her, except those that were merely friendly. Judged from the American
point of view, his attentions were nothing. And to complicate matters,
his following the Corbins and the Romaine party to New York might be
understood as committing him as much to Miss Maywood as to Miss Corbin.
The Chessinghams, Miss Maywood, and even Sir Archy himself regarded
that New York trip as a very important and significant affair, and Sir
Archy, not forgetting his British caution in love affairs, had at first
congratulated himself that his motive might be supposed to be either
one of the girls. But upon further reflection he rather regretted this.
He knew that Letty attached not the slightest importance to anything a
man might say or do short of an actual proposal.

But Ethel Maywood was different. She was of good family, accustomed
to all the restrictions of a young English girl, and Chessingham was
one of his best friends, so that it would be peculiarly awkward if his
conduct had given rise to hopes that never could be realized.

There was no doubt in Sir Archy’s mind, though, that he preferred
Letty. He had heretofore felt, in all the slight fancies he had had for
girls, a need for the greatest circumspection, for he was a baronet
with a rent-roll, and as such distinctly an eligible. But whether Letty
would take him or not, he had not the remotest inkling. Sometimes he
reasoned that the mere fact she exempted him to a certain degree from
the outrageous coquetry she lavished on Farebrother might be a good
sign. Again, he felt himself hopelessly out of the race. As for Miss
Maywood, he had a half acknowledged feeling that if Letty did not take
him Ethel had the next best claim. Of course he knew she would marry
Mr. Romaine if he asked her. But this did not shock him, accustomed
as he was to the English idea that there is a grave, moral obligation
upon every girl to marry well if she can, without waiting for further
eventualities.

The boat only came to the river landing twice a week, so that it
happened very naturally both Sir Archy and Farebrother stepped off the
steamer one November evening, and got into the rickety carriage drawn
by the two showy bobtailed horses bought in New York, over which Dad
Davy handled the ribbons. Dad Davy received the guests with effusion,
and apologized for the restlessness of the horses.

“Dee ain’ used ter de ways o’ de quality yit. Quality folks’ horses
oughter know to stan’ still an’ do nuttin’; ole marse say dee warn’t
raise’ by no gent’mun, an’ dee k’yarn’ keep quiet like er gent’mun’s
kerridge hosses oughter.”

The horses started off at a rattling pace, and the carriage bumped
along at such a lively rate over the country road that Sir Archy fully
expected to find himself landed flat on the ground.

“I don’t believe this old trap will ever get us to Corbin Hall,” he
said to Farebrother.

The two men were pleasant enough together, although each wished the
other back in New York. Farebrother inquired about Mr. Romaine, and Sir
Archy mentioned that the whole party would be down the next week.

It was quite dusk when the ramshackly old coach rattled and banged up
to the door of Corbin Hall. The house looked exactly as it had on that
November night ten years before, when Sir Archy had made his entry
there.

The hall door was wide open, and from it poured the ruddy glow of the
fire in the great drawing-room fireplace, and two candles sent a pale
ray into the darkness. The Colonel stood waiting to receive them, with
Letty and Miss Jemima in the background. When the two men alighted and
entered the house, the Colonel nearly sawed their arms off.

“Delighted to see you, my dear young friends,” he cried, “and most
fortunate and agreeable for us all that you are here together.”

The Colonel, in his simplicity, actually believed this. Miss Jemima’s
greeting and Letty’s was not less cordial, and each of the two men
would have felt perfectly satisfied under the circumstances but for
the presence of the other.

The shabby, comfortable old library looked exactly as it had done ten
years before. The identical square of rag carpet was spread over the
handsome floor, polished by many decades of “dry rubbin’.” Everything
in the room that could shine by rubbing did so--for Africans were
plentiful still at Corbin Hall. The brass fender and fire dogs, the old
mahogany furniture, all shone like looking-glasses.

Miss Letty regulated her conduct toward her two admirers with the
most artful impartiality, and both Sir Archy and Farebrother realized
promptly that their visit was to be a season of enjoyment, and not of
lovemaking--which last is too thorny a pursuit and too full of pangs
and apprehensions to be classed strictly under the head of pleasure.
Miss Jemima gave them a supper that was simply an epic in suppers--so
grand, so nobly proportioned, so sustained from beginning to end.
Afterward, sitting around the library fire, they had to hear a good
many of the Colonel’s stories, with Letty in a little low chair in
the corner, her hands demurely folded in her lap, and the fire-light
showing the milky whiteness of her throat and lights and shadows
in her hazel eyes. Letty was very silent--for, being a creature of
caprice, when she was not laughing and talking like a running brook,
she maintained a mysterious silence. One slender foot in a black
slipper showed from under the edge of her gown--the only sign of
coquetry about her--for no matter how much Puritanism in air and manner
Letty might affect, there was always one small circumstance--whether it
was her foot, her hand, or her hair, or the turn of her head,--in which
the natural and incorrigible flirt was revealed. The evening passed
quickly and pleasantly to all. The Colonel would not hear of a week
being the limit of their visit. Within a few days the Romaine party
would be at Shrewsbury, and then there would be a “reunion,” as the
Colonel expressed it.

When Farebrother was consigned to his bed-room that night, with a huge
four-poster like a catafalque to sleep in, and a dressing-table with
a frilled dimity petticoat around it, and the inevitable wood-fire
roaring up the chimney, he abandoned himself to pleasing reflections,
as he smoked his last cigar. How pleasant, home-like, and comfortable
was everything! Nothing was too good to be used--and the prevailing
shabbiness seemed only a part of the comfort of it all. And Letty, like
all true women, was more charming in her own home than anywhere else in
the world.

Sir Archy, in the corresponding bed-room across the hall, with a
corresponding catafalque, petticoated dressing-table, etc., likewise
indulged in retrospection before he went to bed. He was not so easy in
his mind--no man can be at peace who has two women in his thoughts. He
was very sorry the Romaine party were coming. He had not discriminated
enough in his attentions between Letty and Ethel Maywood, and the
feeling that he might be playing fast and loose with Ethel troubled and
annoyed him. But love with him was a much more prosaic and conventional
matter, though not less sincere, than with Farebrother, who had the
American disregard of consequences in affairs of the heart.

Next morning was an ideal morning for shooting. A white haze lay over
the land, tempering the glory of the morning sun. The rime lay over
the fields just enough to help the scent of the dogs, and there was a
calm, chill stillness in the air that boded ill for partridges.

The Colonel turned his two young friends over to the care of Tom
Battercake, and the trio started off accompanied by a good-sized
pack of pointers. Sir Archy had on the usual immaculate English rig
for shooting--immaculate in the mud and stains necessary for correct
shooting clothes. His gun, game-bag, and whole outfit were as complete
as if he had expected to be cast ashore on a desert island, with only
his trusty weapon to keep him from starvation. Farebrother’s gun, too,
was a gem--but in other respects he presented the makeshift appearance
of a man who likes sport, but does not affect it. His trousers, which
had belonged, not to a shooting-suit, originally, but had attended
first a morning wedding, were so shabby as to provoke Letty’s most
scathing sarcasm. His coat and hat were shocking, and altogether he
looked like a tramp in hard luck. Tom Battercake, much to Sir Archy’s
surprise, was provided with an ancient and rusty musket of the vintage
of 1840, with which he proposed to take a flyer occasionally. Sir
Archy privately expressed his surprise at this to Farebrother, who
laughed aloud.

“That’s all right down here,” he said, still laughing. “There’s game
enough for everybody--even the darkeys.”

Sir Archy could not quite comprehend this--but he reflected that not
much damage could be done by such a piece of ordnance as the old
musket. However, he soon changed his mind--for Tom, by hook or by
crook, managed to fill a gunny bag which he had concealed about his
person quite as soon as Sir Archy and Farebrother filled their bags,
and still he gave them all the best shots. Sir Archy’s wrath was
aroused by some of Tom’s unique methods--such as knocking a partridge
over with the long barrel of his musket as the bird was on the ground,
and various other unsportsmanlike but successful devices. But there
was no way of bringing Tom’s iniquities home to him, who evidently
considered the birds of the air were to be caught as freely as the
fishes of the sea. So Sir Archy soon relapsed into silent disgust.
He was a superb shot, but Tom Battercake fairly rivaled him, while
Farebrother was a bad third. After tramping about all the morning,
they sat down on the edge of the woods to eat the luncheon with which
Miss Jemima had provided them. While they were sitting on the ground,
Tom was noticed to be eying Sir Archy’s beautiful gun with an air of
longing. Presently he spoke up diffidently, scratching his wool.

“Marse Archy--please, suh--ain’ you gwi’ lem me have one shot outen dat
ar muskit o’ yourn?”

Sir Archy’s first impulse was to throw the gun at Tom’s woolly head,
but on reflection he merely scowled at him. Farebrother laughed.

“There, you rascal,” he said, “you may take my gun, and don’t blow your
head off with it.”

Sir Archy was paralyzed with astonishment--not so Tom, who dashed for
the gun and disappeared in the underbrush with Rattler, the dean of the
corps of pointers at Corbin Hall. In a little while a regular fusillade
was heard, and in half an hour Tom appeared with a string of partridges
on his shoulder, and a broad grin across his face.

“Thankee, thankee, marster,” he said to Farebrother, returning the
gun. “Dat ar muskit o’ yourn cert’ny does shoot good. I ain’ never
shoot wid nuttin’ like her--an’ ef dis nigger had er gun like dat,
ketch him doin’ no mo’ wuk in bird time!”

Sir Archy forbore comment, but he concluded that American sport, like
everything else American, was highly original and inexplicable.

The week passed quickly enough. Every day, when the weather was fine,
they went out in the society of Tom Battercake. In the afternoon the
lively horses were hitched up to some of the mediæval vehicles at
Corbin Hall, and they took a drive through the rich, flat country,
Letty being usually of the party. She was surprisingly well behaved,
but Farebrother doubted if it was a genuine reform, and suspected truly
enough that it was only one of Letty’s protean disguises. When the week
was out the Colonel would not hear of their departure, and Sir Archy
promptly agreed to prolong his visit. Of course, when he decided to
stay, Farebrother could not have been driven away with a stick. At the
beginning of the second week Mr. Romaine, the Chessinghams and Miss
Maywood arrived at Shrewsbury. Within a day or two the Colonel and
Letty, and their two guests, set out one afternoon for Shrewsbury to
pay their first call.

Instead of the picturesque shabbiness of Corbin Hall, Shrewsbury was in
perfect repair. It was a fine old country house, and when they drove up
to the door, it had an air of having been newly furbished up outside
and in that was extremely displeasing to the Colonel.

“Romaine is an iconoclast, I see,” he remarked, fretfully. “He is
possessed with that modern devil of paint and varnish that is the ruin
of everything in these days. The place looks quite unlike itself.”

“But doesn’t it look better than it ever did?” asked Letty, who would
have been glad to see some paint and varnish at Corbin Hall. This the
Colonel disdained to answer.

They were ushered into a handsome and modernly furnished drawing-room
by Mr. Romaine’s own man, who wore a much injured expression at finding
himself in Virginia and the country to boot. Newport suited his taste
much better. The Colonel sniffed contemptuously at the Turkish rugs,
divans, ottomans, lamps, screens and bric-à-brac that had taken the
place of the ancient horsehair furniture. Letty looked around, consumed
with envy and longing.

Presently Mr. Romaine appeared, followed by the Chessinghams and Ethel
Maywood, who was looking uncommonly handsome. As soon as greetings were
exchanged, the Colonel attacked Mr. Romaine about what he called his
“vandalism” in refurnishing his house. Mr. Romaine laughed his peculiar
low laugh.

“Why, if I had let that old rubbish remain here, which had no
associations whatever, except that it was bought by my father’s
agent--a person of no taste whatever--I should have been constantly
reminded of the flight of time, a thing I should always like to forget.”

“Life, my dear Romaine,” remarked the Colonel, solemnly, “is full of
reminders of the flight of time to persons of our advanced years, and
we have but a brief span in which to prepare for another world than
this sublunary sphere.”

At this Mr. Romaine, excessively nettled, turned to Letty and began to
describe to her a very larky ballet he had witnessed in New York just
before leaving for Virginia. Letty, in her innocence, missed the point
of the story, which annoyed and amused Mr. Romaine. The Colonel by that
time was deep in conversation with gentle Gladys Chessingham, whom he
sincerely admired, and so did not catch Mr. Romaine’s remarks, of which
he would have strongly disapproved.

Among the four young people--Farebrother, Letty, Sir Archy and Ethel
Maywood--a slight constraint existed. Each girl so resolutely believed
in the falsity of the other’s ideas where men were concerned that each
was on the alert to be shocked. Sir Archy was wondering if his friends,
the Chessinghams, were suspecting him of trifling with Ethel Maywood’s
feelings, and Farebrother was heartily wishing that Ethel would succeed
in landing the baronet in her net, and so leave Letty for himself.

Nevertheless, they made talk naturally enough. Ethel was secretly
much disgusted with the country as she saw it. There were few of the
resources of English country life at hand, and as she had been educated
to depending upon a certain round of conventional amusements to kill
time, she was completely at a loss what to do without them. Reading
she regarded as a duty instead of a pleasure. But with the class
instincts of a well born English girl, she conceived it to be her duty
to say she liked the country at all times, and so protested in her
pretty, well-modulated voice. Sir Archy and Farebrother were temporary
resources, but no more. As for Sir Archy, she regarded him as much
more unattainable than he fancied himself to be. It would be too much
good luck to expect for her to return to England as Lady Corbin of Fox
Court, and so she dismissed the dazzling vision with a sigh, and made
up her mind to fly no higher than Mr. Romaine. Letty wondered how the
domestic machinery ran at Shrewsbury, with black servants picked up
here and there in the country--for the Shrewsbury negroes, having no
personal ties to the place, had scattered speedily after the war. Ethel
soon enlightened her.

“Turner”--that was their maid--“is really excessively frightened at
the blacks. They grin at her so diabolically, and she can’t get rid of
the impression that all blacks are cannibals, and as for Dodson and
Bridge”--the two valets--“they do nothing but complain to Reggie, and
he says he expects them both to give warning before the month is out.”

“I should think they would,” cried Letty, laughing, and realizing the
woes of two London flunkies in a domestic staff made up of Virginia
negroes.

“None of them can read a written order,” continued Miss Maywood,
who usually avoided the bad form of talking about servants, but who
found present circumstances too overpowering for her. “The cook
seems an excellent old person, not devoid of intelligence, although
wholly without education--and as Reggie liked her way of preparing
an omelette, I sent for her to write down the recipe. She came in,
laughing as if it were the greatest joke in the world, called me
‘honey’ and ‘child,’ and I never could get out of her--although she
talked incessantly in her peculiar patois--what I really wished to
know.”

This amused Sir Archy very much, who went on to relate his experiences
with Tom Battercake.

But Mr. Romaine seemed to find Letty more than usually attractive, and
soon established himself by her with an air of proprietorship that
ran both Sir Archy and Farebrother out of the field altogether. He
put on his sweetest manner for her; his fine black eyes grew more and
more expressive, and he used upon her a great deal of adroit flattery
which was not without its effect. He gave her to understand that he
considered her quite a woman of the world. This never fails to please
an ingénue, while it is always wise to tell a woman of the world that
she is an ingénue. Letty really thought that her visit to Newport and
her week or two in New York had made another girl of her. So it had,
in one way. It had taught her a new manner of arranging her hair, and
several schemes of personal adornment, and she had seen a few pictures
and some artistic interiors. But Letty was a girl of robust and
well-formed character before she ever saw anything of the outside world
at all, and she was not easily swayed by any mere external influences;
but she was acutely sensitive to personal influences, and she felt
the individual magnetism of Mr. Romaine very strongly. Sometimes she
positively disliked him, and thought he affected to be young, although
nobody could say he was frivolous--and thought him hard and cynical and
generally unlovely. But to-day she found him peculiarly agreeable--he
artfully complimented her at every turn--he was unusually amusing in
his conversation, and in fact laid himself out to please with a power
that he possessed, but rarely exerted. He had seen in the beginning
that Letty was prejudiced against regarding him as a youngish man,
and this piqued him. He did not pretend, indeed, to be young, but he
decidedly objected to be shelved along with the Colonel and other
fossils--and as for Miss Jemima, who was a few months younger than
himself, he treated her as if she had been his great-grandmother. This,
however, did not disturb Miss Jemima’s placidity in the least.

The visit was a long one, and it was quite dark before the ramshackly
carriage rattled out of the gate toward Corbin Hall. Mr. Romaine had
made them all promise to come again soon, and when they were out of
hearing, Letty expressed an admiration for him which filled Farebrother
with a sudden and excessive disgust.

VII

Sir Archy and Farebrother remained three weeks at Corbin Hall, and in
that time a great many things happened.

There was constant intercourse between the two places, Corbin Hall and
Shrewsbury, which were only four miles apart. Neither of the young
men made anything of walking over to Shrewsbury for a little turn,
nor did the Chessinghams and Miss Maywood consider the walk to Corbin
Hall anything but a stroll. Not so Letty, who was no great walker, but
a famous rider. Nor did Mr. Romaine, who had a very stylish trap and
a well set-up iron-gray riding nag that speedily learned his way to
Corbin Hall. Mr. Romaine got to coming over with surprising frequency,
much to Miss Maywood’s disgust. The Colonel took all of Mr. Romaine’s
visits to himself, nor was Mr. Romaine ever able to convince him that
Letty was his objective point. As for Letty, she was a little amused
and a little annoyed and a little frightened at the attentions of her
elderly admirer. She did not know in the least how to treat him--and he
had so much acuteness and finesse, and subtlety of all sorts, that he
had the distinct advantage of her in spite of her native mother wit.
All her skill was in managing young men--a youngish old man was a type
she had never come across before--as, indeed, Mr. Romaine was, strictly
speaking, _sui generis_. He was never persistent--he paid short and
very entertaining visits. He made no bones of letting Miss Jemima see
that he regarded her as at least thirty years older than himself. Men
hug the fond delusion that they never grow old--women live in dread of
it--and men are the wiser.

Ethel Maywood, though, was cruelly disappointed. She thought Mr.
Romaine was in love with Letty, and in spite of that vehement protest
Letty had made at their very first meeting, she did not for one instant
believe that Letty would refuse so much money. For Ethel’s part, she
sincerely respected and admired Mr. Romaine; she had got used to his
peculiarities, and had fully made up her mind to be a good wife to him
if Fate should be so kind as to give her a chance. And now, it was too
exasperating that Letty, whom she firmly believed could have either
Farebrother or Sir Archy, should rob her of her one opportunity. It
turned out though that Miss Maywood was mistaken, and Letty did not by
any means enjoy the monopoly with which she was credited.

Chessingham, in consequence of the liberal salary paid him by Mr.
Romaine, had agreed to remain with him by the year--and, of course, Mr.
Romaine had nothing to do with Chessingham’s womankind, who elected to
stay, to which Mr. Romaine very willingly agreed. Still, the chance of
Miss Maywood being some day Mrs. Romaine was not without its effect
upon both the young doctor and his pretty wife. But shortly after their
arrival at Shrewsbury, they all became convinced that this hope was
vain.

One stormy November day, when they had been in Virginia about a
fortnight, Mr. Romaine shut himself up in the library as he usually
did, and there he remained nearly all day, writing busily. It was too
disagreeable for him to go over to Corbin Hall, which he had done
with uncommon frequency. In fact, every time he went out to drive or
ride he either said or hinted that he was going over there--but he
did not always go. Mr. Romaine, who could pay like a prince for other
people, and who treated the Chessinghams magnificently as regards
money, delighted in sticking pins in the people he benefited--and it
must be acknowledged that much of his attention to Letty Corbin came
from a malicious pleasure he took in teasing Miss Maywood. After these
announcements as to where he was going, Mr. Romaine would go off,
generally on horseback, his back looking very young and trim, while his
face looked white and old and bloodless; but as often as not he turned
his horse’s head away from Corbin Hall as soon as he was out of sight
of his own windows. He would grin sardonically at the injured air Ethel
would wear upon these occasions.

But on this day he saw no one, and went nowhere. About five o’clock,
when dusk had fallen, a message came. Mr. Romaine desired his
compliments to Miss Maywood and Mr. Chessingham, and would they come to
the library.

The message surprised them both--nevertheless they went with alacrity.
Mr. Romaine was walking up and down the luxurious room with a
peculiarly cheerful smile, and his black eyes glowing. A single large
sheet of paper, closely written, lay on the library table.

“Thank you for coming,” he said, in his sweetest tones to Ethel. “I
will detain you but a moment. I have been engaged in what is generally
a lugubrious performance--making my will. It is now done, and I desire
you and Chessingham to witness it.”

It gave a slight shock to both of them. Chessingham had always found
Mr. Romaine firmly wedded to the idea that, although he was full of
diseases, he would never die. He made plans extending onward for
twenty, thirty, and even forty years, and although he was decidedly
a valetudinarian, he indicated the utmost contempt for his alleged
ailments when it came to a serious question. Miss Maywood felt that
all her hopes were dashed to the ground. A man who is thinking about
getting married does not make his will before that event. She paled a
little, but being a philosophic girl, and not being in love with Mr.
Romaine, she maintained her composure fairly well. “I wish to read it
to you,” said he, and then, placing a chair for Ethel, and toying with
his _pince-nez_, he continued, with a smile:

“It may astonish you--wills generally do surprise people. But, after
all, mine will be found not so extraordinary. I make a few bequests,
and then I--make--Miss--Letty--Corbin--my--residuary--legatee.”

Mr. Romaine said this very slowly, so as not to miss its dramatic
effect. He achieved all he wanted. Ethel flushed violently, and fell
back in her chair. Chessingham half rose and sat down again. None
of this was lost on Mr. Romaine, who could not wholly conceal his
enjoyment of it. He began, in his clear, well-modulated voice, to read
the will. It was just as he said. He gave a thousand dollars here, and
a thousand dollars there, he left Chessingham five hundred dollars to
buy a memento, and then Letty Corbin was to have the rest.

“And now,” said he, gracefully handing a pen to Miss Maywood, “will you
kindly attest it?”

In the midst of Chessingham’s natural disappointment and disgust,
he could scarcely refrain from laughing. The whole thing was so
characteristic of Mr. Romaine. Ethel felt like flinging the pen in his
face, but she was obliged to sign her name, biting her lips as she did
so, with vexation. Chessingham’s signature followed. Then both of them
went out, leaving Mr. Romaine apparently in a very jovial humor.

As soon as they reached their own sitting-room, where Mrs. Chessingham
was waiting, devoured with curiosity, Ethel dissolved into tears of
anger and disappointment.

“He has made a fool of me,” she sobbed, to Chessingham’s attempted
consolation.

“Who is it that Mr. Romaine can’t make a fool of, when he tries?” asked
Chessingham, grimly.

“I think,” said Mrs. Chessingham, who had much sound sense, “Mr.
Romaine acts the fool himself. He has a plenty of money, fairly good
health in spite of his imagination to the contrary, and a great deal
to make him happy. Instead of that, he is about as dissatisfied an old
creature as I ever knew.”

“Right,” answered Chessingham, “and, Ethel, I am not at all sure that
you haven’t made a lucky miss.”

“That may be,” said Ethel, drying her eyes, “but all the same,
everybody expected him to offer himself to me. When we left England it
was considered, you remember, by all the people we knew, that it was as
good as an engagement. And now--to have to go back--” here Ethel could
say no more.

“And Letty Corbin--who, I believe, really dislikes him,” said Mrs.
Chessingham.

“Don’t be too sure about Letty,” remarked Chessingham. “It’s just as
likely as not that he will make another will to-morrow. All this may
be simply to enliven the dulness of the country, and to give Ethel
warning that she is wasting her time. You notice, he exacted no promise
of us--he probably wants us to tell this at Corbin Hall. _I_ sha’n’t
oblige him, for one.”

“Nor I,” added Ethel. “And one thing is certain, I shall go back to
England. I am missing all my winter visits by staying here, and I may
not be able to make a good arrangement for the season in town--so I
think I shall go.”

Both Chessingham and his wife thought this a judicious thing. Ethel was
twenty-seven and had no time to lose, and she was clearly wasting it
buried in the country--or rather in the wilderness, as she considered
it. And, besides, the Chessinghams were fully convinced that Mr.
Romaine would not stay long at Shrewsbury. It was a mere freak in the
beginning, and they already detected signs of boredom in him.

Within a few days Chessingham mentioned to him casually that Miss
Maywood would return to England at the first convenient opportunity.
Mr. Romaine received the news with a sardonic grin and many expressions
of civil regret.

“My dear Miss Maywood,” he said, the next time he ran across her,
“you cannot imagine what a gap your absence will make to me. However,
since your decision is made, all I can do will be to provide as far as
possible for your comfort during your journey back to England. I will
even let Chessingham off to take you to New York, and every day, while
you are at sea, I will arrange that you shall have some reminder of
those that you have left behind in Virginia.”

“Thank you,” stiffly responded the practical Ethel, who thought that
Mr. Romaine had behaved like a brute.

The news of her impending departure was conveyed to Letty one afternoon
when the two girls were sitting comfortably over Letty’s bed-room
fire--for although there was still no love lost between them, they
found no difficulty in maintaining a feminine _entente cordiale_. Letty
was surprised and said so.

“Of course,” said Ethel, who could not banish her injuries from her
mind, “it will be embarrassing to go back. Some malicious people will
say that Mr. Romaine has jilted me--but there is not a word of truth in
it.”

“Certainly not,” cried Letty, energetically. “Who on earth would
believe that you would marry that old--pachyderm?” Letty hunted around
in her mind for an epithet to suit Mr. Romaine, but could think of
nothing better than the one she used.

“I’m afraid plenty of people will believe it,” answered Ethel, with a
faint smile--and then the womanish incapacity to keep a secret that
is not bound by a promise made her tell Letty the very thing she had
declared she would not tell her.

“It sounds rather ungrateful of you to talk that way, for Mr. Romaine
intends conferring a very great benefit--the greatest benefit--on you.”

“What do you mean?” asked the surprised Letty.

“Only this. A week or two ago he called Reggie and me into the library
one afternoon, and there lay his will on the library table--and he
asked us to act as witnesses and read us the will--and you are--”

Ethel paused a moment. Letty was leaning forward deeply interested.

“Did he leave me money for a pair of pearl bracelets?” she cried.

“No. He made you his residuary legatee, after giving away a few
thousand dollars to other people,” answered Ethel.

Letty was quick of wit, and took in at once what Ethel meant. Mr.
Romaine had left her his fortune.

She grew a little pale and lay back in her chair. Her first feelings
were full of contradictions, as her emotions always were where Mr.
Romaine was concerned. Money was a delightful thing--she had found that
out--but Mr. Romaine’s money! And sometimes she hated Mr. Romaine, and
laughed at him behind his back--and now she would have to be very
attentive to him, and to let him see that she felt her obligations to
him. While this was passing through her mind in a chaotic way, she
suddenly remembered to ask:

“Did Mr. Romaine authorize you to tell me this?”

“Not exactly,” said Ethel. “But he said nothing about keeping it
secret, and Reggie says he is convinced Mr. Romaine wishes us to
mention it--for he is a very secretive man usually, and never omits any
precaution when he wishes a thing kept quiet.”

Letty remained strangely still and silent. She was staggered by what
Ethel told her, and thoroughly puzzled--and she had a vague feeling
that Mr. Romaine had taken an unwarrantable liberty with her.

“I think,” said Ethel, “that he wants to marry you, and he imagines
this will incline you to him.”

“In that case,” replied Letty, rising with dignity, “Mr. Romaine makes
a very great mistake. Nothing on earth would induce me to marry him.”

Ethel did not stay long after this, and Letty was left alone.

Sir Archy and Farebrother had not yet returned from their day’s sport.
Letty knew that her grandfather would be likely to be sitting alone in
the library, and the impulse to tell him this strange and not wholly
pleasing thing took hold of her. She ran down-stairs rapidly, opened
the door, and there, in the dusky afternoon, dozing before the fire,
was the Colonel, with a volume of Goldsmith open upon his knee.

Letty went up to him and touched him gently.

“Grandpapa,” she said.

“I was not asleep, my dear,” answered the Colonel, very promptly,
without waiting for the accusation.

“If you were,” said Letty, with nervous audacity, “what I’m about to
tell you will wake you up.”

She hesitated for a moment, in order to convey the news in a guarded
and appropriate manner--and then, suddenly burst out with--

“Grandpapa--Mr. Romaine has made his will and left me nearly all his
money.”

The Colonel fairly jumped from his chair. He thought Letty had lost her
mind.

“He has, indeed,” she continued, in a half-stifled, half-laughing
voice. “He read his will to Ethel Maywood and Mr. Chessingham, and got
them to sign it as witnesses.”

The Colonel could do nothing but gasp for a few moments. Then he lapsed
into an amazed silence--his shaggy brows drawn together, and his
deep-set eyes fixed on Letty’s agitated face.

“And there is something else Ethel Maywood said,” kept on Letty, with
her face growing scarlet, “something that made me very angry with Mr.
Romaine, and I don’t like him, anyhow,” she said.

“Go on,” commanded the Colonel, in a tragic basso.

“She thinks--that--that--Mr. Romaine wants to m-m-marry me--and he
fancies this will win me over,” said Letty, faintly.

“The old ass!” bawled the Colonel, for once roused out of his placid
dignity. “Excuse me, my love, but this is simply too preposterous! When
you first spoke, I assure you, I was alarmed--I was actually alarmed--I
thought you did not know what you were saying. But, on reflection,
knowing, as I do, Romaine’s perverse and peculiar character, I can
wholly believe what you tell me.”

The Colonel paused a moment, and then the same idea that occurred to
Chessingham came to him.

“And the making of a will doesn’t mean the enjoyment of the property,
my love. Romaine may have a passion for making wills--some rich men
have--and this may be one of a dozen he may make.”

Letty said nothing. Money was the greatest good fortune in the eyes
of the world--but the scheme devised for her eventual enrichment had
serious drawbacks. Mr. Romaine might live for twenty years--even
Mr. Chessingham himself did not know precisely what were the old
gentleman’s real maladies, and what were his imaginary ones--and that
would mean twenty years of subservience on her part toward a man for
whom she now felt a positive repulsion. She caught herself wishing that
Mr. Romaine would die soon--and was frightened and ashamed of herself.
And now Mr. Romaine’s relatives would hate her!

“All of the Romaine people will hate me,” she said, with pale lips,
to the Colonel--they were both standing up now before the fire, and
although the ruddy blaze made the room quite light, it was dark
outside.

“Yes,” answered the Colonel, gloomily, “and they may claim undue
influence on your part, and then there may be a lawsuit and the devil
to pay generally. Excuse my language, my dear.”

The Colonel was completely shaken out of his usual composure, and
expressed himself in what he was wont to call--“the vulgar--the
excessively vulgar tongue.” “I foresee a peck of trouble ahead,” he
continued.

“One thing is certain,” said Letty, raising her eyes, “I feel that I
hate Mr. Romaine--and with that feeling, I ought not in any event to
take his money. And if, as you say, he is merely amusing himself at my
expense, and trying to annoy his family, and--and--Ethel Maywood and
the Chessinghams, I hate him worse than ever.”

“If such is your feeling, you undoubtedly should protest against
Romaine’s action.”

Then there was a commotion in the hall. Farebrother and Sir Archy and
Tom Battercake had got home, and there was a rattle of guns on the
rack, and Tom Battercake was guffawing over the contents of the game
bags.

Both Letty and the Colonel had plenty of self-possession, and no one
during the evening would have suspected that anything out of the common
had occurred. But Letty went to bed early and lay awake half the night,
while her dislike for Mr. Romaine grew like Jonah’s gourd.

Next morning, as soon as the coast was clear, the Colonel sent for
Letty into the library.

“I want to say to you, my love,” he began at once, “that I believe
this thing that Romaine has done is not done in good faith. He is the
sort of man to leave his property to perpetuate his name in a library
or something of that kind. And, moreover, if he should even be in
good faith, his relations are not the people to let so much money go
to a comparative stranger without a struggle. They have been looking
to him now, for two generations, to set them on their feet, and they
will be infuriated with you. And they will have just cause--for, after
reflection, I am convinced that grave injustice will be done if this
money comes to you. Then, your personal dislike--”

“Personal dislike! say personal hatred; for I assure you I have felt
something more than mere dislike ever since I heard of this. Queer,
isn’t it?”

“Not at all,” replied the Colonel, with the ghost of a smile. “Your
amiable sex is subject to aberrations of that description. However, I
think, on the whole, that nothing but trouble will result if this plan
of Romaine’s is carried out--and I would be glad to see it prevented.”

The Colonel had no more idea of the practical value of money than a
baby. Nor had Letty much more--and besides, she had youth and beauty
and _esprit_, and so had managed to get on very well so far without a
fortune. The Colonel’s views decided her.

“Then, grandpapa, the best thing to do seems to me to be the most
direct and straightforward thing. Write to Mr. Romaine and tell him
frankly what we have heard, and say that I prefer not to incur the
obligation he would lay upon me.”

“Precisely what I desired you to say,” replied the Colonel, highly
gratified.

It required both of them to compose the letter to Mr. Romaine, but at
last it was finished, copied off in the Colonel’s best clerk-like hand
with a quill pen, and sealed with his large and flamboyant seal. This
was the letter:

                                          CORBIN HALL, November 21, 18--

  MY DEAR ROMAINE:

  Circumstances of a peculiar character necessitate this communication
  on my part, and I am constrained to approach you in regard to a
  subject on which otherwise I would observe the most punctilious
  reticence. This refers to certain testamentary intentions on your
  part concerning my granddaughter, which she and I have heard
  through direct and responsible sources. Many reasons influence my
  granddaughter in desiring me to say to you, that with the keenest
  sense of the good will on your part toward her, and with assurances
  of the most profound consideration, she feels compelled to decline
  absolutely the measures you have devised for her benefit. Of these
  many reasons, I will give only one, but that, my dear Romaine,
  will be conclusive. It would be a very flagrant wrong, I conceive,
  to those of your own blood, who might justly expect to be the
  beneficiaries of your bounty, to find themselves passed over in favor
  of one who has not the slightest claim of any kind upon you. This
  would place my granddaughter in a most painful position, and might
  result in legal complications extremely embarrassing to a delicate
  minded person of the gentler sex. She begs, therefore, through this
  medium, that you will change your kind intentions toward her and
  not bestow upon her that to which she apprehends others are better
  entitled than herself. With renewed assurances of respect and regard,
  believe me to be, my dear Romaine,

                                     Your friend and well-wisher,

                                                       ARCHIBALD CORBIN.

This, which both the Colonel and Letty thought a grand composition, was
despatched to Shrewsbury by Tom Battercake. Tom returned within an hour
or two, with a missive. The Colonel sent for Letty to the library to
read it. It was written with a fine pointed pen, upon delicately tinted
paper with a handsome crest. It ran thus:

                                                                Nov. 21.

  DEAR CORBIN:

  You always were the most impractical man about money I ever knew. I
  shall do as I please with my own.

                                            Yours truly,

                                                          RICH. ROMAINE.

“Most curt and unhandsome,” cried the Colonel, flushing angrily. “What
does he take me for? I shall at once express my sentiments in writing
regarding this extraordinary communication from Romaine.”

“No, grandpapa,” cried Letty, who agreed with the Colonel in thinking
Mr. Romaine’s letter extremely impertinent, “I’ll answer it.”

Once in a while Letty had her way, and this was one of the occasions.
She sat down at the library table, and, with the angry blood mantling
her face, dashed off the following to Mr. Romaine.

“Just listen to this, if you please,” she cried, flourishing her pen in
dangerous proximity to the Colonel’s nose. “I think Mr. Romaine will
find that he has got a Roland for his Oliver.”

Then, in a melodramatic voice, she read:

  MY DEAR MR. ROMAINE:

  As you say, you have a right to do as you please with your own. This
  personal liberty pertaining to you likewise pertains to me--and
  I decline positively to be benefited against my will. I will not
  have your money. Pardon me if I have copied your own brevity and
  positiveness in settling this question. I am,

                                               Very truly yours,

                                                           LETTY CORBIN.

The Colonel chuckled over this letter; nevertheless it was against his
code to send it, but Letty was firm, and Tom Battercake was despatched
for the second time that day to Shrewsbury, with an important
communication.

Letty was radiant with triumph. It was no mean victory to achieve over
Mr. Romaine.

“And if he reads between the lines he will see that he won’t be here
with those sharp black eyes and that cackling laugh of his when it
comes to disposing of his property,” she gleefully remarked to the
Colonel.

But her triumph only lasted until Tom Battercake’s return. He brought
the following letter from Mr. Romaine:

  MY DEAR MISS CORBIN:

  Your spirited and delightful letter has just been received. Permit
  me to say that I have been so charmed with your disinterestedness
  and freedom from that love of money which is the cancer of our age,
  that it only determines me the more to allow my well-considered will
  to stand. I need only make the alteration of leaving the property in
  trust for you, so that it will be out of your power to dispose of
  the principal, even to give it to my relatives--whom I particularly
  do not desire to have it. All I ask is that you continue to me the
  kindness you have always shown me. My ailments become daily more
  complicated and acute, but still I possess great vitality, and I
  would be deceiving you if I gave you to understand that you would not
  have long to wait for your inheritance. But whether you treat me well
  or ill, it and myself are both

                                         Forever yours,

                                                          RICH. ROMAINE.

At the conclusion of the reading of this letter Letty sat down and
cried as if her heart would break, from pure spite and chagrin at Mr.
Romaine’s “outrageous behavior,” as she and the Colonel agreed in
calling it.

VIII

Mr. Romaine had certainly succeeded perfectly in a pastime dear to
his heart--setting everybody by the ears. Colonel Corbin was deeply
offended with him, and made no secret of it.

“For, if the time should come,” he said, with dignity, to Letty and
Miss Jemima, “that Romaine’s relations may accuse us of playing upon
Romaine and getting his money out of him, I desire to be able to prove
that we were not on terms with him. Therefore, I shall only treat him
with the merest civility. I shall certainly not go to Shrewsbury, and I
trust he will not come to Corbin Hall.”

Futile hope! Mr. Romaine came twice as often as he had ever done
before, and the Colonel and Letty found it practically impossible
to freeze him out. Meanwhile, another complication came upon Letty,
who seemed destined to suffer all sorts of pains and penalties for
what are commonly counted the good things of life. She had privately
determined that it would take all her diplomatic powers to avert an
offer from both Sir Archy and Farebrother--for there was something
of “the fierceness of maidenhood” about her--and she was not yet
beyond the secret liking stage with Farebrother, whom she infinitely
preferred. But it dawned upon her gradually that Farebrother himself
was an adept in the art of walking the tight rope of flirtation. He
would talk to Letty in the rainy days, when he could not get out of
doors, by the hour, in such a way that Letty’s heart would be in her
mouth for fear the inevitable offer would come in spite of her. But
after a while she discovered that Farebrother could look down without
flinching from the dizzy height of sentimental badinage, and then
quietly walk away. In a little while these tactics of his bore fruit.
Letty, from being very much afraid that he would propose, began to be
very much piqued that he did not propose. Kindness was then lavished
upon him--sweet looks on the sly, and every encouragement was given
him to make a fool of himself, in order that Letty might be revenged
on him. But Farebrother declined to accept the invitation. He was
shrewd enough to see that Letty’s design in leading him on was simply
to throw him over--and he had no intention to be slaughtered to make a
coquette’s holiday. And he knew besides that Letty had a heart--that
she was a perfect specimen of the Southern type, which coquettes
with the whole world, only to make the most absolute surrender to
one man--and that her heart was not to be won by letting her make a
football of his.

The two men watched each other stealthily, but Farebrother, in
quickness of resource, had much the advantage of Sir Archy. And he was
clear sighted enough to see that there was something wrong between
the Corbins and Mr. Romaine. All at once the Colonel and Letty ceased
going to Shrewsbury, and once when he suggested casually to Letty that
they ride over to see the Chessinghams and Miss Maywood, the Colonel
interfered, with a flush upon his wrinkled face.

“I would prefer, my dear Farebrother,” he said, “that my granddaughter
should not go to Shrewsbury at present. Rest assured that my reason is
a good one--else I would not commit so grave a solecism toward a guest
in my house as to object to her going anywhere with you.”

Farebrother was completely puzzled--the more so that the objection was
all on the Colonel’s side--for Mr. Romaine had been at Corbin Hall the
day before alone, and the day before that with Chessingham’s womankind.
He had noticed some slight constraint on Letty’s part, but the Colonel
had been absent both times. He said no more about going to Shrewsbury,
and privately resolved to go there no more except for a farewell
visit. This gave him distinctly the advantage over Sir Archy, whose
long intimacy and real friendship with Chessingham made it natural and
inevitable that he should go often to Shrewsbury.

Letty, however, was no more capable of keeping an unpledged secret than
Ethel Maywood, and one afternoon, walking through the pine woods with
Farebrother, the whole story about Mr. Romaine and his will came out.

Farebrother sat down on a fallen log and shouted with laughter.

“The old imp!” he cried, and laughed the more.

“Of course,” said Letty, laughing in spite of herself, “I really don’t
believe it is in earnest. Grandpapa says people who make their wills so
openly commonly have a passion for making wills, and he has no doubt
Mr. Romaine is merely doing this for some present object.”

“Certainly,” cried Farebrother, laughing still. “It’s his own peculiar
Romainesque way of giving Miss Maywood warning. Pray pardon me for
hinting such a thing, but Miss Maywood herself has acted with such
delicious candor about the whole matter that it’s absurd to pretend
ignorance. Now what a devilish revenge the old Mephistopheles took!”

Farebrother seemed so carried away by his enjoyment of Mr. Romaine’s
tactics in giving Miss Maywood the slip that Letty was quite offended
with him for his lack of interest in her side of the case. But at
last he condescended to be serious. It was a soft and lovely autumn
afternoon, the red sun slanting upon the straggling woods, and making
golden vistas through the trees. It was hushed and still. It had
rained that day, and the air was filled with the aromatic odor of
the dead, wet leaves. Farebrother had remained seated on the log to
have his laugh out, but Letty had got up and was standing over him
in an indignant attitude, one hand thrust in the pocket of her natty
jacket, while with the other she grasped firmly the brim of her large
black hat, under which her eyes shone with a peculiar, soft splendor.
Farebrother thought then that he had never seen her pale, piquant
beauty to greater advantage.

“But if you could for one moment take your mind off Miss Maywood, and
consider my grievances,” said she, tartly. “Can you imagine anything
more odious? Here is Mr. Romaine pretending--for I don’t believe it’s
anything but that he is trying to make a fool of me--pretending, I
say, that he means to leave me a fortune some day--and he is just
perverse enough to ignore any objection I may make, not only to
his plans, but to himself--for I assure you, I really dislike him,
although I pity him, too. Then suppose he dies and does leave me the
money! You never heard of such tribes of poor relations as he has, in
your life, and all of them, as grandpapa says, have counted on Mr.
Romaine’s money for forty years. He has one niece--as poor as poverty,
with nine--shoeless--hatless--shabby children--who has actually
condescended to beg for help from him--and what do you think she will
say of me when the truth comes out? And there are whole regiments of
nephews--and cousins galore--and the entire family are what grandpapa
calls ‘litigious’--they’d rather go to law than not--oh, I can shut my
eyes and see the way these people will hound me for that money, that
after all should be theirs.”

Farebrother was grave enough now. He rose and went and stood by her.

“Money, my dear Miss Corbin, is like electricity or steam, or any other
great force--it is dangerous when it is unmanageable. However,” he
said, lightly, “as I’ve had to part with some lately, I’ve had to call
up all the old saws against it that I could think of.”

“But I don’t believe you are very sorry about your money.”

“Sorry? Then you don’t know me. I experienced the keenest regret when
I discovered that, according to my father’s will, I came out at the
little end of the horn in the event of disaster, because, as the dear
old gentleman said, I was well able to take care of myself. Of course
I said the handsome thing--when the crash came--especially to Colonel
Corbin, who would have kicked me out of his house if I hadn’t--but
I assure you I didn’t feel in spirits for a whole week after the
financial earthquake.”

Letty looked at him smiling. She was not a bad judge of human nature
and much shrewder than she looked, and she read Farebrother like an
open book--and liked the volume.

“But then, your profession?”

“Oh, yes, my profession. Well, the first thing that cheered my
gloom was when I got a contract for an eight-story granite business
building. I met on the street that very day the fellow I told you of
once--a clever architect, but who has a wife and an army of children
on him, and who always looked at me reproachfully in the old days
when we met--and I had the satisfaction of telling him that it was
work or starvation with me now--and he spoke out the thought I had
read so often in his mind before--‘It’s all right now, but when I
saw you driving those thoroughbreds round the Park, in that imported
drag of yours, and heard of you buying the pick of the pictures at
the exhibition, while I had seven children to bring up and educate
on my earnings, it did seem deuced hard that you should enter
into competition with us poor devils.’ So I reminded him that the
thoroughbreds and the pictures and a few other things were going under
the hammer, and the wretch actually grinned. But I’ll tell you what I
have found out lately--that there’s such a thing as good fellowship in
the world. There isn’t any among rich men. They are all bent on amusing
themselves or being amused. They are so perfectly independent of each
other that there isn’t any room for sentiment--while among poorer men
they are all interdependent. They have to help each other along in
pleasures and work, and that sort of thing--and that’s why it is that
comradeship exists among them as it cannot exist among the rich.”

“I never knew anything about money until that visit to Newport,” said
Letty, candidly. “We had bills--and when the wheat crop was sold it
paid the bills--that is, as far as it would go--for the wheat crop
never was quite as much as we expected, and the bills were always a
great deal more than we expected. But I found the spending of that
money in New York delightful.”

“So did I,” answered Farebrother. “Never enjoyed anything more in my
life. You had more actual, substantial fun in spending that money than
my sisters have out of so many thousands.”

“But I think,” remarked the astute Letty, “that it is more the way we
show it. Your sisters are used to money--”

“That’s it--and so it is as necessary to them as the air we
breathe--but as we breathe air all the time, we are not conscious of
any ecstatic bliss in doing it.”

“Perhaps--but, you see, I am bent on enjoyment, and I am bent on
showing it as well as feeling it.”

“In short, you are a very wise girl,” said Farebrother, smiling, “and
I think it is a pity that you are so determined on never bestowing so
much wisdom and cheerfulness on some man or other.”

“I have never said I wouldn’t.”

“Oh, not in words perhaps, but I imagine a fixed determination on your
part to hold on to your liberty. You may, however, succumb to the
charms of Sir Archy Corbin, of Fox Court.”

Farebrother emphasized the “Sir” and the “Fox Court” in a way that
Letty thought disagreeable--and how dared he talk so coolly of her
marrying Sir Archy, without one single qualifying word of regret? And
just as Farebrother intended, his suggestion did not help her to regard
Sir Archy with any increase of favor.

“There he is now,” cried Farebrother, “shall I make off so as to give
him a chance?”

Letty was so staggered by the novelty and iniquity of Farebrother’s
perfect willingness to give her up to Sir Archy that she could not
recover herself all at once--and the next thing, Sir Archy had tramped
through the underbush to them, looking wonderfully handsome and
stalwart in his knickerbockers and his glengarry pulled over his eyes.

If Letty found that Farebrother was always joking and difficult to
reduce to seriousness, she could find no such fault with Sir Archy. He
was the literal and exact Briton, who took everything _au sérieux_,
and whose humor was of the broad and obvious kind that prevails in the
tight little island. He was as much puzzled by the status of affairs
between Letty and Farebrother as Ethel Maywood was--and could hardly
refrain sometimes from classing Letty as a flirt--a word that meant to
him everything base and dishonorable in womankind--for a flirt, from
his point of view, was a girl with a little money, who led younger
sons and rash young officers and helpless curates to believe that she
could be persuaded to marry one of them, and ended by hooking a mature
baronet, or an elder son, with a good landed property.

Flirtation on the American plan, merely to pass away the time, and
with no ulterior object whatever, was altogether incomprehensible to
him. And Letty’s perfect self-possession! No tell-tale blush, but a
look of the most infantile innocence she wore, when she was caught
in the very act of taking a sentimental walk with a man! The genuine
American girl--not the imitation Anglo-American formed by transatlantic
travel--was a very queer lot, thought Sir Archy, gravely.

“Where have you been?” asked Letty, with an air of authority, which she
alternated with the most charming submissiveness.

“At Shrewsbury,” answered Sir Archy.

“Ah, I know--we all know. There’s a magnet at Shrewsbury.”

Now, to be chaffed about a girl, and particularly a girl like Miss
Maywood--to whom he had undeniably paid certain attentions, was both
novel and unpleasant to Sir Archy, so he only answered stiffly, “I
don’t quite understand your allusion.”

“Why, Ethel Maywood, of course!” cried Letty. “Does anybody suppose
that you would go so often to see that wicked old man at Shrewsbury? or
Mrs. Chessingham and her husband?”

“If you suppose that there is anything more than friendship between
Miss Maywood and myself, you are mistaken--and the suspicion would do
Miss Maywood great injustice,” said Sir Archy, with dignity.

“Oh, if you think it would hurt Miss Maywood to have it supposed that
you are devoted to her--”

“I did not intend to say that,” answered Sir Archy, who was neither
a liar nor a hypocrite, and who knew well enough how baronets with
unencumbered estates are valued matrimonially. “I only meant to state,
most emphatically, that there is nothing whatever between Miss Maywood
and myself--and justice requires--”

“Justice--fudge!” cried Letty, with animation; “who ever heard of
justice between a man and a woman?”

“I have,” answered Sir Archy, sententiously.

“And next, you will be saying that women are bound by the same rules of
behavior as men,” continued Letty, with pretty but vicious emphasis.

Farebrother looked on without taking any part in the scrimmage, and was
infinitely diverted.

“I hardly think I understand you,” said Sir Archy, much puzzled.

“I’ll explain then,” replied Letty. “I mean this; that a man should be
the soul of honor toward a woman--honorable to the point of telling
the most awful stories for her--and always taking the blame, and
never accusing her even if he catches her at the crookedest sort of
things--and giving her all the chicken livers, and the breast of duck,
and always pretending to believe her whether he does or not.”

“And may I ask,” inquired Sir Archy, who took all this for chaff,
without crediting in the least the amount of sincerity Letty felt in
her code, “may I ask what is exacted of a woman in her treatment of
men, as a return for all this?”

“Nothing whatever,” replied Letty, airily; “a man has no rights that a
woman is bound to respect--that is, in this glorious land.”

“It strikes me that your rule would work very one-sidedly.”

“It’s a bad rule that works both ways,” declared Letty, solemnly.

Sir Archy did not believe a word of all this; but Farebrother thought
that Letty had not really over-stated her case very much.

Presently they all turned round and walked home through the purple
twilight. The path led through the woods to the straggling edges of
the young growth of trees on the borders of a pasture, now brown and
bare. A few lean cattle browsed about--the Colonel spent a good deal
of time and money, as his fathers had done before him, in getting the
grass out of his fields, and raising fodder for his stock, instead of
letting the grass grow for them to fatten on--so they were very apt to
be lean for nine months in the year. The path led across the pasture
to the whitewashed fence that enclosed the lawn. A young moon trembled
in the opal sky. As they walked along in Indian file they felt their
feet sinking in the soft, rich earth. The old brick house, with its
clustering great trees, loomed large before them, and a ruddy light
from the library windows shone hospitably. The dogs ran yelping toward
them as they crossed the lawn, old Rattler giving subdued whines of
delight. The thoughts of both Sir Archy and Farebrother, all the way
home, had been how delicious that twilight walk would have been with
Letty, had only the other fellow been out of it.

When they got in the house there were letters--the mail only came twice
a week, and Tom Battercake brought the letters and papers in a calico
bag from the postoffice, eight miles off. Farebrother read his letters
with a scowl. He had meant to stay a few days longer--in fact, he
determined to stay as long as Sir Archy, if he could--but he discovered
that he could not.

“Business,” he said--“I am a working man, you know, and employers and
contractors won’t wait--so I shall have to take the boat to-morrow.”

The Colonel and Miss Jemima were profuse in their regrets--Letty
was civil and Sir Archy was positively gay, when it was fixed that
Farebrother should go the next day. Still, the supper table was
cheerful. Farebrother had a very strong hope that Letty and Sir Archy
never would be able to understand each other enough to enter into a
matrimonial agreement; and then, he was determined to show Miss Letty
that he was by no means heartbroken at the prospect of leaving her.

None of the men who had admired Letty Corbin understood her so well as
Farebrother. The others had paid her court, more or less sincere, but
Farebrother, when he became really interested in her, saw that such
tactics would never do. Instead, he made it his business to pique her,
so artfully that Letty was completely blind to the facts in the case,
and her determination was aroused to conquer this laughing, careless,
stiff-necked admirer, whose conduct to her was very like her conduct to
others. In the first place, the idea that he should come all the way
from New York, upon what seemed likely to turn out a purely platonic
errand, was, from her point of view, a most iniquitous proceeding.
She did not want any man--but she vehemently and innocently demanded
the homage of all. And when a man calmly retained his heart and his
reason, while she invited him to lose both, was in the highest degree
exasperating. But Farebrother absolutely declined presenting his head
to Letty on a charger, even when they were alone in the great cold
drawing-room, under the pretense of hearing some farewell waltzes from
Letty’s fingers, and it seemed almost unavoidable that he should say
something sentimental. He remained obstinately cheerful, and kept it up
until the last.

He had to leave Corbin Hall at five o’clock in the morning, so Letty,
secretly much disgusted with him on account of his callousness, had
to say farewell the night before. The Colonel would be up the next
morning, and Miss Jemima, to give him breakfast, but Letty gave no hint
of any such intention. They had a very jolly evening in the library,
the Colonel being in great feather and telling some of his best stories
while he brewed the family punch bowl full of apple toddy. Miss Jemima,
too, had been induced by the most outrageous flattery on Farebrother’s
part to bring out her guitar, and to sing to them in a thin, sweet
voice some desperately sentimental songs of forty years before--“Oh
No, We Never Mention Her,” “When Stars are in the Quiet Skies,” and
“Ben Bolt.” It was very simple and primitive. The two men of the world
enjoyed it much more than many of the costliest evenings of their
lives, and neither one could remember anything quite like it. The life
at Corbin Hall was as simple and quaint as that of the poorest people
in the world--and yet more refined, more gently bred, than almost any
of the rich people in the world.

At eleven o’clock, Letty rose to go. Farebrother lighted her candle
for her from those on the rickety hall table, and escorted her to the
foot of the stairs. It really did cost him an effort then to play the
cheerfully departing guest. There was no doubt that Letty had been
vastly improved by her touch with the outside world. She had learned
to dress herself, which she did not know before--and she had learned a
charming modesty concerning herself--and she was quite unspoiled. She
still thought Corbin Hall good enough for anybody in the world, and
although she admired satin damask chairs and sofas and art drapery,
she still cherished an affection for hair cloth and dimity curtains.
This ineradicable simplicity of character was what charmed Farebrother
most--she would always retain a delightful freshness, and she never
could become wholly sophisticated.

“I can’t tell you how much I have enjoyed being here,” he said to her,
with hearty sincerity, as he stood at the foot of the stairs, looking
up at Letty. She held the candle a little above her head, and its
yellow circle of flame fell on her pure, pale face--for this young lady
who tried so hard to make fools of men, had the air, the face, and the
soul of a vestal.

Letty nodded her head gravely.

“Of course you have enjoyed yourself. We are such an--ahem--agreeable
family.”

“I should say so! And to get into a community where people won’t even
talk about divorce--and where nobody chases the dollar very hard--and
where the dear Colonel is considered a very practical man--pray excuse
me, Miss Corbin, but I do think your grandfather the noblest old
innocent!”

“I know it. Grandpapa _is_ innocent. So is Aunt Jemima. I am the only
worldling in the family.”

“My dear young friend,--for you must allow me to address you as a
father after that astounding statement,--you are not, and never can be
worldly minded. You are a very clever girl--but it is the wisdom of the
dove, not of the serpent.”

“Very graceful indeed. I thank you. You have a pretty wit when you
choose to exercise it. Now, good-by. I hope so much I shall, some time
or other, see--your sisters--again.”

“Oh, hang my sisters! Don’t you want to see me again?”

“Y-y-yes. A little. A very little.” But while saying this, her hand
softly returned Farebrother’s clasp.

It was still dark next morning, when Letty slipped out of bed and ran
to the window, pulling aside the dimity curtains--she had heard the
old carriage rattling up to the door. The moon had gone down, but the
stars still shone in the blue black sky. Presently Farebrother came
out, accompanied by the Colonel. Letty could hear their voices, and saw
Farebrother take off his hat as he shook the Colonel’s hand. Then he
sprang into the carriage. Tom Battercake gave the restless horses a
cut with a long sapling with all the twigs cut off, and in two minutes
the rig had disappeared around the turn in the lane. Letty crept
back to bed, feeling as if something pleasant had suddenly dropped
out of her life. She determined to go to sleep again, and to sleep
as late as she could. There was no object in going down to breakfast
early--only Sir Archy would be there. Then she began to think about
Farebrother--and her last conscious thought was: “A man so hard to get
must be worth having.”

IX

Meanwhile, a period of convulsion was at hand for the happy family
at Shrewsbury. As soon as it was decided that Miss Maywood was to
return to England, a number of obstacles arose, as if by magic, to her
departure--and they were all inspired by Mr. Romaine. As she was to
cross alone he declared that she must do it only under the charge of a
certain captain--and when inquiries were made at the steamship office
in New York, it turned out that this particular captain had a leave of
absence on account of ill health, and would not command his ship again
until after Christmas. Mr. Romaine proposed to wait for this event,
if it did not occur until midsummer. Then some acquaintances were
discovered who intended sailing almost immediately, but Mr. Romaine
suddenly grew very ailing, and could not part with Mr. Chessingham to
take his sister-in-law to New York. Besides he found every imaginable
fault with the proposed traveling companions, and the Chessinghams
and Ethel felt that, after enjoying Mr. Romaine’s hospitality for so
long, they ought to defer to him as regarded the impending departure.
Therefore, although Miss Maywood had undoubtedly got her congé from
Mr. Romaine, she was still under his roof well on in December, and it
looked as if he would succeed in doing to her what Letty complained of
in her own case--making a fool of her. Ethel was really very anxious to
leave; but this reluctance to give her up on the part of her elderly
and eccentric friend made her wonder sometimes whether, after all, Mr.
Romaine would let her return to England without him. He openly declared
that he was tired of Virginia and meant to take a house in London for
the season; and he actually engaged, by correspondence, a charming
house at Prince’s Gate, from the first of April. Ethel felt that it
would be flying in the face of Providence to insist upon going, as long
as there was a chance of her presiding over the house in Prince’s Gate.
And the liberty and spending-money enjoyed by American women seemed
daily more pleasing to her. Whatever could be said against Mr. Romaine,
his worst enemy could not charge him with meanness. He gave with a
princely generosity that made Ethel--who thought that nobody got more
than three per cent. interest on money--think he was worth millions.
Sir Archy had gone away from Corbin Hall a few days after Farebrother
left, but was to return after Christmas; but Ethel put Sir Archy out of
her mind altogether--she was eminently reasonable, and never counted
upon the vaguely brilliant.

The beginning of more serious upheavals was the announcement, one
day, from Bridge, Mr. Romaine’s own man, and Dodson, who was also Mr.
Romaine’s man, but waited on Mr. Chessingham, that they desired to
leave at the end of the month; and Carroll, the ladies’ maid, gave
simultaneous warning.

“I ’ave been, sir, with Mr. Romaine for sixteen year, and I ’ave put
hup with ’im, and I could put hup with ’im for sixteen year more; but
this stoopid country and the willainous blacks is too much for me,”
Bridge announced to Chessingham, with an injured air. Dodson followed
suit, and Carroll tearfully explained that she ’ad been in mortial
terror ever since she first knew the blacks, for fear they would kill
and eat her.

Chessingham was secretly much delighted with this, and confided his
feelings to his wife and Ethel.

“It will take the old curmudgeon back to London quicker than anything
on earth that could have been devised,” he said. “He can’t get on
without Bridge--nobody else, I’m told, ever stayed with him more than
three months--and he’ll be forced to quit.”

In the library a characteristic interview was taking place between
Bridge and his master. Bridge, feeling like a felon, announced his
determination to leave.

“That’s quite satisfactory,” remarked Mr. Romaine, raising his black
eyes from his book. “I have been thinking for some time that I needed
a younger and more active man. I do not like men of any sort when they
become antiquated.”

Bridge opened his mouth to speak, but dared not. He was at least twenty
years younger than Mr. Romaine, and there he was reproached with his
age!

However, some faint stirring of the heart toward the man he had served
so long, and who had given him some kicks, but a good many ha’pence,
too, made him say hesitatingly:

“Wot’s troublin’ me, sir, is how is you goin’ to be hattended to when
you’re hill; and how is you to get shaved, sir?”

“As to my attendance when I am ill, that is a trifle; and shaving will
be unnecessary, as I have intended for some time past to turn out a
full beard,” promptly responded Mr. Romaine. “Now you may go. When you
are ready to leave come to me and I will give you a check.”

The idea of Mr. Romaine in a full beard drove Bridge immediately
into the pantry, where he confided the news to Dodson, and they both
haw-hawed in company.

Nevertheless, the loss of his man, who knew some secrets about his
health, was a very serious one to Mr. Romaine. Also, he had never
shaved or dressed himself in his life, and to him immaculateness of
attire was a necessity. He turned the ridiculous and embarrassing
question over in his mind--how was he to get shaved?--until it nearly
drove him to asking Bridge to reconsider his decision. But before
doing that, he went over to Corbin Hall one day, where a new solution
of the difficulty presented itself.

It was a bright, wintry day in December when he was ushered into the
shabby library, where sat the Colonel. Now, although none of the family
from Corbin Hall had darkened the doors of Shrewsbury for a month past,
Mr. Romaine had calmly ignored this, and had treated the Colonel’s
studied standoffishness with the most exasperating nonchalance. Colonel
Corbin could not be actively rude to any one to have saved his own
life, and the extent of his resentment was shown merely in not visiting
Mr. Romaine, and receiving him with a stiffness that he found much more
difficult to maintain than Mr. Romaine did to endure. The struggle
between the Colonel’s natural and sonorous urbanity toward a guest
and his grave displeasure with Mr. Romaine was desperate; and Mr.
Romaine, seeing it with half an eye, enjoyed it hugely. The idea of
taking Colonel Corbin seriously was excessively ludicrous to him; and
the Colonel’s expectation of being taken seriously on all occasions he
thought the most diverting thing in the world.

“How d’ye do, Corbin?” said Mr. Romaine, entering with a very jaunty
air.

“Good-day, Mr. Romaine,” answered the Colonel, sternly--and then
suddenly and unexpectedly falling into his habitual tone, he continued,
grandiloquently:

“Has your horse been put up, and may we have the satisfaction of
entertaining you at dinner?”

“Oh, Lord, no,” answered Mr. Romaine, smiling; “I merely came over
to see how you and Miss Corbin were coming on--and to ask you a most
absurd question.”

“My granddaughter is coming on very well. For myself, at my time of
life--and yours, too, I may say--there is but one thing to do--which
constitutes coming on well--and that is to prepare for the ferriage
over the dark river.”

“I do not anticipate needing the services of the ferryman for a good
while yet, and my heirs, I apprehend, will have a long wait for their
inheritance,” snapped Mr. Romaine, who was always put in a bad humor
by any allusion to his age. Colonel Corbin, though, could not stand
Mr. Romaine’s hasty allusion to his heirs, and without saying a word,
turned away, and with a portentous frown began to stare out of the
window.

Mr. Romaine, after a moment or two, cooled down and proceeded to make
amends in his own peculiar fashion for his remark.

“Excuse me, Corbin, but you are so devilish persistent on the subject
of my age that I inadvertently used an illustration I should not have
done had I reflected for one instant whom I was addressing. But I take
it that no gentleman will hold another accountable for a few words
said in heat and under provocation. Remember, ‘an affront handsomely
acknowledged becomes an obligation.’”

“Your acknowledgment, sir, was not what I should call a handsome one.”

“Hang it, Corbin, we can’t quarrel. Here I am in trouble, and I have
come to you, as to my friend of forty years, to help me out.”

It was always hard for the Colonel to maintain his anger, and Mr.
Romaine, when he said this, put on one of his characteristic appealing
looks, and spoke in his sweetest voice, and the Colonel could not help
relaxing a little.

“I think you understand, Romaine, the attitude I feel compelled
to assume toward you; but--but--if you are really in unpleasant
circumstances--”

“Deuced unpleasant, I assure you. I’ve had a man for sixteen
years--never knew him to make a mistake, to be off duty when required,
or to have any serious fault--and now he swears he can’t stand Virginia
any longer, and intends leaving me in the lurch. I can’t stand Virginia
much longer myself, but I don’t want the villain to know that his loss
is actually driving me back to England before my time. But the case is
this--I can’t shave myself. Does that black fellow of yours, David,
shave you?”

“I always shave myself--but David understands the art of shaving, and
has practised it on guests upon various occasions, with much success.”

“I wish you would send him over to Shrewsbury to-morrow. If I can’t get
a man by the time Bridge leaves--which will be next week--I might ride
over here every day, and, with your permission, make use of David’s
services until I can get a capable white man.”

To say “No” was generally impossible to the Colonel, so he weakly
yielded. He would send David over on the next day.

Mr. Romaine did not ask to see Letty, and went off after a short visit,
leaving the Colonel in a very bad humor indeed.

Nevertheless, next day Dad Davy appeared and was introduced into Mr.
Romaine’s bed-room. Dad Davy was not only honored by being thought
capable of shaving Mr. Romaine, but he had brought his implements with
him in a rusty-looking rush basket.

“You may know that I am about to dismiss my man; and I desired to find
out if I could get any sort of a barber, in case there might be delay
in the arrival of a man from New York that my agent will send me,” said
Mr. Romaine. He was sitting in a large chair, with a newspaper in his
hand, and wore a flowered silk dressing-gown, and evidently had not
been shaved.

“Lord, yes, sir; I kin shave er gent’mun,” answered Dad Davy, with
visions of a silver quarter illuminating his imagination. “I done brung
some new shavin’ things wid me, and ef you wuz to let me git de hot
water, I kin trim yo’ face jes’ ez clean ez er b’iled onion.”

“Very well; you may try your hand,” said Mr. Romaine, picking up his
paper. “There is the shaving-table.”

Dad Davy tiptoed over to the shaving-table, and examined suspiciously
the silver toilet articles, the spirit-lamps, scented soaps, etc., etc.
Mr. Romaine, absorbed in his paper, presently heard Dad Davy, in an
apologetic tone, saying:

“Marse Richard, I k’yarn do nuttin’ wid dem gorgeousome things. I got
some mighty good soap here, an’ a new shavin’-bresh; an’ ef you will
jes’ lem me took yo’ razor--”

“All right,” answered Mr. Romaine, deep in his paper.

In a few minutes Dad Davy remarked, “I’se ready,” and Mr. Romaine,
lying back in his chair, shut his eyes, while Dad Davy began the
lathering process. When it was about half done Mr. Romaine began
sniffing suspiciously, but he could not open his mouth. Dad Davy then
began with the razor, and a smoother or more luxurious shave Mr.
Romaine never had in his life. As soon as he could speak, he growled:

“What infernal soap is that you’ve got there?”

“Hi, Marse Richard,” answered Dad Davy, in a surprised voice. “I got
de bes’ kin’ o’ soap fur shavin’. Dis heah is de bes’ sort o’ _sof’_
soap, made outen beef taller an’ ash lye--none o’ your consecrated lye,
but de drippin’s f’um er reg’lar lye gum, full o’ hick’ry ashes--an’ I
brung er go’d full.”

Dad Davy produced a large gourd full of a molasses-like substance,
which he poked under Mr. Romaine’s high-bred nose.

“Good heavens!” yelled Mr. Romaine, jumping up and seizing a towel with
much violence.

“Now, Marse Richard, what you gwine on dat way fur? Sof’ soap is de
bes’ fur shavin’. Didn’t I gin you er easy shave?”

“Yes, you did--but this villainous stuff--where’s your shaving-brush?”

Dad Davy triumphantly produced a shaving-brush made mop-fashion by
tying a mass of cotton threads to a short wooden handle.

“My ole ’oman made dis heah,” said Dad Davy, exhibiting this instrument
with great pride. “She make ’em fur ole Marse--and dis heah is er bran
new one--co’se I war n’ goin’ use no u’rr but a new one fur you, Marse
Richard--”

Mr. Romaine looked in speechless disgust from Dad Davy to the rusty
basket, the “go’d” of soap, and the mop for a shaving-brush. But
without one word he sat down again, and Dad Davy finished the job in
perfect style. Just as he had got through, a tap came at the door, and
Bridge entered--and came very near dropping dead in his tracks at the
paraphernalia of the new barber. Mr. Romaine was saying affably:

“A most satisfactory shave--the best I’ve had for years. I would
prefer, however, my own things next time. Give me the bay rum.”

Dad Davy soused his client with bay rum, and then taking up the gourd,
mop, etc., put them in the basket, and stood, expectant of his quarter.

“Here’s a dollar for you,” said Mr. Romaine; “and say to Colonel Corbin
I am much obliged for your visit to-day--and if I had as good a barber
as you I should not follow his plan of shaving himself.”

Dad Davy, although secretly astounded at the magnificence of the gift,
disdained to show his delight before “po’ white trash,” as he regarded
Bridge, and making a profound bow, took himself and his basket off.

Bridge, however, after the manner of his kind, seeing his master
independent of him, began to reflect that he had a good place and high
wages, and that if Mr. Romaine was a difficult master to serve, all
masters had their faults; and he finally concluded to stay. He went to
Mr. Romaine therefore a few days afterward, and with much shuffling,
hemming, and hawing, declared his willingness to remain, provided
Mr. Romaine went to England in April. At this Mr. Romaine expressed
much surprise, and declared that his return to England was quite
problematical and might never occur. Bridge, though, saw unmistakable
signs that Mr. Romaine’s latest freak had outworn itself, and at last
knuckled down completely--when he was restored to favor. Dodson then
followed the prevailing wind and asked to be reinstated; and Carroll,
the maid, being a diffident maiden of forty, declared she couldn’t
think of traveling alone from Virginia to New York; and so, with
the delays attending Miss Maywood’s departure, it looked as if the
Shrewsbury party would depart intact as when it came.

But a disturbance greater than any that yet occurred was now impending,
and was brought about by the innocent agency of Colonel Corbin.

One evening the Colonel had his two fine horses hitched up to a
two-wheeled chaise which had been resurrected from the loft of the
carriage-house during the emergencies of the war time, and started out
for the river landing for a parcel he expected by the boat.

It was now past Christmas, and the “Christmas snow” had come, whitening
the ground. The Colonel’s position in the chaise was one calculated
to make a nervous person uneasy. The vehicle ran down on the horses’
withers in the most uncomfortable way, and if the traces broke--and
they had several breaks in them, mended with twine--the Colonel would
be under the horses’ hind feet before he knew it. But Colonel Corbin
did not know what it was to be afraid of man or beast, and sat back
composedly in the chaise, bracing his feet against the low dashboard,
while the horses dashed along the slushy country road. The snow does
not last in Eastern Virginia, and it only made the road wet and
slippery to the most unsatisfactory degree. But over the fields and
woods it lay soft and unsoiled. The afternoon was gray, and a biting
east wind was blowing.

The Colonel got to the landing in ample time, but it would be dusk
before the great river steamboat would arrive. Meanwhile, he went into
the little waiting-room, with its red-hot stove, and conversed amicably
with the wharfinger, a blacksmith, and two drummers, waiting to take
the boat “up the bay.” It was almost dark when a long, shrill whistle
resounded, and everybody jumped up, saying, “The boat!” A truck loaded
with boxes and freight of all sorts, and the drummers’ trunks, and
drawn by a patient mule, was started down the tramway on the wharf that
extended nearly four hundred yards into the river. The Colonel, like
most country gentlemen, liked to see what was to be seen, and walked
out on the wharf to watch the exciting spectacle of the boat making her
landing.

The sky had darkened still more, and it looked as if more snow were
coming. The great, broad salt river, with its fierce tides and foaming
like the ocean that it was so near, was quite black, except for the
phosphorescent glare left in the steamer’s wake as she plowed her
way along, looking like a gigantic illuminated lantern with lights
blazing from one end of her to the other. At intervals her long, hoarse
whistle screamed over the waters, and presently, with much noise
and churning, she bumped against the wharf and was made fast. Her
gang-plank was thrown out, and a few passengers in the humbler walks
of life stepped off; but, in a moment, the captain himself appeared,
escorting a woman in a long fur cloak. The light from a lantern on
the wharf fell directly upon her, and as soon as the Colonel saw her,
he understood why she should have the captain’s escort. She was about
forty, apparently, and her abundant dark hair was slightly streaked
with gray. But there was not a line or a wrinkle in her clear, pale
face, and her eyes had the beauty of a girl of fifteen. There was
something peculiarly elegant in her whole air--the long seal-skin
mantle that enveloped her, the close black bonnet that she wore, her
immaculate gloves and shoes--Colonel Corbin at once recognized in her a
metropolitan.

She remained talking with the captain for a few moments, until he was
obliged to leave. It took only a short while to discharge the small
amount of freight, and in five minutes the boat had lurched off, and
the noise of her churning wheels and the myriad lights from her saloons
were melting in the blackness where the river and night sky blent
together.

The stranger looked around her with calm self-possession, and seemed
surprised at the loneliness of the landscape and the deserted look of
things around the little waiting-room and freight-house at the end of
the wharf. Colonel Corbin, imagining her the unexpectedly arrived guest
of some one in the county, advanced with a profound bow, and taking off
his hat in the cutting blast, said:

“Madam, permit me to say that you seem to be a stranger and to have
no one to meet you. I am Colonel Corbin, and I should esteem it a
privilege to be of assistance to you.”

“Thank you,” she answered, turning to him and speaking with a very
French accent, “I did not expect any one to meet me, but I thought
there would be a town--or a village at least, when I left the steamer.
I am foreign to this country--I am French, but I am accustomed to
traveling.”

“Every word that you say, madam, is another claim upon me. A lady,
and alone in a strange country! Pray command my services. May I ask if
you are a visitor to any of the county families?--for in that event
everything would be very much simplified.”

“Scarcely,” responded the stranger, with the ghost of a smile upon her
handsome face; “but I have traveled many thousand miles to have an
interview with Mr. Richard Romaine. Permit me to introduce myself--I am
Madame de Fonblanque.”

The Colonel’s face was a study as Madame de Fonblanque continued,
calmly: “I should like first to go to a hotel--somewhere--and then I
could arrange to meet Mr. Romaine.”

“But, madam, there is no hotel, except a country tavern at the Court
House, ten miles away. My residence, however, Corbin Hall, is only four
miles from here--and Mr. Romaine’s place, Shrewsbury, is also within
that distance; and if you would accept of my hospitality, and that of
my sister and my granddaughter, I should be most happy. I have here a
chaise and pair, and would feel honored if you would accept of their
service as well as mine.”

Madame de Fonblanque then showed considerable knowledge of human
nature: for she at once agreed to trust the Colonel, although she had
never laid eyes on him before.

“I think,” she said, after a slight pause, “that I shall be compelled
to accept of your kindness as frankly as you offer it. I will say at
once, that as I have come to demand an act of justice from Mr. Romaine,
he may not make any effort toward seeing me--and as he may do me that
act of justice, I must ask you to trust me for that. But the sooner I
see him the better. If, therefore, you would drive me at once to his
château--house--I could in a few moments discern his intentions. The
boat, I understand, passes here daily before the sun rises--and I could
leave to-morrow morning.”

The simplicity and directness of Madame de Fonblanque’s language
prepossessed the Colonel still more in her favor. But at the
proposition to go to Shrewsbury he winced a little. However, there
was no help for it--he had offered to befriend her, and he stood
unflinchingly to his word.

“Then, madam,” said the Colonel, bowing, “it shall be my privilege
to drive you to Shrewsbury, Mr. Romaine’s residence--and from there
to my own place, where my sister and granddaughter will be happy to
entertain you as long as you find it agreeable to remain with us.”

“I thank you a thousand times,” replied Madame de Fonblanque. “I have
never met with greater kindness, and you have the gratitude of a
woman and a stranger, whom you have relieved from a most inconvenient
predicament.”

The Colonel then offered her his arm, and together they traversed the
long wharf in the descending night, while a wild east wind raved about
them and made the black water seethe below them. There was not much
talking in the teeth of such a wind, but when Madame de Fonblanque was
seated in the chaise with the lap-robes tucked around her, and the
horses were making good time along the soggy road, she told all that
was necessary about herself. She was the widow of an army officer, and
since her widowhood had spent much time in traveling. She had come to
this country to see Mr. Romaine on a matter which she frankly declared
was chiefly one of money; and she desired a personal interview with him
before taking legal steps. She had had a maid with her, but the woman,
having found an unexpected opportunity of going back to France, had
basely left her only the day before.

“And so, as I am a soldier’s daughter and a soldier’s widow,” she
said, with a smile, “I thought, ‘What can harm one in this chivalrous
country? I will go alone. I will take enough money with me’--I was
careful not to take too much--‘and I will simply find out the quickest
way to reach Mr. Romaine, and see him; and then I will return to New
York, where I have friends.’”

“A very courageous thing for a lady to do, madam,” replied the Colonel,
gallantly. “But I think you will find, particularly in the State of
Virginia, that a woman’s weakness is her strength. Every Virginia
gentleman is the protector of a defenseless woman.”

Madame de Fonblanque smiled prettily, showing very white teeth. She
did not quite understand the Colonel’s allusion to Virginia gentlemen
especially, but having great tact, she appeared to comprehend it
perfectly.

“But do not think for a moment,” she said, “that I would bestow my
confidence upon all men as I have bestowed it on you. The supreme
honesty of your character was perfectly visible to me the instant you
addressed me. I have seen much of the world, and I am no bad reader of
character, and I trusted you from the moment I saw you.”

The Colonel took off his hat, and bowed so low that the chaise, at
that moment giving a lurch, nearly pitched him head foremost under his
horses’ heels. Madame de Fonblanque uttered a little scream.

“I always was so nervous about horses,” she said; “although both my
father and my husband were in the Lancers, they never could induce me
to ride.”

Then she began asking some questions about Mr. Romaine, which showed
that she had a very clear knowledge of his character.

“And is the English mees there still?” she inquired, with a slight
smile.

“Yes; but I understand that she has been desirous to leave for some
time,” answered the Colonel.

“Mr. Romaine is a very extraordinary man,” continued Madame de
Fonblanque, after a pause. “I have known him for a long time, and I do
not think in all these years I have ever known him to do one thing in
the usual manner.”

“I have known him, madam, many more years than you have--we were
boys together sixty years ago--and I must say your estimate of him is
correct. Yet Romaine is not without his virtues.”

“Quite true,” replied Madame de Fonblanque, composedly. “He can be the
most generous of men--but I do not think he knows what justice is.”

“Precisely--precisely, madam. After Romaine has spoiled a life, or
has used the power of his money most remorselessly, he will then turn
around and do the most generous and princely thing in the world. But I
should not like to be in his power.”

“Nor I,” said Madame de Fonblanque, in a low voice.

“At present,” continued the Colonel, “the relations between us are
somewhat strained. I am much vexed with him, and have shown it. But
Romaine, as you say, being totally unlike any created being, sees fit
to ignore it, and actually rides over and borrows my man David--a
worthy negro, of very inferior intellect, though--to shave him!”

It did not take long to make the four miles to Shrewsbury, and
presently they dashed up to the door of the large, brightly lighted
house, and the Colonel rapped smartly on the door. There was a bell--an
innovation introduced by Mr. Romaine--but Colonel Corbin disdained to
use so modern and unheard-of an appliance.

Dodson opened the door, and a flood of light from the fine
old-fashioned entrance hall poured out into the night. Colonel Corbin,
according to the Virginia custom, walked in, escorting Madame de
Fonblanque, without asking if any one was home--somebody was certain to
be at home and delighted to see visitors.

Dodson was about to usher them politely in the drawing-room, when
Bridge suddenly appeared. To say that his hair stood on end when he
caught sight of Madame de Fonblanque is hardly putting it strong
enough. His jaw dropped, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head. He
recovered himself and ran and seized the knob of the drawing-room door.

“Please,” he said, in a very positive tone, “Mr. Romaine hisn’t at
’ome.”

“How do you know that, sir?” sternly demanded the Colonel, advancing on
Bridge, who still held on to the door-knob.

“Because--because--I _knows_ he ain’t--to--that--’ere--pusson.”

The Colonel, who was tall and strong, caught Bridge by the coat collar,
and, with clenched teeth, shook him up and down as a terrier shakes a
rat.

“You insolent scoundrel,” he said, in a fierce basso, “I have a great
mind to throw you out of the door. Go this instant and tell your master
that Madame de Fonblanque and Colonel Corbin are here.”

Bridge, nearly frightened out of his life, and black in the face, was
glad to escape. He made his way half across the hall to Mr. Romaine’s
study door, and then hesitated. Afraid as he was of the Colonel,
the idea of facing Mr. Romaine with such a message was still more
terrifying. The Colonel helped him to make up his mind by advancing and
giving him a well-directed kick on the shins which nearly threw him
into Mr. Romaine’s arms, as that individual unexpectedly opened the
door.

Then there was a pause.

Madame de Fonblanque had remained a silent spectator of the whole
scene, wearing a look of calm amusement. As soon as Mr. Romaine caught
sight of her, his pale face grew still more ashy, and his inscrutable
black eyes blazed with a still more somber splendor. Colonel Corbin,
quite unmoved by his little rencontre with “that infernal flunkey,” as
he described the worthy Bridge afterward, advanced and said, with his
most magnificent air:

“Allow me, Romaine, to announce a lady with whom I imagine you to have
the honor of a previous acquaintance--Madame de Fonblanque.”

“The devil I have!” replied Mr. Romaine.

X

Colonel Corbin could not kick his friend Romaine as he had done poor
Bridge--but he would have dearly liked to at that moment.

Mr. Romaine, after glaring at Madame de Fonblanque, without the
slightest greeting, turned to the Colonel.

“Corbin,” he said, “you always were and always will be the most
unsophisticated, impractical creature God ever made. The idea of your
taking up with this brazen adventuress and bringing her to my house!”

“Hear me, sir,” responded the Colonel; “if you utter another
disparaging word respecting this lady, I will forget your age and
infirmities, and give you the most genteel walloping you ever had in
your life.”

“It will be the first time you ever forgot my age and infirmities,”
coolly answered Mr. Romaine; and then turning to Madame de Fonblanque,
he said:

“What do you want of me?”

“You know very well what I want of you.”

“You will never get it.”

“I shall try, nevertheless. I wish to see you in private.”

“Madam,” said the Colonel, “if you desire the protection of my
presence, you shall have it. I have not the slightest regard for
this--person--who so maligned you; and you see that physically I am
still worth a good deal.”

“You are worth a good deal in every way,” replied Madame de Fonblanque
warmly. “Still, I will see Mr. Romaine alone; and when the interview is
over I will again throw myself upon your protection.”

Mr. Romaine turned and led the way to his library, Madame de Fonblanque
following him. He closed the door, and stood waiting for her to speak.
He was in the greatest rage of his life, but he did not in the least
lose his self-possession.

“Well?” he said, his face blazing with the intensity of his anger.

“One hundred thousand francs,” responded Madame de Fonblanque, sweetly.

They were standing in the middle of the floor, the soft light of the
fire and of a great lamp on the table falling upon them.

“You have raised your price since we last met.”

“Yes. I reckoned up the interest and added it. Besides, I really think
a woman who was disappointed in being made your wife needs a hundred
thousand francs to console her for your loss. Now, most men would not
be worth more than thirty or forty thousand.”

Madame de Fonblanque spoke quite cheerfully and even gaily. She tapped
her pocket gracefully.

“Here I have those letters of yours. They never leave me--particularly
the one proposing marriage, and the half dozen in which you call me
your dearest Athanaise and reproach me bitterly for not loving you
enough. Just imagine the hurricane of amusement they would cause if
read out in court with proper elocutionary effect.”

Madame de Fonblanque laughed, and Mr. Romaine positively blushed.

“What an infernal, infernal ass I was!”

“Yes, I thought so, too,” responded the pretty and sprightly French
woman--“I have often noticed that people who can make fools of others,
invariably, at some time in their lives, make fools of themselves.”

“I did,” answered Mr. Romaine, sententiously. “But I tell you, once for
all, not a penny will I pay.”

“Ah, my dear M. Romaine, that is not for you to say. These
breach-of-promise cases sometimes turn out very badly for the
gentlemen. I can so easily prove my position, my respectability--the
way you pursued me from London to Brighton, from Brighton to
Folkestone, from Folkestone to Eastbourne--and these invaluable and
delightful letters. It will be a _cause célèbre_--that you may depend
upon. And what a figure you will cut! The New York papers will have a
column a day--the London papers two columns. By the way, I hear you
have leased a fine house at Prince’s Gate for the season. You will have
to give up that lease, my friend--you will not dare to show your face
in London this season, M. Romaine.”

All this time Madame de Fonblanque had been laughing, as if it were a
very good joke; but she now became serious.

“There is a tragic side to it,” she continued, going closer to Mr.
Romaine, and looking at him in a threatening way. “I know all about
that visit to Dr. Chambers. No matter how I found it out--I know
he passed sentence of death on you; and while this good, amiable
Chessingham is doctoring you for all sorts of imaginary aches and
pains, you have one constant ache and pain that he does not suspect,
because you have so carefully concealed it from him--and the slightest
annoyance or chagrin may be fatal to you. I know that you have tried
to persuade the good Chessingham that you have every disease in the
calendar of diseases--except the one that is killing you.”

Mr. Romaine walked rather unsteadily to a chair and sat down, burying
his face in his hands. Madame de Fonblanque, after a moment, felt an
impulse of pity toward him. She went and touched him lightly.

“You called me a brazen adventuress just now--and I acknowledge that
I am not engaged in a very high business, trying to make you pay me
for not keeping your word. But I feel sorry for you now. I dislike to
witness your unhappiness. Say you will pay me, and let me go.”

“Never,” answered Mr. Romaine, looking up, with an unquenchable
determination in his eyes.

“Very well, then,” answered Madame de Fonblanque, quietly; “you know
I am a very determined woman. I came here to see for myself what your
condition is. I shall go away to instruct my lawyers to bring suit
against you immediately. I may not get one hundred thousand francs in
money--but I will get a hundred thousand francs’ worth of revenge.”

“It seems to me,” presently said Mr. Romaine, with a cynical smile on
his face, “your revenge will be two-edged.”

“So is nearly all revenge. It’s a very ignoble thing to avenge one’s
self--few people can do it without sharing in the ignominy. But I
weighed the matter well before I made up my mind. French newspapers
take but little notice of what goes on outside of Paris. I have
influence enough to silence those that would say anything about it--and
I care not a sou for anybody or anything in this country or England. I
shall go back to Paris and say it was another Madame de Fonblanque.”

Madame de Fonblanque, following Mr. Romaine’s example, seated herself,
and opened the long, rich cloak of fur she wore. She was certainly very
handsome, particularly when the heat of the room brought a slight flush
to her clear cheeks.

“It is strange to me that a woman of your education and standing should
engage in this scheme of yours,” after a while said Mr. Romaine.

“One hundred thousand francs,” responded Madame de Fonblanque.

“You might have married well a dozen times if you had played your cards
right,” he continued.

“One hundred thousand francs,” again said Madame de Fonblanque.

“What are your plans of campaign, may I ask?”

“To get one hundred thousand francs from you.”

“That ridiculous old blunderbuss, Corbin! I suppose he has invited you
to take up your quarters at Corbin Hall, indefinitely, without knowing
any more about you than he does of the man in the moon.”

“He has--the dear, innocent old gentleman--and I shall stay until I get
my one hundred thousand francs. But he shall not regret it. I know how
to appreciate kindness. I have met with so little. The man I loved--my
husband--squandered my _dot_, which I gave him, and it is on account of
my rash fondness for one man that it is now absolutely necessary for me
to have some money from another; and I intend to make every effort to
get a hundred thousand francs from you.”

Mr. Romaine remained silent for a few minutes, considering a _coup_.
Then his usual sly smile appeared upon his countenance. When he spoke
his voice had more than its usual velvety softness.

“Your efforts, Madame de Fonblanque, will not be necessary; for I
hereby declare to you my perfect willingness to marry you, and I shall
put it in writing.”

It was now Madame de Fonblanque’s turn to be disconcerted. She fell
back in her chair and gazed dumbly at Mr. Romaine. Marry him! And as
she had laughed while Mr. Romaine had suffered, now he laughed wickedly
while she literally cowered at the prospect presented to her.

“And as regards my sudden and speedy death, which you seem to
anticipate, it could not benefit you”--he leaned over and said
something to her in a low tone, which caused Madame de Fonblanque
to start--“so that you will have the satisfaction of enjoying my
money--such as I may choose to give you--as long as I live. But I warn
you--I am not an easy man to live with, nor would the circumstances of
our marriage render me more so. Ask Chessingham if I am easy to live
with, and he will tell you that I am not, even at my best. It would
not surprise me, in case our marriage took place, if you were to wish
yourself free again. You say you desire revenge. So would I--and I
would take it.”

Madame de Fonblanque grew steadily paler as Mr. Romaine spoke. She
knew well enough the purgatory he was offering her. To marry him! Such
an idea had never dawned upon her. The conviction of his insincerity
had caused her coyness in the first instance which had stimulated Mr.
Romaine so much. It had really looked, in the beginning, as if he
would not succeed in the least in making a fool of this pretty French
widow. But he had finally succeeded at the cost of making a fool of
himself. However, it was now his turn to score--because it was plain
that Madame de Fonblanque was anything but enraptured at the notion of
marrying him.

She caught sight of Mr. Romaine’s black eyes dancing in enjoyment of
her predicament. She rose and drew her fur cloak around her.

“I will think it over, Mr. Romaine,” she said, calmly.

“Pray do,” responded Mr. Romaine; “and I will write you a letter
to-morrow morning, making a specific offer to fulfil my promise, which
will make those cherished letters of yours worth considerably less than
the paper they are written on--and what a honeymoon we will have!”

At this, Madame de Fonblanque positively shuddered, but she held her
head up bravely as Mr. Romaine opened the door politely for her, and
they discovered Colonel Corbin stalking up and down the hall alone.

“Corbin,” said Mr. Romaine, blandly, “Madame de Fonblanque and I have
reached a perfectly satisfactory agreement.”

“Sir,” replied the Colonel, glowering with wrath, “it must also be made
satisfactory to me. When I bring a lady to a house, she is under my
protection; and when she has the term ‘brazen adventuress’ applied to
her, simply because she has come to demand a mere act of justice--and I
know this to be a fact, because she has so informed me--I must insist
upon an apology from the person applying that term.”

“Very well, then,” said Mr. Romaine, debonair and smiling. “I
apologize. Madame de Fonblanque is not a brazen adventuress--she is
merely a lady of great enterprise and assurance, and I wish you joy of
her acquaintance.”

In Madame de Fonblanque’s breast there sprang up that desire that
is never wholly smothered in any human being--to appear well in the
presence of a person she respected. She did sincerely respect Colonel
Corbin, who had befriended her on that risky expedition, and it cut her
to the heart to be insulted before him. Her eyes filled with tears, and
she turned to him with trembling lips.

“Do not mind what he says. He hates me because he has injured me, and
keeps me out of money that he ought to pay me.”

“I do not mind him in the least, madam,” replied the Colonel, suavely.
“Mr. Romaine knows perfectly well my opinion of him. He keeps you out
of money he owes you, and insists upon forcing on my granddaughter
money that she does not want, and which will involve her in endless
trouble. I think that is quite characteristic of Romaine. Let us now
leave this inhospitable house.”

Madame de Fonblanque took the arm the Colonel offered her, and walked
out of the hall without noticing Mr. Romaine’s courteous bow.

The proposition made to Madame de Fonblanque was truly startling.
Almost anything on earth was better than marrying him--and what he
had whispered to her proved that she could not profit one penny by
his death. She would gladly have foregone that offer on paper for
some other letters she had in which he flatly refused to keep his
word, and which she had held over him _in terrorem_. She could not
determine in a moment what to do, but she was convinced that she could
not see Mr. Romaine again, and the matter would have to be settled
by correspondence. And then she felt the sooner she got away from
this place where she had been checkmated the better. When they were
traveling fast through the murky night toward Corbin Hall, she broached
the subject at once of her return in the morning. The Colonel declared
it depended upon the weather, which puzzled Madame de Fonblanque very
much until it was explained to her that it was a question of weather
whether the boat came or not. Sometimes, in that climate, the river
froze over, and then the river steamers stopped running until there was
a thaw--for ice-boats were unknown in that region. It was very cold,
and getting colder, and the Colonel was of the opinion that a freeze
was upon them, and no boat could get down the river that night.

When they got to Corbin Hall, Madame de Fonblanque was extremely
nervous about the greeting she would get from the Colonel’s
womankind--but it was as cordial and unsuspicious as his had been.
The Colonel explained that Madame de Fonblanque had business with Mr.
Romaine, who had treated her like--Mr. Romaine; and Letty, as soon as
she found somebody with a community of prejudice against the master of
Shrewsbury, felt much drawn toward her. There was no doubt that Madame
de Fonblanque was a lady; and in the innocent and unworldly lives of
the ladies at Corbin Hall, the desperate shifts and devices to get
money of people with adventurous tendencies were altogether unknown and
unsuspected. Besides, people from a foreign country were very great
novelties to them; and Letty seated herself, after tea, to hear all
about that marvelous world beyond the sea. The Colonel still talked
about his visit to Europe in 1835, and Paris in the days of the Citizen
King, and imagined that everything had remained unchanged since then.
Madame de Fonblanque was a stout Monarchist, as most French people of
dubious antecedents profess to be, and gave out with much tact that,
although only the widow of a poor officer in the Lancers, she was on
intimate terms with all the Faubourg St. Germains. As she frankly
admitted her modest means, there was no hint of braggadocio in anything
she said in her fluent French-English. She had great curiosity about
Mr. Romaine, and was well up in all his adventures since he had been in
America. She spoke of him so coolly and critically that it never dawned
upon her listeners that the difficulties between them were not of the
usual business kind.

“As for the English mees,” she said, calmly, “I would say to her, ‘Go
home, my pretty demoiselle; don’t waste your time on that--that aged
crocodile.’ The English, you know, have no sentiment. They call us
unfeeling because French parents select a suitable man for an innocent
young daughter to marry, and bid her feel for him all the tenderness
possible. But those calculating English meeses would marry old
Scaramouch himself if he had money enough.”

The Colonel did not like to hear his favorite nation abused, and rather
squirmed under this; but he reflected that Madame de Fonblanque’s
remarks were due, no doubt, to the traditional jealousy between the
French and the English.

Madame de Fonblanque gave the straightest possible account of herself,
including the desertion of her maid the day before.

“I thought, with my trusty Suzanne, I could face anything. I did not
imagine I could go anywhere in this part of America that I would not
find hotels, railroads, telegraph offices--”

“There is one tavern in the county, and that a very poor one, six miles
away--and not a line of telegraph wire or railway nearer than two
counties off,” explained Letty, smiling.

Madame de Fonblanque clapped her hands.

“How delicious! I shall tell this in France. It is like some of our
retired places in the provinces, where the government has erected
telegraph lines, but the people do not know exactly what they are meant
for! And when that wretched Suzanne left me, I asked at once for the
French consul--but I found there was none in town. All of my adventures
here have been novel--and as I have met with such very great kindness,
I shall always regard them as amusing.”

She showed no disposition to trespass on the hospitality so generously
offered her, and looked out of the window anxiously when they rose to
go to their rooms. But it had begun snowing early in the evening, and
the ground was now perfectly white.

“No boat to-morrow, madam,” said the Colonel. “You will, I am sure, be
forced to content yourself at Corbin Hall for some days yet.”

“I content myself perfectly,” replied Madame de Fonblanque, with ready
grace; “but one must be careful not to take advantage of so much
generosity as yours.”

When she was alone in the same old-fashioned bed-room that Farebrother
had occupied, enjoying, as he had done, the sparkling wood-fire,
she reflected gratefully upon the goodness of these refined and
simple-minded people--but she also reflected with much bitterness
upon the extremely slim prospect of her getting any money from Mr.
Romaine. She had fully counted upon his dread of ridicule, his fear of
publicity, to induce him to hand over a considerable sum of money; but
she had not in the least counted upon what she considered his truly
diabolical offer to come up to his word. To marry Mr. Romaine! She
could have brought herself to it, reflecting that he could not live
forever; but those few words he whispered to her showed her that it
was out of her power to get any money at his death. She believed what
he told her--it was so thoroughly characteristic of him--and she would
by no means risk the horrors of marrying this embodied whim with that
probability hanging over her. She turned it over and over in her mind,
wearily, until past midnight, when she tossed to and fro until the gray
dawn shone upon the snow-covered world.

But Mr. Romaine suffered from more than sleeplessness that night. The
Chessinghams guessed from the accounts given by the servants of the
strange visitor that Madame de Fonblanque had turned up miraculously
with Colonel Corbin, and after a short interview with Mr. Romaine had
disappeared. They knew all about the old report that Mr. Romaine had
been very marked in his attentions at one time to the pretty widow and
Chessingham shrewdly guessed very near the truth concerning her visit,
which truth convulsed him with laughter.

“It is the most absurd thing,” he said to his wife and Ethel Maywood,
in their own sitting-room that night. “No doubt the old fellow has some
entanglement with her, and finding widows a little more difficult to
impose upon than guileless maidens, he’s been trapped in some way.”

“And serves him right,” said Mrs. Chessingham, with energy. “I know
he’s kind to us, Reggie--but--was there ever such another man as Mr.
Romaine, do you think?”

“The Lord be praised, no,” answered Chessingham. “And he is not only
mentally and morally different from any man I ever saw, but physically,
too. I swear, after having been his doctor for two years, I don’t know
his constitution yet. He will describe to me the most contradictory
symptoms. He will profess to take a prescription and apparently it
will have just the opposite effect from that intended. Sometimes I
have asked myself if he has not, all the time, some disease that he
rigorously conceals from me, and he simply uses these subterfuges to
deceive me.”

“Anything is possible with Mr. Romaine,” said Ethel quietly. “And
yet--he is the most generous of men. Our own father was not half so
free with his money to us as Mr. Romaine is. And he seems to shrink
from the least acknowledgment of it. How many men, do you think, would
allow a doctor to carry his wife and sister-in-law around with him
as he does, and do everything for us, as if we were the most valued
friends and guests?”

“Oh, Romaine isn’t a bad man, so much as a perverse one,” replied
Chessingham, lightly, “and he is a tremendously interesting one.”

At that very moment, Mr. Romaine was in the condition that any man but
himself would have called for a doctor--but not for worlds would he
have allowed Chessingham to see him then. He understood his own case
perfectly--and the one human being near him that was in his confidence
was Bridge.

The evening was a very unhappy one for Mr. Romaine--the more so that
what the great specialist he had consulted had predicted was actually
happening. Being disturbed in mind, he was becoming ill in body. How
on earth had that cruel French woman found out about Dr. Chambers? So
Mr. Romaine thought, sitting in his library chair, suffering acutely.
Dr. Chessingham offered to come in and read to him, to play écarté
with him--but it occurred to Mr. Romaine that perhaps a visit to the
Chessinghams’ part of the house might divert his spirits and take
his mind off the torturing subject of Madame de Fonblanque. He took
Bridge’s arm and tottered off to the Chessinghams’ sitting-room. But
the instant he entered the door his indomitable spirit asserted itself.
He stood upright, walked steadily, and even forced a smile to his lips.
Mrs. Chessingham and Ethel were at their everlasting fancy work, of
which Mr. Romaine had never seen a completed specimen. Ethel rose and
placed a chair for him--which, as he was old and infirm and needed it,
nettled him extremely.

“Pray, my dear Miss Maywood, don’t trouble yourself. I do not yet
require the kind coddling you would bestow upon me.”

Ethel, being an amiable and patient creature, took this with a smile.

“I am looking forward with great pleasure,” said Mr. Romaine, after
having seated himself in a straight-backed chair, while he yearned
for an easy one, “to the season in London. I have had my eye on that
house in Prince’s Gate for several years, and, of course, feel pleased
to have it. Being an old-fashioned man, I have kept pretty closely
to the localities which were modish when I was a young attaché some
years since--such as Belgravia, Grosvenor, and Lowndes Squares, and
all those places. But there is something very attractive about the new
Kensington--and I have intended for some years to take a house in that
part of town for a season--and this one particularly struck my fancy.”

“It is very handsome--but very expensive,” said Mrs. Chessingham.

“Most handsome things are expensive, dear madam, but this house is
reasonable, considering its charm, and I hope that you as well as your
sister will enjoy some of its pleasures with me.”

Both young women smiled--it would be nice to have the run of the house
at Prince’s Gate--and after going through with a winter in the country,
and in Virginia, too, they thought they had earned it.

“Heretofore,” continued Mr. Romaine, stroking his white mustache with
his delicate hand, “while I have been fond of entertaining, it has
always been of a sedate kind--chiefly dinners. But last year I was
beguiled into promising my young friend, Lady Gwendolen Beauclerc,
a ball, if I could get a house with a ball-room--and a few days ago
I received a very pretty reminder of my promise, in the shape of a
photograph and a letter.”

“Better and better,” thought Ethel--“to be invited to a ball given to
please Lady Gwendolen Beauclerc!” But Gladys spoke up with her usual
simplicity and straightforwardness.

“I hardly think, being now married to a medical man with his way to
make in the world, that I shall be asked to many swell balls--and
perhaps it is better that I should not go.”

“But, Gladys, we went once to swell balls,” said Ethel, reproachfully.

“Oh, yes,” answered Gladys, “but that was over and done with when I
married my husband--and he is well worth the sacrifice. Reggie himself
is of good family, as you know, but he is on that account too proud
to associate with people upon terms of condescension--so, when we
were married, we agreed to be very careful about giving and accepting
invitations.”

“The social prejudices of you English are peculiar,” remarked Mr.
Romaine. “It is from you that we Virginia people inherit that profound
respect for land. I found, early in life, when I first went to
England and when Americans were scarce there, that it was more in my
favor to be a landholder and a slave-owner than if I had been worth
millions. The landed people in all countries are united by a powerful
bond, which does not seem to exist with other forms of property. But
because agriculture is perhaps the first and the most absorbing and
conservative of all industrial callings, the people who own land are
naturally bound together and appreciative of each other.”

While Mr. Romaine was giving this little disquisition, he suffered
furious pain, but the only indication he gave of it was a furtive
wiping of his brow.

“And the hold of the land upon one is peculiar. I could never bring
myself to part with an acre of it which I had either bought or
inherited. Of course, during my practical expatriation for many years,
my landed property here has suffered. I have often wondered at myself
for holding on to it, when I could have invested the money in an
English estate which really would have been much more profitable--but
I could never divest myself of the feeling that the land would yet
draw me back to it. However,” he continued, quite gaily, “it is now so
depreciated, and the new system is so impossible for the old masters
to adopt, that I can’t sell it, and I can’t live on it--so I shall be
compelled to buy an estate in England in the country, for a town house,
even the Prince’s Gate one, is only endurable for five months in the
year.”

Ethel’s eyes glistened--a town house at Prince’s Gate--an estate in the
country! Might she not, after all, be Mrs. Romaine? And Mr. Romaine’s
position was so much better than that of any other American she knew;
the others were all striving for recognition, but Mr. Romaine had had
an assured place in English society for a generation. He had not only
dandled Lady Gwendolen Beauclerc, who was a duke’s daughter, on his
knee, but he had danced, at a court ball, with the Queen herself, when
she was a youthful matron, and he was a slim young diplomat. And in a
flash of imagination, Ethel saw herself becomingly attired in widow’s
weeds and leaving, by the hands of a footman in mourning livery,
black-bordered cards, bearing the inscription, “_Mrs. Romaine_.”

XI

At last, Mr. Romaine was conquered by pain, and rose to leave the
Chessinghams’ rooms about ten o’clock. As he said good-night, some
strange impulse made him take Ethel’s soft, white hand in his, which
was deathly cold and clammy. He looked at her in her fresh, wholesome
beauty. He knew she was just as designing in her own way as Madame
de Fonblanque--but the designing was different in the two women,
according to their race. Ethel’s was the peculiarly artless and
primitive designing, which is as near as the English character can come
to deception--for it really deceives nobody. Madame de Fonblanque’s
was the consummate designing of the Latin races, which could deceive
almost anybody. At that very moment she was completely hoodwinking
the people at Corbin Hall, and Letty, who had been disgusted with
Ethel’s transparent devices to ensnare Mr. Romaine, never for a
moment suspected that the graceful and tactful Madame de Fonblanque’s
“business” with Mr. Romaine was an attempt to entrap him of a nature
much more desperate and barefaced than Ethel would have dreamed of.

But as Mr. Romaine looked into Ethel’s rosy, fresh face, he saw a great
deal of good there. She would not bedevil him as the French woman had
done. She was amiable even in her disappointments, and if things had
been otherwise, and she could have shared with him the town house, and
the country house, and the carriage, would have tended him faithfully
and kindly. Some dim idea of rewarding her by making her an offer as
soon as he was clear of the French woman dawned upon his mind. Ethel,
for her part, read a new look of gentleness in his expressive black
eyes--and his hand-clasp was positively tender. But his pain showed
in his glance--there was something agonizing in his eyes as Ethel’s
met his. And fascinated by them she gazed into them with a strange
and pathetic feeling that it was not “good-night” she was saying, but
“good-by.” Mr. Romaine himself had something of this feeling--and
so for a fall minute they stood hand in hand, and quite silent. Mrs.
Chessingham moved away judiciously--and did not return until the door
closed behind Mr. Romaine. Ethel stood in the same spot, with a pained
face.

“Do you know, Gladys, I had a queer feeling just now--as if Mr. Romaine
were really ill, and might die at any time? And all the time we have
looked upon him as a hypochondriac.”

“Reggie says if anybody really expected Mr. Romaine to die he would
live forever. But I have not heard him say he was ill, and I am sure
Reggie does not suspect it. And, Ethel dear, I shouldn’t be surprised
if, after all, that house at Prince’s Gate should be yours.”

“_I_ should be,” answered Ethel, “but if it ever is, I promise to be
kind to the old gentleman.”

Bridge had met “the old gentleman” just outside the door, and had gone
with him to the library, where he sat within easy call. Mr. Romaine,
seated at his table, after a while seemed to recover from his paroxysm
of pain. He unlocked a drawer and took out his will, which he read
over, smiling all the time--he seemed to regard it as a very facetious
document. Then he added something to it. He had a few valuable diamonds
which he had collected for no particular purpose some years before,
and he thought that Ethel Maywood might as well have them. And then
he wrote his offer to Madame de Fonblanque, and sealed and addressed
it. It seemed to give him such acute pleasure that he almost forgot
his pain. He smiled, his black eyes sparkled, he smoothed his mustache
coquettishly, and thought to himself:

“Checkmated, by Jove!”

It was then near twelve o’clock, and he rang for Bridge and went to his
bed-room.

The man undressed him and put him to bed, and then Mr. Romaine said
casually:

“You had better sit in this room to-night.”

Even with this servant, who knew the whole secret of his ailments, Mr.
Romaine maintained a systematic kind of deceit which did not deceive.

Bridge stirred the fire into a ruddy blaze, and sat down by it to
doze. Occasionally he rose and went toward the luxurious bed, where
Mr. Romaine lay with wide-open, staring eyes, and every few moments he
wanted something done for him. This alarmed Bridge, but he dared not
show his uneasiness. At last, about two o’clock in the morning, when he
had given up all attempts at dozing, he heard a sound which made him
jump. It was a slight groan.

In all the sixteen years that he had served Mr. Romaine he had never
known from him the slightest sign that pain was victor. Bridge fairly
ran to the bed at this.

“What’s the matter?” sternly asked Mr. Romaine.

“Didn’t I hear you groan, sir?”

“Of course not--Bridge, you are in your dotage.”

Bridge went back to his place. In ten minutes came another groan--and
another.

He rose and went to the bedside again.

“Mr. Romaine, I’m a-goin’ for Mr. Chessingham. I can’t stand this no
longer.”

“I should think if I could stand it, you could.”

“No, sir. Can’t nobody stand what you can stand, and I’m a-goin’ for
Mr. Chessingham.”

“If you dare,” said Mr. Romaine.

Bridge moved toward the door. By a tremendous effort Mr. Romaine rose
up in bed, and seizing a carafe of water from the table at his side,
sent it whizzing after Bridge. It missed its target by a very close
shave, indeed.