young gentleman came up and asked the pleasure of
her hand in the next quadrille.

Elsie, with a start, and a sigh of relief, suffered him to lead her
forth to the head of the cotillion.

I am sure Dr. Hardcastle was unconscious of the angry flush and fierce
glance with which he followed the meanderings of the young couple
through the mazes of the dance.

Not so Elsie. With many a swift, furtive glance she detected the angry
passion of her lover’s face, and felt self-reproach enough to bewilder
her movements. Never had beautiful Elsie danced with less grace, and
never had she been so glad when the set was over.

Her partner led her to a seat, distant from the one he had taken her
from, took his seat by the side of her, and held her in conversation
that made her more fidgety than before.

Poor Elsie was at length relieved by Judge Jacky, who, seeing her
distress and embarrassment, came up, and taking my gentleman by the arm,
and saying to him: “There is a very lovely woman who would not be averse
to dancing the next set with you; come, let me introduce you to her,”
marched him off to dance with a tall, thin young lady of sixty-five.

Dr. Hardcastle now left his position across the room, and, walking
leisurely, came up to Elsie, and dropped slowly into the seat just
vacated.

And at that very instant, as if to try his patience to the utmost, up
came Ulysses Roebuck, and holding out his hand, in quite a confident
way, informed Elsie that he intended to confer upon her the glory and
the joy of being his partner in the next set.

Elsie glanced at Magnus, shook her head, and laughed lightly.

Ulysses persisted, affirming that indeed he was in earnest, and did not
mean to humbug her; that he really had reserved the honor and the
pleasure of his hand in the next cotillion for her, and her alone. That
his uncle had selected a very charming partner for him, whom he had
declined, in consideration of her.

Elsie laughed a little, and told him she feared “the honor and the
pleasure” was only offered to her in order to pique Ambrosia.

Whereupon Roebuck began to vow and protest, but in the midst of his
vociferous asseverations, he happened to spy Ambrosia sitting down,
quite exhausted, quite alone, apparently quite disengaged, for the first
time during the evening, and Ulysses suddenly sped off toward her, in
order to secure her at once—for the dance?—no, for a good, rousing
quarrel.

“Why did you not dance with Ulysses?” inquired Magnus of Elsie.

She threw a swift glance to his face, then dropped her eyes, and
replied, in a low tone:

“I shall not dance again to-night.”

“Why?” he asked, taking her hand, and seeming to study its deep beauty.
“Why will you not dance again to-night?”

But she colored so deeply, and looked so distressed, that he desisted
from questioning her.

At last Elsie of herself said, in a very low voice:

“Mother told me not to dance, unless it were to make up a set that could
not otherwise be completed.”

“But I do not understand why you should have been warned against your
favorite amusement, Elsie?”

“Why, lest by filling up one place in the cotillion, I might keep some
young lady from dancing,” replied she. But then, as though spurning
disingenuousness, she added: “But that was not the only reason I refused
Ulysses.” Then pausing, and making a great effort over herself, she
added, in a very low and tremulous voice: “It was because you looked so
annoyed while I was dancing with Mr. Brent.”

The light of an unutterable joy shone on the face of Magnus. He caught
her hand with a strong, almost crushing clasp—his bosom heaved—his eyes
kindled and smoldered. He stooped his lips near Elsie’s ear to whisper
something, but her cheek blazed.

And just then a slight bustle at the other extremity of the room
attracted their attention. Exclamations of astonishment, joy, and wonder
were intermingled with many words of cordial greeting, and of hearty
welcoming. Above all noises were heard the jocund tones of old Mr.
Hardcastle. The bustle widened in the crowd, like eddies in the water
where a stone had just been cast, and the crowd seemed to be swayed
toward the place where our lovers sat. The center of this crowd was a
young man of rather effeminate, but exceeding personal beauty, tall, and
slightly, but elegantly proportioned, with Grecian features, a fair,
roseate complexion, golden hair, and light, soft, hazel eyes. He was
receiving, and gracefully and graciously acknowledging, the _devoirs_ of
all around him, who were also moving with him towards Magnus and Elsie.
As he drew near, they both simultaneously exclaimed:

“My Cousin Lionel!”

“Lionel Hardcastle!”

And both eagerly started forward, holding out their hands, in joyful
welcome, before even thinking of the miracle of his advent.

Lionel at first shook hands with Magnus, then, seeming to yield to a
sudden and irresistible impulse, folded him to his heart in a close
brotherly embrace.

He then took Elsie’s hand, bowed over it gracefully, raised it tenderly
to his lips, when Elsie exclaimed:

“Oh, my dear old playmate, I am so glad! so glad! that you were not lost
after all!” threw herself into his arms.

The youth’s eye and cheek kindled with a hectic flush, as he pressed the
innocent, affectionate girl for an instant to his bosom, and released
her to turn and see Magnus grasp her arm with no very gentle hand, and
lead her away. To the many eager questions of “When did you arrive?”
“Where from?” “How did you escape?” “Where have you been all this time?”
put to him by the astonished crowd as soon as they recovered sufficient
strength, Lionel replied:

“To-morrow, to-morrow, I will tell you all about it.”

“That you shan’t! you shan’t tell for a week. It is enough, good Heaven,
to have you among us. No more questions shall be asked or answered for a
week!” exclaimed Judge Wylie, in a magisterial tone, and the company
understood that they had been wearying a fatigued traveler, and
desisted.

It was late when the ball broke up. And Judge Jacky, who seemed
possessed with a spirit of jollity, resolved to follow up this party by
one of his own. Accordingly, that very night, he improvised the “time,
place, and circumstance” of a ball, and availed himself of the
opportunity afforded by the presence of so many of his familiar friends,
to give out rather informal verbal invitations. When all the company had
departed, a cloud remained upon the brow of General Garnet. He spoke
coldly to Magnus, in reply to his “good-night,” as the latter left the
house. Alice looked deeply distressed. Elsie glanced from father to
mother with a vague presentiment of impending evil.

                             CHAPTER XVIII.
                          THE NEW-FOUND HEIR.

                  _Ernest._—Which is the bridegroom?
                  _Wilhelm._—Marry! the heir.
                                            _—Newman._

Magnus had returned home with his cousin. The next day the family from
the Hollow dined at Mount Calm, by invitation. General Garnet was still
cold and reserved to Magnus, but showed the most marked attention to
Lionel. This at first surprised Dr. Hardcastle; but soon, with a haughty
curl of the lip, he thought:

“I see how it is; fortune has changed. I have lost an inheritance.”

After dinner Lionel told a tale of an Algerine cruiser, of a long
captivity, of a hair-breadth escape, but left as vague an impression of
reality upon the minds of his hearers as it leaves now upon the minds of
my readers. They did not doubt his story, but they could not well
connect the effeminate beauty of the man with any life of
pirate-adventure and slavery hardships.

Elsie was saddened for the first time in her life, and she scarcely knew
wherefore. During the short estrangement between herself and her lover
she had been nervous, anxious, excitable; now she was depressed. She
loved her mother very tenderly; she loved her father passionately; and
Magnus she loved—oh, how shall I say?—with an infinite future
reservation. But now she saw a cloud—she was too guileless to know
wherefore—settle and deepen, dark, cold, and chill, between her lover
and her father; and the happy, buoyant Elsie grew pensive and
thoughtful. General Garnet, with all his coldness, was studiously
polite; and Magnus was self-possessed and social.

As this day passed—as far as the relative positions of some of the
parties were concerned—so passed the weeks, and brought the day upon
which Judge Wylie’s party was to be given.

There was a heavy cloud of thought and care upon the brow of General
Garnet; and those who knew him well surmised that he was considering the
best manner of transferring the hand of the heiress of Mount Calm from
the poor doctor to the rich heir of Hemlock Hollow.

Magnus continued his visits, as usual, undisturbed by the freezing
exterior of General Garnet.

Alice always received him with affection; and Elsie’s manner to him was
earnest, affectionate, deferential, as if she wished to make up for her
father’s coldness. She was no longer shy and diffident. It seemed as if
the presentiment of some impending misfortune, which she felt rather
than understood, had thrown down the barriers of her reserve, and that
she could not do too much, in her sweet, feminine way, to assure Magnus
of her unchangeable affection and unswerving truth. Her eyes waited on
him, shyly, all day long, for her maiden pride was self-subdued, but not
her maidenly delicacy. Elsie had no suspicion of what her father really
meant until the morning of the day upon which Judge Wylie’s ball was to
be given. General Garnet called Elsie into his room, and having
explained in his polite way—he was polite even to his child—that
circumstances beyond all human calculation or control had rendered it
expedient that a new adjustment of affairs should take place, and that
she must no longer look upon Magnus Hardcastle in the light of a suitor
for her hand, but must, on the contrary, prepare herself to think of,
and accept, Lionel Hardcastle, to whom he had given permission to visit
her—Elsie opened wide her eyes in undisguised astonishment, that her
father, her revered father, should ask her to break her plighted faith;
but without one atom of terror, and without an instant’s hesitation, she
answered:

“Why, father, being engaged to Magnus, with yours and mother’s consent,
I would no more forsake him now than if I were already his wedded wife.”

“We shall see, Miss Garnet. I will give you time,” replied the General,
in his soft, but sarcastic, manner.

“Father,” said Elsie, her cheek burning with shame and indignation, “if
I should give you to suppose that any lapse of time could alter my
determination, I should be a coward or a hypocrite. Father, I would not
have engaged myself without your consent and my mother’s, for I should
have felt that to be wrong; but having engaged myself with your consent
and blessing, I will not break that engagement, come what may. I
promised, with your approbation, to give my hand to Dr. Hardcastle on
Thursday week, and Thursday week, father, I must do it. Dr. Hardcastle
has lost an inheritance; an event which he rejoices in, since it gives
his uncle back a dearly beloved and long-lost son. But he must not lose
his wife, father; he shall not.”

General Garnet stood like one thunderstruck. His wife had never ventured
to oppose his will, except

                      “To plead, lament, and sue,”

to avert some cruel deed. His servants had ever trembled before him. His
very neighbors and associates had fallen into the habit of yielding to
his inflexible will; and here was a little girl of seventeen years of
age, with positively her own notions of right and wrong, of faith and
infidelity, of honor and dishonor—and telling him, with a high,
unblanching cheek, and a clear, unfaltering voice, that she meant to
abide by right, and eschew wrong! He turned pale with suppressed rage;
his eyes gleamed with their sinister light; he clenched his fist, and
made one step towards her, but retreated again, and dropped his hand.
The polished “gentleman” asserted its supremacy of habit over the angry
“man.” It would not be _comme-il-faut_ for “General Garnet” to give
“Miss Garnet” a good drubbing with his fists; besides, there was a look
of calm, healthful moral strength about the mere child that forcibly
impressed him.

“Father, this thing came suddenly upon me, and surprised me out of my
self-possession, and the respect that is due to you. I spoke hastily,
and, I fear, irreverently. I earnestly repent it, and ask your pardon.
Forgive me,” said Elsie; and she approached, and would have offered
herself in his embrace; but General Garnet extended his hand, and waved
her off.

“Do I understand you to say, Miss Garnet, that you repent your foolish
decision? If so, I am sincerely rejoiced to hear it.”

“No, sir. Always, father, and in all else, I will be your submissive
child. But for this, sir, you, yourself, laid on me this other duty,
which I cannot shake off. Forgive me.”

General Garnet looked at her steadily, while gleamed that red light from
his dark eyes, and slowly shook his head, as communing with himself.
Then, turning suddenly, and muttering something that sounded very much
like a threat to “break her will or break her heart,” he left the room;
and Elsie sank down in her chair, and leaning upon the windowsill,
raised her eyes to heaven, “full of thought and prayer.”

                              CHAPTER XIX.
                         THE DEVOTION OF LOVE.

        Oh! sweeter far than wealth, than fame, than all,
        Is first and passionate love; it stands alone.
                                                      _—Byron._

There was a much larger, but not so select, a company invited by the
genial, social Judge Jacky than that assembled by the proud and reserved
General Garnet. And by “early candle light”—the country hour for
assembling for a ball—the whole house—parlors, chambers, family rooms,
and saloon—were crowded to overflowing. The dining room only was kept
shut up, for there the two long tables were to be set for supper. The
saloon, or “big room,” as it is plainly called in old-fashioned country
houses, was blazing with light and splendor, and pealing with music, and
alive with young men and maidens in ball dresses, laughing, talking,
wooing, flirting, dancing. It was something like General Garnet’s ball
on a larger and somewhat coarser scale, it must be confessed, but then
it was such a joyous, jubilant, exultant scene! The young folks laughed,
and talked, and danced, and jested with so much gladness and freedom!
And Judge Jacky moved about laughing, talking, joking, gallanting all
the ugly old maids, making love to all the low-spirited old widows,
flattering and complimenting all the plain girls, encouraging all
shamefaced young gentlemen, and electrifying into jocund life all the
“flat, stale, and unprofitable” folks in the joyous company.

But it is not with the gay and thoughtless of that merry throng that we
have to do, but with our great-hearted Magnus and our dear Elsie. You
know at this moment, just as well as I do, that they both had too much
on their minds to think of dancing. They had each come to the ball
chiefly to meet the other and have a talk. General Garnet would
willingly have kept Elsie away, but he did not think it polite to offend
Judge Wylie by doing so. But one thing he had taken care to do—to send
for Lionel Hardcastle to escort her there. And Lionel had ridden in the
carriage alone with Elsie from Mount Calm to Point Pleasant, and had had
every opportunity of pursuing a courtship that he had commenced almost
from the first evening of his return. Elsie cut him short in the midst
of one of his finest speeches by telling him that he was making love to
his cousin’s wife—or to one who would be so on Thursday week! Yes, Elsie
compelled herself to say exactly that to Lionel, to crush his hopes at
once. On reaching the house at Point Pleasant, Elsie said aloud to
Magnus, who came out to meet them:

“Dr. Hardcastle, help me to thank your cousin for the kind manner in
which he has supplied your place in attending me here,” and, bowing
courteously to Lionel, she took the arm of Magnus and entered the
saloon.

They were now seated at the farthest extremity of the vast saloon,
within the bay window. Elsie was looking very beautiful this evening.
She was dressed in a gossamer white crape, over white satin. Her snowy
arms and neck were bare, and encircled by diamond bracelets and
necklace. She was always beautiful, but now her usually happy, joyous
face was softened and deepened into an expression of serious thought and
feeling ineffably charming.

They had been conversing. Elsie had told him all that had passed between
herself and her father. And Magnus had recounted a similar scene that
had taken place between himself and General Garnet. He had, as Elsie
had, asserted his determination to abide by their betrothal. He repeated
the same thing to Elsie now. It was this—this saving of her heart’s
fondest hopes amid the crash of fortune—that made Elsie feel and look so
very blessed.

They were still conversing. He raised her hand—she had an exquisitely
beautiful hand, elegantly shaped, and white as snow, and now diamond
rings sparkled upon it; appropriate ornaments for it, as one may see.
Well, he raised that small, white, jeweled hand, and looking tenderly,
half-remorsefully upon it, said—and his voice was full-toned and
melodious with love and sorrow:

“This tiny, snow-white hand, sparkling with diamonds—this fresh, pure,
delicate thing!—a jewel itself!—how can it be put to the uses to which
my wife’s hand must be put, Elsie?”

She looked at him with passionate devotion, saying:

“Take the jewels off and cast them from thee, Magnus—do!”

“And this slender wrist—you have such a beautiful arm, Elsie! What a
round, full, graceful curve from the elbow to the forearm, and how
elegantly it tapers off to the slender wrist! Ah! this arm, so pure and
fresh, so well decked with this sparkling diamond bracelet—like icicles
upon snow! How will it support labor?”

“The bracelet offends you, too? It was my father’s birthday gift; but I
like it no longer—it offends you. Take it off and cast it from you.
Press your thumb and finger around my arm instead. Press it tightly, so
that you will leave a ring there. It will be a red bracelet—or even a
black one; so that when I can no longer see you, I may close my eyes,
and, feeling the impress of your fingers, cheat my heart with the fancy
that you still grasp my wrist with a sweet violence. It will be another
dearer bracelet that I will wear in remembrance of you. Oh, don’t you
know I understand now the enthusiasm of the saints?”

“Dearest Elsie, let us go forth from here. The light, the glare, the
crowd, the noise here is insufferable. Let us go forth in the fresh air
under the light of the holy stars. Come, love! My heart hungers, faints,
to press you to itself. Come, love!” And opening a leaf of the bay
window, he led her forth. It was a mild, clear, beautiful starlight
night for the season, yet the air was chill, and Elsie was lightly clad.
He looked at her and glanced around. The lighted window of a sitting
room in the angle of the building showed that apartment to be vacant. He
led her there. It was one of those small, conical wainscoted parlors so
common in old houses. A fine fire was burning in the chimney, and a
little old-fashioned green settee drawn up on one side of the fireplace.
The room had an air of delightful snugness, comfort, and repose. He led
her to this sofa and seated himself beside her, opened his arms, and
whispered: “Come to my bosom, my own soul’s love!” and folded her
closely there. “Elsie, my pure, fresh, delicate, elegant Elsie, can you
go with me indeed to share my lot of poverty and struggle? Oh, Elsie! if
you do, will you never repent? Oh, Elsie! do you know what poverty is?
Born and brought up in luxury and wealth, do you know what poverty is?
Oh, Elsie, my little idealist, there is no poetry in poverty. Oh, Elsie,
my little epicurienne, every sense is shocked and tortured in poverty.
You see unsightly things, you hear discordant sounds, you come in
contact with roughness, you partake of coarse food; oh, Elsie! ideality
is wounded and saddened, sense is shocked, and love itself, perhaps,
revolted!”

“Never! oh, never!” she said fervently.

“Oh, Elsie! my bright, beautiful Elsie! my delicate, elegant Elsie! I am
worse than an executioner to marry you. I feel it, and yet I shall do
it. God knows that I will have you, and let the future take care of
itself!” he said, pressing her strongly to his bosom.

“Yes, have me, have me; let me be always with you. It will be bliss
ineffable. I should die if you were to leave me. My heart would consume
itself in its own fires. I do not care for wealth, or rank, or
distinction, or for ease or luxury. I only care for the wealth and
luxury of your affection, and your constant society. I do not fear to
have ‘ideality wounded and saddened.’ No, for the soul creates its own
poetry. I do not fear to have every sense shocked. I do not fear to live
amid unsightly objects and discordant sounds, and rough contacts; oh,
no, for the soul creates its own heaven of beauty and harmony. I do not
fear to have love revolted. Oh! no, no, no! I only fear a separation
from you. My whole being trembling, tends toward you—so strong, as it
would lose itself in you. Shut out the world, shut out light and sound,
only let me feel your arms around me, pressing my bosom to your heart as
now. All my life is compressed within my heart, and it is bursting to
meet yours. I am blind, deaf, dead to all but you. I have scarcely self
enough to say ‘I have no self.’ I love myself in you. Oh, my greater
self! my larger life!”

So the softly flushed and moist cheeks, the heavy, liquid eyes, and the
palpitating bosom said, but no word escaped the parted and glowing lips.
Nor could a word have escaped between the kisses that were pressed upon
them. Then he released her, and they sat upon the old-fashioned sofa by
the glowing hickory fire in the old wainscoted parlor, and, hand in
hand, talked. Oh, how they talked! Sometimes with profound earnestness,
sometimes with light and bantering gayety.

“Yet you have had many admirers, Elsie,” said Magnus.

“Have I?” she asked.

“Oh, Elsie, you know that you have.”

“I try not to know it.”

“Why, dearest?”

“Because I wish I was an Eastern bride for you. Oh, yes! I wish that I
had been reared in conventual seclusion, that no man’s eye had seen me
until my husband came to claim me; that, then, I could have gone apart
from the world and seen only him. That would have been exquisite; that
would have been blissful; for I do not want admiration; I want only your
heart’s approval! There would be such intense and concentrated joy in
knowing only you. My joy would be diluted if my heart were divided among
many.”

“But your numerous admirers, dearest?”

“Oh, my numerous admirers! I did not finesse when I asked you if I
really had any; for, in truth, my ‘admirers’ never came near enough to
me to breathe their admiration.”

“Why was that? How was that? Tell me.”

“Look in my eyes, love, and read your answer there. Peruse my heart,
love. It lies open to you as a book.”

“Nay, tell me. I love to hear you talk. It delights me to listen to you.
Tell me now. It is some sweet secret that will give me heaven to know.
Come, love, be generous. Breathe the secret out upon my bosom,” he
whispered softly, and drew her again to his heart. “Come, love——”

“Yes, I will. I will repress this feeling of reluctance, and tell you
all my thoughts. Yes, for surely I feel you have a right to have an
answer to any question you ask me, my higher self. Listen, then. Bend
low, for I shall whisper very low, lest the air around should hear me.
When you first drew me on to love you, when leaf by leaf my heart
unfolded and developed under the life-giving warmth of your eyes, of
your touch, just as a rose buds and blossoms under the rays of its
sovereign, the sun—my heart, I mean, or something rising within
it—taught me many mysteries that neither prophet, priest, nor sage could
have taught me. Among other things, it revealed to me the knowledge of
all that would please and all that would displease you in myself, and
impelled me to follow the first and eschew the last. It made me wish to
isolate myself for you. It killed the very first germ of vanity in my
heart, and made me wish that none should come near enough to me to know
whether I were beautiful or otherwise, far less so near as to tell me of
it. It made me shrink from all those little gallantries from gentlemen
which make up so large a portion of a belle’s life. I was so afraid of
being found unworthy of you when you should take me. I should not have
felt good enough for you if my hand, that awaited your hand, had been
squeezed and kissed, and my waist, that awaited the dear girdle of this
arm—fold it closer around me now—had been pressed, and I, your expectant
bride, had been twined and whirled about in the giddy waltz. But none of
these things have happened to me. I come to you almost an Oriental bride
for exclusiveness, and that makes me so happy. I should have else been
unhappy, should else have been unworthy of you.”

All this was murmured slowly, softly, dreamily, as though the truth
stole out of a slumbering heart, while she lay upon his bosom, and the
last words were breathed forth in an almost inaudible sigh. But he
answered with passionate vehemence, clasping her to his heart:

“Unworthy of me! You! so beautiful! so good! so intellectual!—save when
your highest intellect is whelmed in feeling!—yet, no—your highest
intelligence—your spirit—is never so whelmed! You, the heiress of the
haughtiest family in Maryland—and I—who am I?”

“My greater self! my life-giver!—by these titles only I know you. Does
my rank and fortune offend you? Pluck me away from them; for I am yours.
Bury me with yourself, in some lone forest cabin, in the wilderness,
whither your footsteps tend; and there my hunter’s wife will forget the
world, while preparing the cabin for his return at eve. And she will not
think the hours of his absence long, for they will be filled with
fervent thoughts of him. Oh, that hunter’s lodge in the wild! I see it
even in my dreams!”

And this was not romance; but the passionate fanaticism of first, of
early love.

“Oh, Elsie! how you talk!” he exclaimed, gazing on her eloquent face
with wonder, reverence, and passion.

She blushed deeply, and bowed her crimson brow upon his bosom,
murmuring:

“Do I? I am sorry. I suppose maidens do not talk so; do they?”

“I do not know how maidens do or should talk, any more than you do,”
answered Magnus, and then a singular expression passed over his
countenance. He bent his gaze upon her, with a look of profound thought
and searching inquiry, as though to read the depths of that heart she
had so freely laid open to his perusal. And he said, very seriously: “I
do not know how maidens talk, for I have spoken with but one maiden
before of love.” He paused and gazed down deeply into her eyes, as if to
read her most hidden thought and feeling—possibly he expected to see
some trace of jealousy there—he saw only the calm, profound repose of
love, deep joy, and infinite trust. He resumed: “I never talked with but
one maiden of love before; she was my first love.” Again he looked down,
and saw upon her beautiful face the same ineffable peace. He continued:
“I loved her passionately. I lost her. It nearly maddened me.” For the
last time he gazed down upon her, as she lay quietly over his arm, with
her face turned up to his, but her whole countenance radiated with a
sort of calm, rapt ecstasy, as though she were then in the possession of
all the bliss possible on earth. He gazed for a moment, full of
astonishment, and then quietly asked: “Is it possible that this gives
you no uneasiness, my love?”

“Does what?”

“The thought of my first love.”

“No, dearest. Why should it?”

“‘Why should it?’ What a question. Why should it not?”

“I don’t know, I am sure. When I do, I’ll tell you.”

“Yet,” said Magnus thoughtfully, “though the idea of my having had a
first love gives you no pain, you felicitated yourself and me very much
upon the fact of your having had no other lover.”

“Oh, that was a very different thing. Don’t you feel that it was?”

“Yes; I feel it. But tell me now—think—why is it that the thought of my
first love does not distress you?”

“Indeed, I do not know at all. I only know by the sure inspiration of my
soul, and feel in every nerve of my body, that you love me; and I am so
ineffably blessed.”

“My darling Elsie!” he said, joyously kissing the lids down upon her two
sweet eyes. “My darling Elsie, you are not selfish or jealous for
yourself at all. I only wished to probe your heart a little. You were so
jealous for me that I thought perhaps you might be so for yourself. You
are not, my darling Elsie; my light of life! You are the only woman I
ever loved! Yet, dearest, I told you no fiction. You, yourself, were
‘the maiden to whom I spoke before of love.’ But it was soon after you
returned from school. You, yourself, were the maiden whom I lost,—for a
little while, during our short misunderstanding,—and whose loss nearly
maddened me. Oh, come! enter the heart of hearts, and live there
forever!” He clasped her closer, and they subsided into silence, or
conversed only with their eyes.

Long, long they remained in that still trance of joy, but at last Elsie
withdrew herself, laughing, from his arms, sat down beside him, and they
began to talk of their future home. He told her it would be indeed a
cabin in the backwoods of Maryland; but not a hunter’s cabin, as she
fancifully supposed. Oh, no! but a country doctor’s dwelling, in a new
settlement. And that he would not return at eve in the hunter’s
picturesque costume, with a gun and a nine-antlered deer across his
shoulders, but upon the back of a stout mule, with a country doctor’s
saddle-bags behind him. How would she like that?

“Oh, very well, dearest Magnus! for then you will be saving life instead
of taking it. Oh, yes, I do like—I do love—your profession, Magnus.
Since you must have one, I like it better than any other you could have
chosen. I think physicians do more disinterested good than any other set
of men on earth. I will not even except the preachers. Oh, yes! I do
love your profession, dear Magnus, and love you better, if possible, for
being a poor country doctor. God love and bless you! When you shall have
come home tired, from your long round—oh, you shall have sweet repose,
love—indeed you shall! God bids me to assure you that you shall.
Whatever our cabin home may be, I can make it a little haven of repose—a
little heaven of bliss for you. Oh, indeed I do not fear; my whole full
soul assures me that we shall be happy and victorious over fate. Let me
kiss your eyes—you kissed mine just now, so sweetly. God bless those
grand eyes! Oh, Magnus, can a cabin or a garb of homespun hide the
light, the greatness that is in you? Oh, Magnus, I saw a king and
several princes of the blood when I was presented at court by General
Armstrong; but their foreheads were low and receding, their presence had
the strut without the dignity of majesty. Oh, Magnus, their kingly crown
could not have given either that magnificent forehead of yours. Oh,
Magnus, there is something greater in you than any surrounding you can
have. Do not any more dread that I shall be either pained or revolted at
anything in the circumstances of our condition. The rough walls of a log
cabin will not shock or sadden me.”

“No, darling, for the rough walls of our log cabin, like the rough bark
of an oak tree, has something really picturesque about it; but”—said he,
in a half-sorrowful, half-comic way—“the pots and kettles, the mops and
brooms!”

“What! the humble little household gods and goddesses that set up no
pretension to worship, or even to honorable mention, and yet confer so
much benefit? No, indeed. I have a kindly feeling for all such. Mine, if
they can’t be beautiful, shall be neat and pretty. Oh, don’t you
remember when we were children, and used to run in out of the snow to
old Aunt Polly’s kitchen, and how she’d press us in to help her every
time she could? Oh, I know a great deal about cooking, and I always had
a turn for housekeeping.”

He arose, took her hand, and raised her up, and looked at her from head
to foot, as she stood—that delicate, beautiful girl, in her elegant ball
dress of gossamer crape over white satin, diamonds sparkling on her arms
and neck, as he had said, like icicles upon snow. He surveyed her, from
her white rose-wreathed auburn hair to the tip of the white satin
slipper. He clasped her hand, and looked at it.

“I know,” she said, “what you are thinking of again—‘Elsie must doff
this dress, and this style of dress, for some years to come’; but do not
fear, within ten years, and by the time that the beauty of your love has
matured, Elsie will weave a more elegant dress than this, when her
husband’s talents shall have ‘achieved greatness.’ And this little hand
that you look at so fondly, so sadly—‘this pure, fresh, delicate thing,
a jewel itself,’ as you called it just now—under this soft, white
cushion of flesh are nerves and sinews of steel. I am very strong, dear
Magnus, very strong every way. And I can work; this hand shall toil and
retain its beauty, because you prize it, too.”

He clasped her again to his breast, and drew her white arms up around
his neck. And then that notion of isolation came upon her again like a
fond superstition, and she whispered:

“I do not want neighbors or friends where we live, love. I want only
you. I want no one that can take me off from you. It is late. Shall I
go?”

“Yes, dear love,” she answered, untwining her arms from about his neck.

                              CHAPTER XX.
                          ELSIE IN THE ATTIC.

              To-night, when my head aches indeed,
              And I can either think nor read,
              And these blue fingers will not hold
              The pen—(this attic’s freezing cold)—
              I tell you, I pace up and down
              This garret, crowned with love’s best crown,
              And feasted with love’s perfect feast,
              To think I bear for him at least.
                                              _—Browning._

When they re-entered the ballroom the revelry was still at its height.
Six cotillions were on the floor.

Judge Jacky was flying about, now here and now there, now everywhere at
once.

Ambrosia Wylie, in a gold-colored satin, that harmonized well with her
warm-hued tone of beauty, sat in the bay window, the sunny center of a
system of satellites.

General Garnet, who had got through with the political business that
detained him at Huttontown, had just arrived, and was now standing
apart, conversing with Lionel Hardcastle. He frowned darkly on seeing
Elsie enter the room leaning on the arm of Magnus, and both looking so
self-possessed, confident, and happy.

He smoothed his brow quickly, however, excused himself to Lionel, and
advanced toward them. Bowing slightly to Magnus, he took the arm of
Elsie, and saying that he wished to have a conversation with her, drew
her off for a promenade.

In going off, Elsie turned, smiled on Magnus, and said:

“If I do not return in half an hour, Dr. Hardcastle, you must seek me
out,” and, bowing playfully, she went on.

“Was that done to insult me, Miss Garnet?”

“No, dearest father, it was done out of respect to Dr. Hardcastle; as
you forgot to excuse yourself to him for taking me off so abruptly, it
would have been scarcely courteous in me to have left him without a
word. We would not have treated a common acquaintance so, father.”

“A common acquaintance! And pray what more is Dr. Hardcastle entitled
henceforth to be considered?”

“As my husband, and as your son-in-law, father.”

General Garnet turned pale, and spoke low, with suppressed rage:

“Your husband, and my son-in-law! I—would—see—him—and—you—in the lowest
pit of h——l first!”

Elsie gave a violent start as this awful word struck her like a bullet.
It was the more awful, that Elsie had never known her father to forget
himself so far before. Violence shocked her, profanity revolted her; she
was unaccustomed to either. Her father, even in his tyranny, was
habitually polite. Her mother was ever gentle. Fury, threats, were
strange to her; and now came this terrible burst of passion, the more
terrible for its half suppression. She gazed at him in alarm. His face
was white with anger, but it reminded her of the white ashes upon a
burning coal. He continued in the same deep, stern tone:

“How dared you even receive that young man’s attentions, after I have
withdrawn my countenance of him?”

“Father, because his attentions were my right and his right. Who else,
in your absence, could have attended me with so much propriety?” asked
Elsie, trembling in her flesh, but firm in her spirit.

“Do not commit the impertinence of answering my question by asking
another again, Miss Garnet. A question which, impertinent as it was, I
will answer. ‘Who,’ you inquire, ‘in my absence, could have attended you
with so much propriety?’ I reply, Mr. Lionel Hardcastle, the gentleman
under whose protection I placed you for the evening.”

“And who wickedly abused his position by addressing the words of love to
one whom he knew to be Dr. Hardcastle’s betrothed wife.”

“Death! if you say that again,” exclaimed General Garnet, trembling with
fury.

“And whom,” continued Elsie, frightened, but resolute, “I had therefore
to dismiss as soon as I found Dr. Hardcastle.”

He grasped her arm with a violence that might have crushed it. He set
his teeth, and drew his breath hard. He could not shake or beat her
there—not in that room full of company—among those hundreds of people.
He could not even let them see the rage that was on the eve of
explosion.

He looked around. Seeing Lionel Hardcastle at a short distance, he
beckoned him to approach, and, without relinquishing his vise-like grip,
said, in a deep, hurried tone:

“Do me the favor to call my carriage, sir, instantly, if you please.”

Lionel opened his soft, bright eyes in a look of wide surprise, turned
on Elsie a gaze of mingled admiration, sorrow, and deprecation, and,
bowing to General Garnet, moved off to comply with his request.

General Garnet grasped Elsie’s arm with a suppressed fierceness, and
pulled her after him into the hall, thence out into the portico, and
down the steps to the carriage door. Pushing her forcibly in, he jumped
in after, pulled to the door, commanded the coachman to drive rapidly
for Mount Calm, and was soon whirled away on the road to that place. He
maintained a stern silence toward Elsie during the whole ride.

Arrived at Mount Calm, he sprang from the carriage, took Elsie out, drew
her arm roughly within his own, and pulled her up the steps.

“Has your mistress retired?” was the first question he asked of the
servant at the door. The man started at the fierce abruptness of his
master’s tone and manner, and replied hurriedly that she had.

“It is very well. Go wake up the housekeeper; ask her for the keys of
the attic-room, and bring them to me yourself, with a night-lamp.”

The man hurried away in dismay. And General Garnet remained there, still
with his violent grasp upon Elsie’s arm. When the servant returned with
the bunch of keys and the light:

“Precede me upstairs, and on up into the attic,” said General Garnet;
and grasping Elsie more tightly, he fiercely hurried her on, till they
reached the first floor, and the wide hall into which the family
chambers opened.

“Father, this is my chamber door. I wish to retire,” said Elsie,
pointing to the door on her left. But her father hurried her past it.

The servant was now going up the attic steps, but paused to look down
upon the scene.

“Father, what are you about to do?” asked Elsie, holding back. Her
attire had been very much disordered by the violence with which she had
been hurried in, her cloak and hood had fallen off below stairs; now her
beautiful dress was tumbled, and her hair in wild disorder. “What are
you going to do, father?” she asked again, drawing back.

But he turned upon her sharply, shook her furiously, as though he would
have shaken the life from out her; and then seeing the horrified gaze of
the servant standing on the stairs, he exclaimed, “Up into the attic,
and wait for me there, instantly, sirrah. And consider yourself already
sold to a trader, for your insolence in watching me!”

The appalled servant vanished up the steps, and the unmasked tyrant
turned to Elsie, and tightening the grasp that he had never
relinquished, dragged her to the foot of the attic stairs. Here the girl
sank with all her weight upon him, upheld only by his hand.

“Up, up the stairs with you!” he exclaimed fiercely.

Elsie had too much physical strength to swoon, and too much presence of
mind to scream. She would not have terrified her poor mother to no good
purpose. Yet her agitation was so great, with augmented astonishment and
terror, that she could not move.

He seized her violently, drew her up the stairs until they had reached
the narrow attic passage, and commanding the negro to unlock the door
that stood before them, forced her into the room; dismissed the servant,
locked the door on the inside, and turned upon her. Elsie had dropped
into an old flag-bottomed armchair, where she sat shivering with cold
and fear. He turned upon the delicate and trembling girl fiercely,
scornfully, triumphantly, tauntingly, as if she had been some rough male
adversary in his power. He placed the key in his pocket, buttoned up his
overcoat, and stood looking at her with a bitter, sarcastic laugh,
saying:

“You have insulted and provoked me sufficiently this evening, Miss
Garnet! You were very happy and confident an hour ago. What do you think
of your prospects now?”

Elsie shuddered and was silent.

“Can you escape from this room? Will you jump from one of those windows
and fall a hundred feet? Will your lover find a ladder long enough to
reach you? I think not. Can you break that lock? I think not. Will you
bribe your jailer? I think not; for I shall be your jailer myself. No
one else shall enter this room. And now listen to me,” and taking a
chair, he sat down before her, and said in a hard, harsh voice, “I do
not care one jot for all the miserable, contemptible love sentiment in
the world; I never did! I do not believe in it. I never did! But that
which I want, and that which I will have, is the union of these two
joining estates, Mount Calm and Hemlock Hollow. That project is as dear
to old Mr. Hardcastle as it is to me. It was for that reason, and not
upon account of any trifling, mutual predilection of yours, that we were
about to negotiate a marriage between my daughter and his nephew, when
fortunately Lionel came home in time to arrest the execution of the
plan; of course it was perfectly easy to see what then became the duty
of all parties.”

“Fidelity,” said Elsie in a low voice.

General Garnet laughed tauntingly, and continued without further notice
of her reply:

“The young man who was to inherit the estate was to have the bride. It
mattered nothing to me whether that were Magnus or Lionel; but the hand
of my heiress was to be bestowed upon the heir of Hemlock Hollow. That
was the treaty. So I reminded old Mr. Hardcastle. He remembered that it
really was so, and fully and entirely agreed with me. Young Lionel
Hardcastle is also conformable. You only are contumacious. But I have
pledged myself to your consent, and, by Heaven, you shall redeem my
pledge. Listen, minion! You never leave this room until you leave it as
the wife of Lionel Hardcastle. Curious place for a marriage ceremony!
but, come, it does not matter; we can have the wedding afterward. You
were to be the wife of Dr. Hardcastle, as you very respectfully call
him, on Thursday week. Ha! ha! ha! Come, what do you think of your
prospects of marrying him now?”

“Father, as far as my marriage with Dr. Hardcastle on Thursday week is
concerned, my fate has gone out of my hands and into God’s! I have no
more to say about that.”

“Ha! ha! I should think not. Not quite so confident as you were an hour
ago, hey?”

“But, father, forgive me for reminding you that as far as marriage with
any other person is concerned, that is entirely in my hands for refusal.
Church and State very properly make the bride’s consent an indispensable
preliminary to marriage, and even a vital part of the marriage ceremony.
And my consent can never be gained to marry Lionel.”

“Ha! my pretty piece of stubbornness, we shall see. Pray, do you
know—have you ever felt the power of solitary imprisonment, cold, and
hunger, in bringing a contumacious girl to docility?”

Elsie’s face flushed, more for him than herself.

He continued:

“For all those mighty engines can I spring upon you! And will I, by
Satan and all his hosts!”

“Father, you may do that, and nature may faint and succumb to their
power. I am very strong, but those things you threaten me with may be
stronger still. But, father, if ever I am left with strength enough to
stand before the minister with Lionel Hardcastle by my side, when that
minister shall ask me whether I will promise to love, honor, and obey
him till death, I shall answer, ‘No, I do not love him, I never did, I
never shall. If I stand here to be married to him, it is to please my
father, his father, and not myself! And so I cannot tell a falsehood,
far less vow one in God’s presence about it. I love Dr. Hardcastle, to
whom you all know that I have been long engaged. I always did love him,
and always shall,’ and then let the minister of God marry us, if he
durst.”

With a furious oath he sprang upon her—seized her—the idea of strangling
her upon the instant darted through his brain; but he only shook her
with frenzied violence, and holding her in his terrible grip, said, with
a husky voice and ashen cheek, and gleaming eye:

“If you were to do so, girl, as God in heaven hears me, I would kill
you!”

And she felt to the very core of her shuddering heart that he told the
truth. Then he dropped her, and threw himself out of the room, leaving
her there, half dead with cold and fright, in the miserably bleak attic,
without a spark of fire or light, for the lamp had been blown out by the
fury with which her father had banged the door.

                              CHAPTER XXI.
                        CRUELTY—A CHAMBER SCENE.

               Thou knowest not the meekness of love,
                 How it suffers and yet can be still—
               How the calm on its surface may prove
                 What sorrow the bosom may fill.
                                           _—Mrs. Ellis._

Early the next morning Mrs. Garnet arose softly, without awaking the
general, and thrusting her small feet in wadded slippers, and drawing on
her wadded dressing-gown, passed into her daughter’s chamber for the
purpose of looking silently upon her while she slept, to see whether she
bore the fatigue of the ball well. She went in softly, drew the curtains
of the bedstead, and to her surprise, found that it had not been slept
in. Her first thought, of course, was that Elsie had remained all night
at Point Pleasant.

She felt disappointed, and returned immediately to her own chamber, rang
for her maid, and proceeded with her morning toilet.

Her maid, Milly, entered, bearing on her arm the cloak and hood that
Elsie had worn to Point Pleasant, and afterward dropped while being
dragged through the passage. Mrs. Garnet gazed at her in fixed
astonishment, saying:

“Why, where did you get those, Milly? Is it possible that your Miss
Elsie has returned so early this morning? Where is she?”

“Miss Elsie returned last night, missis, and must have dropped these in
the passage, for that is where I found them.”

“Returned last night! Her bed has not been occupied! Where is she?”
exclaimed Mrs. Garnet, dropping the long mass of golden curls that she
had been twisting into a knot, and standing aghast with vague terror.
“Where is she? What is the meaning of this? Why do you look so
strangely? Oh, my God! what has happened to my child? Speak this moment,
Milly! What do you know of it?”

“I thought you must a’ known, Miss Ally; marster’s locked her up in the
garret.”

All the blood of the Chesters rushed to the brow of Alice, and crimsoned
it.

“Locked Elsie up in the attic!” she exclaimed. Then: “Give me the keys!
Where are they? Bring me the keys instantly!”

“Please, Miss Ally, marster took the garret key off of the bunch, and
put it in his pocket.”

“Leave me, Milly. Go! Hasten! Go downstairs! I don’t want you this
morning,” said Alice, conscious of having betrayed too much emotion in
the presence of her servant.

Milly left the room, and Alice hastened, with a flushed brow, and
trembling hand, to the big armchair at the head of the bed, over the
back of which hung the general’s clothing that he had worn the night
before. Alice searched all the pockets of the overcoat in vain. And she
took up the dress coat.

But while Alice was hunting for the key, the general had risen upon his
elbow, and, unseen by her, was watching her motions with a demoniac
leer.

Alice searched all the pockets of the dress coat, and it was not there.
Then she raised the vest, and in the pocket found the key. She seized it
eagerly, and was about to fly off with it when a heavy blow felled her
to the floor! The key dropped from her hand. General Garnet stooped and
repossessed himself of it, and looking at her with a laughing devil in
his eye, said:

“Oh, was that you? Excuse me, madam! I beg ten thousand pardons; but
waking up suddenly, and seeing a hand in my pocket, I naturally enough
supposed it to be that of a thief! It’s Heaven’s mercy that I had not
shot you by mistake, my dear!”

But seeing that she did not move, he leaned further over the side of the
bed, and perceived that in falling the back of her head had struck the
corner of the dressing bureau, and that she was stunned by the
concussion—stunned or dead, he did not know which. He jumped to the
floor and raised her. Her head and limbs fell helplessly over his arms.
He laid her on the bed, ran his fingers through the golden tresses of
her hair, but found no fracture; there might be a concussion of the
brain, but there was no outward sign.

He started to the bell to ring it, but before he got there changed his
mind and returned, locked the door, went to the bureau, and taking a
couple of linen handkerchiefs, tore them in strips, and took a lancet
from his case (all planters kept such things for the exigencies of the
plantation). He then went to the bedside, ripped up the sleeve of
Alice’s dress, and baring the arm, opened a vein. As the blood began to
flow—first very sluggishly, then faster—she opened her eyes and looked
at him. He then bound up her arm, and telling her that he hoped this
sharp lesson would teach her the danger of opposing his will again, left
her and proceeded to dress himself.

Alice attempted to rise, but her head grew dizzy, her eyes dim, and she
sank back at the same moment that he sternly bade her be still, and not
venture to leave her bed that day. He dressed, and left the chamber.

At noon General Garnet returned and entered the room, and approaching
the bedside asked Alice how she felt.

“Only drowsy, inclined to sleep while lying down, but sick and dizzy and
blind when I attempt to rise.”

“If that be the case, you must not, upon any account, yield to that
inclination to sleep. It is dangerous; you must rise and sit up.”

“I cannot—I wish I could—I cannot. I turn deadly sick as soon as my head
is lifted.”

“Alice—I—think I must bleed you again,” he said, taking out the lancet
and baring her arm. Then he hesitated a moment; he doubted whether this
second bleeding would be right, but he resolved to risk it rather than
risk the exposure of their secret by sending for a physician. He opened
the vein again, and while the blood was trickling, looked so full of
solicitude that Alice felt sorry for him, and said:

“Never mind; don’t you know I knew it was an accident—the striking of my
head against the bureau.” She now looked so much better again that he
ventured to say, as he bound up her arm:

“I hope, Alice, that this will be a profitable lesson to you, at least.
Consider. You—you might have been killed.” Then he raised her in a
sitting posture, propped pillows behind her, took a seat in the big
chair, and said: “This is really a trifle as it turns out, Alice. This
dizziness will soon pass away if you sit up. Only, I hope, as I said
before, that this will be a warning to you, for it might have been much
more serious, or even fatal. It is dangerous, Alice, dangerous to rebel
either by stratagem or force against just authority. And, now listen,
for I wish to talk to you of Elsie for two reasons—first, to keep you
from falling into an injurious sleep; and, secondly, to let you know my
reason for confining her, and my plans and purposes toward her.”

And then General Garnet, for the first time, openly avowed to his wife
his fixed determination to break off forever the projected marriage
between Magnus and Elsie, and to bestow the hand of the latter upon
Lionel Hardcastle, giving her his reasons in full for doing so, and
declaring his intention to keep Elsie confined until her consent was
obtained, and to take her then from her room at once to the altar, that
no deception might be practiced. Alice dreaded lest he should ask her
opinion, or her co-operation. Fortunately for her, he did not consider
either of the least importance, and soon rising, left the room and went
down to dinner.

Alice pressed both hands to her head and groaned forth the prayer:

“Oh, God! guide me aright through this labyrinth of crossing duties,
lest I lose my way!”

In the afternoon General Garnet went out again.

And soon after he was gone Milly entered her mistress’ chamber and put
in her hand a little slip of paper, which she said Elsie had given her
as she handed in her dinner.

Alice took it eagerly. It was the flyleaf of her pocket prayer-book, and
on it was picked with a pin the sentence:

“Say something to me, beloved mother.”

Alice asked for a pencil, and wrote:

“To-morrow I will write, dear child.” And then the pencil dropped from
her hand. “Milly, when you take her supper up, give her that,” she said,
and closed her eyes from exhaustion.

                             CHAPTER XXII.
                               MARRIAGE.

                 Take her, and be faithful still,
                   And may the marriage vow
                 Be sacred kept in after years,
                   And fondly breathed as now.
                                           _—Old Song._

The next morning, after General Garnet had left the house—for the whole
day—Alice arose, still dizzy and weak, not only from the effects of the
blow, but from fasting and anxiety. She was scarcely seated in her chair
when a letter was brought to her that had come in the mail-bag from the
post office. It was superscribed in the handwriting of Dr. Hardcastle.
Alice tore it open, and read a much longer epistle than I can find space
to transcribe here, reader, but the sum total of it was this: Magnus
informed his friend Alice of what she already knew—General Garnet’s
expressed determination to break the engagement existing between himself
and Elsie, for mere mercenary motives; of his own and Elsie’s fixed
resolution to abide by their betrothal, and his hopes that their
decision would meet her—Alice’s—approval. He told her of his wish that
their marriage should take place on Thursday, as had been first
proposed; and of his intention to depart on the following Monday for his
home, among the new settlements in the backwoods of Maryland. He told
her, farther, that he had called the day before to see her and Elsie,
but that he had been refused admittance at the very threshold, the
servants adducing their master’s commands as their warrant. He had
heard, he said, that Elsie was immured, but hoped and believed that this
was not so. He concluded by entreating Alice to write and inform him of
her own and Elsie’s state of health and spirits, and advise him how to
proceed.

Alice folded the letter, clasped her hands, and closed her eyes a moment
in intense thought and prayer. Then, bidding Milly wheel her writing
table before her, she took pen and paper, and wrote the following short
but important note:

  “DEAR MAGNUS:

  “As soon as you see this, go to a locksmith and send him instantly to
  me. Then get a carriage, procure your license, call at Fig’s to take
  up the young Methodist minister who boards there, and come at once to
  Mount Calm. When you return, Elsie shall accompany you.

                                                     “Your friend,
                                                         “ALICE GARNET.”

She sealed this note, dispatched it, and then dropped her head into her
hands, holding it tightly, as though to chain thought to its object.
Then once more she drew her writing-desk nearer to her, took her pen,
and wrote these hurried lines to Elsie:

  “Within a very few hours from this, my own dear Elsie, you will be
  released and married. And now let me tell you, my own dear child, my
  reasons for advising and aiding you in this step. It is not only, my
  Elsie, that your heart has long been given to Magnus; that your hand
  has long been pledged to him with the approbation of both your
  parents; that your happiness is concerned in being united to him; that
  your honor is implicated in keeping faith with him; it is not, either,
  that it would be a heinous wickedness to forsake your betrothed at the
  very moment that fortune forsakes him, and in the hour of his greatest
  adversity; it is not that this very desertion of yours would shake his
  faith in all that is good and true in heaven or on earth, palsy his
  energy and enterprise, and thus do him a serious mortal and social
  injury. And, on the other hand, it is not that you do not love Lionel.
  No, Elsie, it is simply because Magnus is entirely the better man of
  the two,—better, incomparably better,—physically, mentally, morally,
  religiously. Magnus is healthful, strong, handsome, energetic, highly
  intellectual, purely moral, profoundly religious; and he loves you
  completely. Lionel is broken in constitution, evidently by excess;
  indolent, selfish, voluptuous, yet irritable and often violent. His
  interest in you is a low compound of vanity, cupidity, and sense—it
  would be false and profane to call it by the sacred name of love.
  Magnus would make you better and happier, in loving you greatly, in
  elevating your moral and religious nature, while Lionel would draw you
  down to the misery and degradation of his own low nature. My child, my
  one lone child, it is for this consideration that I bar you from
  wealth, luxury, ease, adulation, and give you to the stern but kindly
  discipline of poverty, toil, and privation—with love by your side, to
  lighten all your labors and God above you to reward them. May God love
  you, my only child! my little Elsie!”

No tear-drop blotted this paper, though her tears had fallen thick, and
fast, and blindingly, while she wrote it. She had turned her head away;
for no sign of sorrow should wound and weaken Elsie in the letter
written to comfort and sustain her. She had turned her head away, and
the tears had rained upon her lap. Many times she had arisen from her
writing desk and fallen, overcome with grief, upon the bed. But it was
done. She had succeeded. And there was nothing upon the paper or in the
letter to betray the anguish of mind in which it was written.

Trying to steer as blamelessly as she could through her labyrinth of
duties, Alice would not call one of the servants, all of whom had been
expressly forbidden to approach the attic, but took the paper herself,
went feebly up the stairs, and supporting herself by the balustrades,
she reached the topmost landing, and went to the door of Elsie’s room.

“You are there, dear mother. I know your footstep so well, though it is
weaker than usual. And if I did not know your footsteps, I should know
your sigh. Dear mother, do not grieve for me. I am happy—reverently be
it spoken—as Peter was in prison.”

“My darling Elsie, here is something I have written for you. I will push
it under the bottom of the door. Take it, darling, read it. Try to
compose your mind, and be ready for me very soon. I must go now, dear,
for when you begin to read that you will find I have a great deal to
prepare. Good-by, for an hour, my dear.”

Alice then went down, entered her chamber, and rang for Milly; then she
went to her drawers and caskets, and got together all the jewelry that
she possessed, to the amount of several thousand dollars, and all
Elsie’s, that amounted to several thousand more, and placed them in one
strong casket. Then she searched her purse and pocketbook, and took out
all the money she had in possession, a few hundred dollars, and put it
in a strong packet. Then she sent Milly into Elsie’s vacant chamber, and
had all her clothing collected and packed into two large, strong
traveling trunks. Next, she sent for a man-servant to come and lock and
strap them down before her face. Lastly, she received the keys from him,
and told him to procure assistance, take the trunks down, put them into
a cart, carry them over to Huttontown, and leave them at Mr. Fig’s, with
a request from her that he would keep them until they were called for.
When Alice had done this she was told that a man wished to see her in
the hall.

She went out, and found the locksmith with his tools. She bade him to
follow her, and led the way up into the attic, and to the door of
Elsie’s prison. She stopped there, and turning to the locksmith, said:

“Pick this lock.”

No sooner said than done. The man put in his instrument and unlocked it
with as much ease as though he had used a key.

“There, thank you, sir! you need not open the door. Please to retire
now. Milly, my girl, will settle with you downstairs,” said Alice, who
did not by any means wish to “reveal the secrets of that prison-house.”

The man bowed, gathered his tools, and went downstairs.

Alice opened the door, and was instantly locked in the arms of her
daughter. Fearing to lose her courage and presence of mind, perhaps
trembling for the strength of her purpose, too, Alice did not venture to
indulge these enervating endearments, but hastened to say:

“You read and understood my note, my dear Elsie?”

“Yes, mother.”

“You know, then, what is about to take place?”

“Yes, dear mother.”

“Come, then, my child, we must be quick. I expect Magnus here with the
license and the minister every minute. Your trunks are already packed
and sent off to Huttontown. Where are your diamonds, Elsie? I did not
see them among your jewelry. They are the greatest portion of your dower
now, my child. Where are they? I wish to put them into a casket that I
have packed for you.”

“Here they are, mother, with the ball dress in which I came to prison.”

“Ah, that ball dress, put that on, it will do as well as another; or,
no, you will perhaps have no time to change it afterward. Come down into
my room, and put on your traveling dress at once. I have left it out
with your bonnet; come, Elsie.”

“If you please, ma’am, Dr. Hardcastle and Parson Wilson are downstairs,
inquiring for you,” said a servant from the foot of the interdicted
stairs.

“Invite them into the back parlor, and say that I will be with them in a
few minutes,” said Alice. “Come, Elsie, hasten, dear, and let me dress
you.” She drew Elsie down.

She felt no weakness or dizziness now. She was upheld by a strange
excitement. Her cheeks and lips seemed burning, and her eyes blazing as
with a hectic fever.

Arrived in her own chamber, she quickly assisted Elsie to put on her
traveling dress, smoothing her beautiful auburn ringlets, pressed her
again fondly to her bosom, tied on her little beaver bonnet, and led her
downstairs into the back parlor, where Dr. Hardcastle and the minister
sat.

Both forward, bowed, and shook hands.

“Oh! for God’s sake have it over quickly, Magnus, lest my strength
fail!” said Alice, trembling violently.

The minister drew the prayer-book from his pocket and opened it.

Elsie suddenly lost every vestige of color, and threw herself again into
her mother’s arms. Alice pressed her passionately to her heart a moment,
and then gave her up to Magnus, who took her hand, passed his arm around
her waist to support her, and stood before the minister.

In ten more minutes Magnus Hardcastle had the joy of clasping his wife
to his bosom.

“Thank Heaven that it is over! Oh-h-h! Ugh-gh-h! I felt my flesh
creeping all the time, as if father were peeping over my shoulder,”
exclaimed Elsie, shuddering, and burying her head under the arm of
Magnus.

“Yes, thank Heaven, it is over! It was short. A few solemn words of
exhortation, a brief prayer, a briefer benediction, and now I possess
you, without a doubt, or dispute—entirely. The laws of God and man give
you to me alike, and no power under heaven can tear you from me, my own
Elsie! my own wife!” said Magnus fervently, and almost crushing her in
his arms.

“Yes, thank Heaven it is over! The doubt, the struggle, and the fear is
over. You are safe, Elsie. Your happiness, as far as human foresight can
secure it, is insured,” said Alice, as she received Elsie once more from
the arms of Magnus, and folded her in her own.

“But you! Oh, my dear mother! you will be left without your child!”

“Never regret me, my own darling. You go without your mother, but you go
with your husband, and you are happy. Are you not, my Elsie?”

“Oh, yes, yes, mamma.”

“Well, I am left without my daughter, but I remain with my husband.
Think that I am happy also,” said Alice, feeling thankful to Providence
from the bottom of her heart, that Elsie was “innocent of the knowledge”
of General Garnet’s tyranny over herself.

Yet Elsie half suspected, she knew not what. She looked deeply,
searchingly, for an instant into her

mother’s dark blue eyes, as if to read the secret of the deep sorrow in
them.

But Alice dropped her long lashes, and averted her head.

Then Elsie took her hand, and bending round to look into her troubled
face, said, slowly, earnestly, tearfully:

“You love my father dearly, very dearly; don’t you, mamma? Say, don’t
you, mamma? Oh! don’t you, mamma?”

“Yes, Elsie, I love him,” said Alice, in a very low voice, turning again
to her daughter.

“Oh, mamma, you love him as well as I love Magnus! Don’t you, mamma?
Don’t you? You love him better than you love me, and you will be very
happy with him even when I am gone? Say, mamma! Oh, tell me before I
go.”

For an answer Alice stooped and kissed her daughter on the forehead.

“But oh! tell me before I go! Tell me that you love my father better
than you love me, and that you will be very happy with him when I am
gone,” said Elsie, growing more anxious for an answer every instant.

Alice turned very pale.

And Magnus, who saw that she was fast losing her self-control, came to
her relief, by saying, as he approached, took her hand, and drew her
off:

“I have a word to say to you, if you please, Mrs. Garnet.”

They went to a window, leaving Elsie near the parson.

“Mrs. Garnet! Cousin Alice! Dearest friend! I have a proposal to make to
you that must surprise and may shock and offend you. But nevertheless, I
make it. Listen to me, Alice. I know too well what you have risked for
us, and what you have incurred at the hands of your husband this day!
Alice! I fear—I tremble at the thought of leaving you here alone, and
exposed to his terrible wrath. You——”

But Alice raised her hand and gently arrested his speech.

“Magnus, forgive me for reminding you that you should not talk to me in
that way. General Garnet’s displeasure, as far as I am implicated, will
perhaps be just. You and Elsie were right. Your faith was pledged with
his consent. You were right in redeeming your mutual pledge. But I,
perhaps, was wrong in assisting you in it. I do not clearly know. Oh,
Magnus, for many years my ideas of right and wrong have been very much
confused. For many years I have lost sight of the exact line that
divides good and evil. Oh, Magnus, when the eyes are dimmed with tears,
the sight is not very clear—and when the soul is drowned in grief,
Magnus, the moral vision may be very much obscured. But this I know—that
General Garnet’s anger, just or unjust, moderate or violent, I must
meet, and meet alone. By all means alone! The dignity of both is
concerned in that.”

“Alice, you must not! Hear me! Listen to me! Do not turn away with that
air of gentle self-respect, and wave me off! Don’t I know that your
heart is breaking this moment—this moment, that your child is leaving
you, and you are left desolate and exposed to danger! Desolate,
wretched, in peril, though you would have her to believe otherwise? Oh,
Alice, you may deceive the child of your bosom, but you will not deceive
the boy who sat at your feet and loved you, and studied the mystery of
the sorrow on your brow when you came home a bride, and everybody called
you happy. I was not deceived then; I have not been deceived since. Oh,
Alice, my love for Elsie, my love for you, my relation toward both, give
me the right to feel, the right to speak and advise. Hear me: You must
not remain here to meet the anger of your husband. Your life—your life
will be endangered. Nay! do not lift your hand to stop my speech; hear
my plan; hear me out—I will be very brief. Listen! You love Elsie and
me. Go with us when we leave here. Go with us to our backwoods home. Our
home will be humble, but full of peace and love, and the repose you so
much need. We shall be poor, but you shall not feel it. Respectful and
loving hands will wait on you all day long. You will be happy with us.
Remain with us till the storm blows over. There need be—there would
be—no exposure, no gossip, no scandal. To the neighbors who knew of our
betrothal, our marriage and departure will seem perfectly natural, only
rather unsocial because we did not give a wedding. And I can answer for
the discretion and fidelity of Wilson. Your accompanying us, for a
visit, will seem nothing unusual. General Garnet, if I mistake not, is
too much a man of the world not to keep his own secret, and too much of
a despot not to enforce silence upon his people, in regard to this
matter. General Garnet will be very anxious to get you back before your
visit is prolonged to a suspicious extent. And then, Alice, while you
are safe with us, you can make your own conditions with him for your
return. You can secure for yourself——”

“Stop! Magnus, I do not wish to mar the harmony of this sad hour by one
dissonant word or thought or feeling. But let me hear no more of this.
Not one breath more, dearest Magnus. What! I leave my home! leave my
husband, and remain away to make conditions with him! I, who
unconditionally pledged myself to him ‘for better or worse’—I, who vowed
love, honor and obedience to him ‘until death’! No Magnus. That marriage
vow, in all its details, is not to be tampered with. It is not a
question of happiness, or of peace, or of expedience, or of repose, or
of affection, but simply of duty. No, Magnus. When I hastened to bestow
my daughter upon you, it was for the reason that I believed you to be
one toward whom it would be a happiness as well as duty to keep sacred,
in all its minutiæ, that marriage vow.”

“Alice, dearest Alice, your heart is very mournful, and, forgive me for
saying it, very morbid.”

“It is? Call Elsie, then. Her feelings are all singularly healthful.
Call her, and in her presence just invite me to go with you, simply to
go with you—that will be the mildest form of your proposal—and see what
Elsie will say. Come, do so.”

Magnus turned with a smile, and beckoned Elsie to approach. Elsie came,
with her bright face beaming with interest and inquiry.

“Elsie, my love,” said Magnus, “I have been trying to persuade your
mother to accompany us to our new home, and remain there for a few
weeks.”

“And leave father so suddenly, when I am leaving him, too! Oh, don’t
press her to do any such a thing, dear Magnus. Oh, don’t think of
leaving father just now, dearest mother,” said Elsie earnestly; then
throwing herself in her mother’s arms, whispered anxiously: “Mother,
don’t you love father? Oh, mother, tell me, before I go, that you love
father.”

“Yes, Elsie, I do love him. No, Magnus, I cannot leave him. I have
helped to bereave him of his child for a season—I cannot leave him.”

“But, oh, Alice!” said Magnus, drawing her apart, “think again! think
what you will meet. How can you brave his anger?”

“I shall not brave it, Magnus. It may be just, coming from him. At least
I must bear it—patiently, too.”

Just then the door was burst open by a servant, who exclaimed, in
affright:

“Madam!—mistress!—doctor!—Miss Elsie! Marster is a riding down the road,
post-haste, to the house!”

“Oh, my God! there is not a moment to spare. Good-by, my beloved child.
God bless you!” said Alice, straining her daughter to her bosom.

“Oh, mother, don’t you love father dearly? Tell me once more.”

“Yes, yes, Elsie.”

“Oh, mother, if you love him so dearly, get my pardon from him. Tell him
how I grieve to be under the necessity of offending him. Get my pardon
for me, beloved mother.”

“I will do my very best. God bless you, my darling child! Good-by! Oh,
Magnus, be good to her, be merciful, be loving, be tender. Oh, Magnus, I
have torn the heart from my bosom and given it to you. Be good to her.”

“May God deal by my soul as I deal by her heart!” said Magnus, folding
his mother-in-law in a fervent embrace.

Then they hurried out, hastened into the carriage, the blinds were let
down, the doors closed, the whip cracked, and the vehicle rolled away.

                             CHAPTER XXIII.
                        “THE HEART OVERTASKED.”

         Oh, break, break, heart! poor bankrupt, break at once!
         To prison, soul! Ne’er hope for liberty!
                                                 _—Shakspere._

          Oh! do whate’er thou wilt! I will be silent.
                                            _—Joanna Baillie._

Alice heard an advancing step. She looked around. Milly stood at her
side.

“Where is your master? Did he enter by the back gate? Is he at the
stables?” she inquired.

“Miss Alice, no, ma’am; he didn’t come home at all. He didn’t even meet
the carriage. He turned off ’fore he got to the porter’s lodge, and rode
hard as he could down the path as leads down the Hollow. I ’spects how
he had some ’litical business long o’ Mr. Hard’stle.”

“Oh, thank Heaven!” said Alice, with a long-drawn sigh of relief, and
rising, she hurried off to her own chamber. Not to sit down in faithless
despair, but to write a letter to General Garnet, softly and meekly
breaking to him the news of their daughter’s marriage, so that the first
shock of astonishment and rage should be over before he should come home
and she should have to meet him. She wrote this letter. It contained all
that she had said in her letter to Elsie, and much more; besides, a
meek, appealing spirit pervaded it, that few hearts could have resisted.
She dispatched it by a servant to General Garnet at Hemlock Hollow. Then
she lay down and tried to sleep.

She was disturbed by the entrance of a servant bearing a letter.

She raised up and took it. It was for General Garnet, and bore the
post-mark of Huttontown. She regarded it attentively for an instant, for
it was written in a coarse, schoolboy-like hand.

Then she placed it on the dressing-table, and, dismissing the servant,
lay down and closed her eyes again, with an effort to sleep. She could
not do so for a long time. Emotion was busy in her heart, and thought in
her brain. One, two, three hours passed; and then she prayed, prayed for
the promised rest, and, praying, fell asleep.

She did not know how long she had slept, when, waking, she perceived
General Garnet in the room.

He was sitting in the large armchair near the bed, and his attention
riveted upon a letter he was reading. Alice glanced at the
dressing-table. The letter she had placed there was gone. Yes, it was
that letter which he was reading with such fixed interest.

Alice lay quietly, yet anxiously watching him, until he finished
reading, folded up the letter, and put it in his pocket. His attitude
was one of deep, even intense, thought. In the crimson twilight of that
closely curtained chamber she could not see the expression of his face.
It was evident, she thought, that he had not seen her in the shadowy
recess where her sofa stood.

After thus watching a moment, breathing a prayer for mercy, she slowly
arose, crossed the room, and sank upon the cushion near his feet, took
his hand, and looked up pleadingly into his face.

Alice was still a very beautiful woman, as I have told you, and never
was a more beautiful picture than that kneeling figure, with the bright,
flowing hair, flushed cheek, and upturned, pleading gaze with which she
sought silently to deprecate the anger of her husband. She sought to
read her fate in his countenance; but that high and haughty face was
lifted and averted, and its features were stern, and calm, and
impassible. Then she found words to speak, and inquired, softly:

“You received my letter, General Garnet?”

“Yes, madam, I received your letter,” he answered, in a hard, cold tone
of voice.

“Then you know what else I should tell you here at your feet.”

“I know that my daughter has eloped, and that my wife helped her off,”
he replied, in the same dry tone, and with his head still averted.

Alice could not see that his lips were bloodless and compressed, and his
eyes burning with a fearful, lurid glare. His very quietude, hard and
dry, and constrained as it was, deceived her. She took his hand again
and pressed it to her lips, and held it to her bosom, murmuring softly:

“Let us forgive each other! Oh, my husband, let us forgive each other!
For many wrongs there is positively no other remedy in the wide universe
but simple forgiveness—simple, magnanimous, sublime forgiveness. ‘It is
impossible but that offenses will come,’ said the most merciful of all
beings. It is impossible, says the experience of life, it is impossible
but that disappointments, sorrows, pains, and partings will come. They
are the conditions of our existence. We cannot escape them. Let us
lessen their bitterness as much as we may. It is impossible but that
troubles will come, but the vital question is whether we shall turn them
to good or evil account—whether we shall live to any good end or not.
Oh, my husband, make friends with me! We have only each other in the
wide world upon whom to depend for our life’s comfort and happiness.
Make friends with me!”

She paused, covering his hand with fond caresses, pressing it to her
lips, laying it against her cheek, holding it to her throbbing heart. He
drew his hand from her gentle clasp, and folded his arms.

Alice sank back, sobbing—sobbing, as though her heart would burst—then
suddenly she clasped his knees, exclaiming wildly: “Can we hate each
other—you and I who have lived so many years together? Can we hate each
other—you and I, who love our only child, our dear Elsie, so much? Make
friends with me! Let us understand each other! Let us be candid with
each other! Let us forbear each other! I know that you deeply regret the
failure of your favorite plan to unite these estates. I know it; I am
sorry for it; sorry that I have been constrained to have a hand in it.
But, oh, General Garnet, I, too, you know, was once—long years
ago—bitterly disappointed—terribly disappointed! But it is all over now;
it has all been over many years ago! And that is what I have often
wanted to tell you, when I saw by the cold, dark shadow on your brow
that you thought yourself unloved. But I never could approach you near
enough to tell you—to tell you that if you would look into my heart you
would see it filled with the love of God, of my husband, and my child.
Oh, Aaron! let us forget all that estranged us in the dreary past, and
see if we cannot live a better and happier life in the future! At least
we can be kind, candid, forbearing with each other. Think how long we
may have to travel the rough road of mortal life side by side! We are
not old—you and I, Aaron! You are not forty-five, and I am much younger.
People healthful as we are usually live to the age of eighty and beyond
it. Think how many years we may have to live together! Shall we, through
all these years, be unloving, cold, estranged, suspicious, uncharitable
each to the other? Think how many years of our life we have already
wasted in coolness, strangeness, misunderstandings! Think how many yet
remain! Shall we not live the rest in mutual forbearance, candor,
benevolence? Make friends with me. Let us comprehend each other. Dear
Aaron, I have opened my heart to you; give me your confidence!” She
ceased, half turned to gaze up in his face; his head was quite
averted—had he relented? She thought so. She suddenly, impulsively
arose, threw her arms around his neck, and bent her lips to kiss him,
repeating softly: “Dearest Aaron, make friends with me. Give me your
confidence.”

He sprang up, and with one dash of his strong arm threw her from him,
exclaiming:

“Off, traitress! Off, serpent! Viper!”

She tottered and fell back among the silken cushions of an old-fashioned
low lounge, exhausted, pale, and shuddering.

He gazed at her with flashing eyes and darkening brow, and white and
writhen lips, and the long restrained passion broke out in a torrent of
invective. Shaking his clenched fist at her, he exclaimed:

“How dare you talk to me of confidence, traitress that you are? How
durst you even approach me, serpent! viper! after your black treachery?
What do you mean by braving me? Are you enamored of a broken head? Or do
you think your own too hard to be broken? At what do you value your
life, pray? What hinders me now from strangling you? Why didn’t you fly
with your hopeful daughter? Don’t you expect me to hurl you out of doors
after her? How durst you cross my path after your treachery? Viper,
answer me, I say!” he vociferated, striding toward the lounge, grasping
her shoulder, and jerking her to her feet before him. “Answer! How dared
you face me after your black treachery?”

“It was no treachery,” answered Alice, pale and trembling, yet with a
certain gentle dignity in her words and tone; “it was no treachery; I
broke no promise; I betrayed no trust; I am incapable of doing either.”

“Silence, traitress!” he thundered, shaking her furiously; “I do not ask
you for any impudent falsehood; I will not, by Heaven, permit you to
tell me one! I ask you how you dared to meet me here?”

“Oh-h-h!” sighed Alice, suddenly sinking at his feet. “It was to return
to my allegiance; at whatever personal risk, to yield myself to you; to
abide henceforth by my duties. And oh, General Garnet, do not
misunderstand me! If I have humbled myself before you—vainly, perhaps,
it is not from so base a motive as fear! Oh, I have outlived and
outsuffered the fear of pain—the fear of death—the fear of anything that
might befall me! I am at your feet. If I have placed myself
unconditionally in your hands, it is for the sake of the holiest
principles, the most sacred duties. General Garnet, you believe me—I see
that you do! General Garnet, listen to me farther; this is positively
the first time in our married life of seventeen years that I ever
opposed you.”

“The first time that you ever successfully opposed me, madam; and, by
Heaven, you have made a signal beginning!” commented General Garnet, no
longer speaking in a furious voice, but in the dry, hard, stern tone,
and fixed, inflexible brow with which he had in the beginning of their
interview heard and replied to her gentle words. The burst of violent
passion had passed away and left him—the hard, scornful, sarcastic, yet
cool, calculating, dissembling, most dangerous man that he was before.

Alice gazed up at his face, seeking to read the changed expression
there; but it passed her skill, and she murmured slowly:

“Perhaps I was wrong; I know that under other circumstances it would
have been very wrong; yet I dare not say that I regret what I did, for
under the same circumstances I should do it again. Not to obtain your
forgiveness would I deceive you, though to obtain it would make me
comparatively happy; but I deeply regret that anything I had a hand in
should give you pain. And I say, do as you please, I shall not complain,
I cannot. From the one revolt of my whole life I return to a full and
unconditional allegiance; there is nothing farther to disturb it,
nothing to draw me aside. My love for my child only did it; that cannot
move me again.”

“Ha! can it not?” he asked scornfully.

“No, no, indeed it cannot!”

“Never!”

“Never! How can my love for Elsie ever again draw me aside from you?
Elsie is married and gone; now I have only you; my duty is
undivided—and, oh, if you would let me, I would try to make you so
happy!”

“Would you?” he asked, doubtfully, scornfully.

“Yes, I would,” she said, suddenly rising, leaning her hand upon his
arm, and her head upon his shoulder, with the confidence of perfect love
and faith. “Oh, Aaron, you have not been yourself for a few days past.
Yet I do not love you the less on that account; indeed, I do not. Oh,
Aaron, I can excuse your violence more than you can excuse yourself, I
know, for I have been used to it in others. My father was violent
sometimes. And I know that anger is a brief intoxication—’a short
madness’—in which people do and say what they never intended. Come, you
are not angry now; you are smiling; and I—I can only repeat what I said
in the beginning, ‘Let us forgive each other, and live better and
happier all our future lives.’ That is right—put your arm around me,
dear Aaron, for I am very weak.”

It was scarcely in human nature, or in devil nature, to resist the charm
of her winning beauty, gentleness, and meekness. General Garnet pressed
a passionate kiss upon her lips, and clasped her to his heart. It was
the first kiss of many, many years; and Alice, trembling, happy, with
her blushing face hidden on his bosom, saw not the “laughing devil in
his eye.”

“Oh, Aaron, this is generous—this is magnanimous. Oh, Aaron, if you knew
how the simple act of forgiveness has power to bind the human heart! I
know it by the way it draws my heart to yours,” said Alice, with
enthusiasm.

But another and a more passionate kiss sealed her lips for a time.

At last she said:

“My friend, how has it been with you this long, long time? I mean how
has it been with your heart and soul, your inner life? Have you been
happy—have you had any great life purpose? Oh, Aaron, often when I have
watched you in your daily life, as you walked, or rode, or drove; as you
sat at table, or at your writing-desk, or settled business with your
overseer or agents; or jested or told anecdotes among your friends; when
you have seemed to live lightly on the outside of things, I have longed
to ask you, ‘How is with you—is this reality, and is this all of your
life, and are you contented with it—are you happy?’ And when I have seen
you sit, or stand, or walk apart, silent, moody, abstracted, retired
into yourself, I have longed to knock at your heart’s door, to be let
in, too—to be let into your confidence, and to give you my sympathy, but
I dared never to do so. It has taken the grief and passion of this hour
to enable me to do so now. But this shall never be so again, shall it?
We shall never be such strangers to each other again? Come, tell me
now—how it is with you. Are you happy?”

“Quite happy, just at this hour, Alice.”

“And do you truly love me—a little? Oh, love me—only love me!”

“Love you! That is not so difficult, Alice. You are still a very lovely
woman.”

“Will you let me deliver Elsie’s last message to you?”

He quickly averted his face to hide the dark cloud that overswept it,
while he answered:

“I will hear it.”

“Elsie’s parting words to me were, ‘Oh, mother, you love my father very
dearly, do you not?’ I answered, ‘Yes.’ She replied, ‘Oh, if you love
him, mother, win my pardon from him!’ Aaron, look on me. Father, forgive
your child for loving her husband as much as her mother loves thee.”

“Alice,” he said, drawing her again to his bosom and kissing her, “this
seals your full pardon; be content; for the rest, give me time.”

“Oh, if I could persuade you to forgive poor Elsie—who only needs her
father’s pardon and blessing to be perfectly happy in her humble state.”

“Alice, if Elsie were before me, as you are, in all your beauty, perhaps
I could not choose but be reconciled with her as with you, my lovely
Alice.”

Alice was so unused to praise from him that these words and caresses
were beginning to embarrass her. Blushing like a very girl, she withdrew
herself from his arms, and sat down. Then, as fearing to have offended,
she said:

“Do not think me ungrateful. Test my sincerity in any way you please.”

“In any way, Alice?” he asked significantly.

“Yes. Try me—test me.”

“Pause—think—in any way?”

“In anything and everything will I obey you, that does not transgress
the laws of God, I mean, of course.”

“Ah, that to begin with, is one very broad and comprehensive
exception—especially if you design to give it a very liberal and
latitudinarian interpretation. And it implies, besides, a suspicion and
a guard against my giving you any command which, to obey, would be to
transgress the laws of God. Do you really suppose that I am capable of
doing such a thing, Alice?”

“No—oh, no. Only you pressed me for an exception, you know, and I gave
you the only one I thought of.”

“I am satisfied with your exception, Alice. But is that really the only
exception to your vow of compliance?”

“Yes, indeed, the only one.”

“Reflect—you may find another.”

“No; indeed, no.”

“No? What is the dearest wish of your heart, now, Alice?”

“For peace—for perfect family peace and perfect Christian love.”

“Thanks, Alice. ‘Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian.’ But is
there no secret, darling thought that hovers around Magnus and Elsie?”

Alice suddenly turned very pale. Her hands flew up pleadingly, and
involuntarily she cried, in a voice of anguish:

“Oh, for the loving Saviour’s sake, do not require me to renounce
Elsie!”

“If I did, would you do so, Alice?”

She was silent, with her head bowed upon her clasped hands.

He looked at her and smiled sardonically, saying:

“I knew it—another exception! How many would follow this, I wonder? But
be easy, Alice. I do not require you to renounce your daughter. Far be
that from me. Hold her as closely to your heart as you wish. Nothing but
nervousness could have put that thought into your head. Have I not said
that even I might be brought to forgive Elsie? Pshaw, dear Alice, I only
wished to prove to you how really vain were all your promises.”

“No, they are not!” exclaimed Alice earnestly, energetically. “You have
reconciled yourself to me when I least hoped and expected it, and I will
do anything to prove how glad I am—anything except renounce Elsie or
fail in my higher duty to Heaven. Oh, do not close your half-opened
heart to me again! Try me!”

“Good! I will put your sincerity to one more test. And woe to both if
that third test should prove you faithless.”

“It shall not—it shall not!” said Alice solemnly. “All our future
confidence and peace depends on it, and it shall not fail, so help me
Heaven. What is it?”

“You shall soon see, Alice,” replied General Garnet, rising and
preparing to leave the room. “Where are they now?—I mean Dr. Hardcastle
and his wife.”

“I believe they are at the hotel at Huttontown, where they expect to
remain for a few days—if you do not bring them back here. Oh, General
Garnet, if you would pardon them—if you would bring them back here to
live with us—how happy we should all be—oh, how happy we should all be
the long future years! No more partings—no more tears. Our children and
grandchildren would be with us all through life. Magnus could practice
his profession, and be of such inestimable value besides, in your
political plans, and such company for you at home. And Elsie would be
such a comfort to me. We should all be so happy! Come, bring them back
with you. Ah! do. Let us have them with us, all reconciled, around the
table to-night—and it will be the happiest family gathering that ever
was held. Oh, I see you smile, and I know you will bring them back—will
you not?” said Alice, suddenly seizing his hand, and gazing eloquently,
beseechingly into his face.

“We shall see, Alice—I will tell you more about that when I return,” he
said, with one of his charming smiles, and shaking her hand cheerfully,
opened the door and went out.

“Oh, yes—I do believe he will bring them back with him. Ah, no father
can harden his heart against his child. Yes, yes, I am sure he will
bring them back!” she repeated, seeking to still the anxiety that was
tormenting her breast.

                             CHAPTER XXIV.
                           THE WIFE’S TRUST.

          I know not, I ask not, if guilt’s in that heart,
          But I know that I love thee, whatever thou art.
                                                    _—Moore._

The sun was going down when a servant entered the chamber and announced
that Judge Wylie was below stairs and begged to see Mrs. Garnet alone
upon important business.

Telling the man to show Judge Wylie into the library, Alice threw a
shawl around her, and, full of vague and painful misgivings, descended
the stairs.

What could be the important business upon which Judge Wylie came? What
business, trifling or important, could he have with her? Had any
accident happened to Elsie? The thought gripped her heart like a vise.
Had anything happened to Magnus or General Garnet?

Trembling and pale, and almost overwhelmed by the trials of the day, she
opened the library door and entered in.

Judge Wylie was standing there awaiting her. Judge Jacky’s usually
jubilant face was now overcast and troubled as he advanced to meet
Alice, took her hand, led her to a settee, and seated himself beside
her. He pressed her hand with paternal kindness and said, gravely and
gently:

“My dear Mrs. Garnet, you will pardon the liberty about to be taken by
your oldest friend.”

“For Heaven’s sake—what has——” happened, she was about to ask, but the
words died on her pale lips.

“Do not be alarmed, my dear Mrs. Garnet. Nothing has occurred since the
marriage—you perceive that I know all about it. But it is to warn you—to
put you upon your guard against something about to occur, that I come to
you this evening.”

“For God’s sake—what? what?”

“Be easy. Nothing that you have not in your full power to avert by a
little firmness.”

“For Heaven’s sake, explain yourself, Judge Wylie.”

“You know something, I presume, of the Maryland laws of property, of
inheritance, and of marriage?”

“No, no; I know nothing about it.”

“At least you know that when a girl marries, all the personal property
she may be possessed of at the time of her marriage, or may afterward
inherit, becomes the property of her husband?”

“Yes, of course, I know that.”

“Yes, but—listen. All the landed property she possesses at the time of
her marriage, or afterward inherits, is hers—hers alone. Her husband can
neither alienate it during his life, or will it at his death. He cannot
mortgage it, nor assign it, nor can it be taken for his debts. It is
hers, and hers alone. She alone has the disposal of it.”

“Yes. Well?”

“Therefore, all the personal property you became possessed of at the
death of your father is the property of General Aaron Garnet.”

“Certainly. Who disputes it? Well?”

“But. And now listen! All the landed property, consisting of six
thousand acres of the best land on the Western Shore, which you
inherited from your father, is yours, your own, and at your death it is
your daughter’s, if she survive you, and unless you choose to will it to
someone else. General Garnet can make no disposition of it either during
your life or at your death.”

“It seems to me, Judge Wylie, that this conversation is a very singular
one,” said Alice coldly.

“Not so singular or so impertinent—that is what you mean—as it appears
to be. Bear with me. Hear me out. I speak for your good, and your
child’s good, I have before me now the face of your sainted mother. I
loved her in my youth, Alice; but that is neither here nor there. Well,
this is what I had to say: Your daughter Elsie has, by her marriage,