Margaret to join them; but Margaret, between Walter Petty and her
mother, was walking another way, so she accepted the inevitable with a
good grace, and strove to interest herself in her companion. A few
wind-bent trees maintained a struggling existence not far off upon a
slope of sun-parched turf coming down upon the shore, with morsels of
grateful shade; and thither they bent their steps.

"I am glad _that_ part of the enjoyment is through," Joseph was
saying. "It gives one cramps all over, that sitting on the ground all
crumpled up, and eating things. But apparently there must be eating,
if it is a party of pleasure."

"Please, sir, there is a parcel for you at the kitchen tent--sent on
as you ordered. The man says you must sign a receipt." It was a waiter
who spoke, puffing and fanning his shining black face, and grinning
with all his teeth, while he held his hand convenient for the expected
tip.

"Ha! Come, has it?" and Joseph smiled in return, slipping the dollars
in the ready palm, and dismissing the messenger well pleased.

"Let me settle you comfortably beneath yon tree, dearest; and then
will you excuse me till I run after the fellow? I shall not be a
minute gone. You will wait for me there, will you not?"

"Go back at once; I can do that much for myself, and will wait there
as you say."

And so they parted, Joseph making all haste in one direction, while
Rose walked leisurely forward in the other. She had almost reached the
trees, her sunshade open before her, her eyes upon the sand.

"At last!" and a figure stood between her and the light. "I have been
waiting, Rose, for a chance like this."

Rose started at the voice. A thrill ran through her, and the sunshade
fell aside, as though the arm which held it were benumbed. Immediately
in front of her stood Gilbert Roe. The flaming red and white chased
one another across her face, but her eye looked steadily in his.

"Sir!" she cried, with indignant emphasis; but she said no more, her
lips closed tightly, and her eyebrows straightened in a frown.

"They tell me you are going to be married, Rose? You must hear me this
once. I am resolved to have it out with you."

She threw back her head, and her nostrils quivered in pride. The angry
blood suffused her temples now; there was no paleness and no sign of
fear. "Allow me to pass," she answered, haughtily.

"Not till you hear me, Rose. I mean to save you from yourself."

"What right have you to interfere with me?"

"The strongest; the right of one who loves you."

"You have _no_ right! The law denies it. It gives me freedom. You
shall not interfere."

"Calm yourself, Rose. I cannot live without you. And more, you never
will be happy but with me."

"Bah! you are too long of finding it out. I am free, and I shall keep
my liberty as far as you are concerned. I have tried you, and know you
to my cost. It is over now. The law has cried quits between us."

"It cannot, Rose! Think of the old time in Canada!--the evenings when
we sang together, and talked in the porch--the walks between the
corn-fields--the afternoons in the orchard--and the promises we made.
Can you ever forget them?"

"How dare you remind me of them? Have you no decent shame? You might
wish the ground to open and let you through, rather than hear those
old days named, and be reminded how you have outraged a trusting
girl!"

"I have been true to my vows, Rose. I make no merit of it; I could not
have been otherwise. It was my glory and delight to fulfil them."

"And you did it admirably! certainly. It was in fulfilment of them, I
suppose, that you made fierce love to that silly Horatia Simpkins,
under my very nose, and before the eyes of her own husband? If it had
even been a handsome woman, or one not absolutely a fool, the slight
might have been less unpardonable. But with her!"

"What else could I have done?--the way you went on with her
husband--that conceited ass Rupert. Would you have had me stand by,
like a gawk, with my thumb in my mouth, assenting to your outrageous
flirtation, which nearly drove his poor little silly wife out of her
wits with jealousy? She is not as clever, perhaps, as you are, but at
least she is fond of her husband!"

Rose coughed impatiently and stamped her foot. The adversary must be
admitted to have scored one by that thrust.

"Is a woman to give up the amusements of social life--the little
conventional pleasantnesses of society--because she happens to have
lent a too trusting ear, and yielded to the man who wanted to marry
her? Does she grow plain and old and stupid from the day she becomes a
wife? Is she no more to find pleasure in being liked and admired? Life
is not over when she comes back from church: she is still as human as
she was before--wants a little of the diversions she has learnt to
like, and needs a continuance of the devotion her suitor taught her
to expect. You are hideously jealous, Gilbert. You should have been
born a Turk, with a harem built out in the back-yard, beside the
chicken-house, to lock up your wife in."

It was the first time she had used his name. Gilbert noted it and took
courage.

"You know you wanted me to be jealous when you took up with that
ninny--and you wanted to tease his wife. You succeeded. She thought
you had stolen her husband's affection--or what represents it, in
him--and she was not going to submit quietly to the robbery. She
thought to make reprisals, and so laid siege to your husband in
return. I am not sure but she got the revenge she wanted. You cannot
deny that you were absurdly jealous."

"Absurdly? Yes; laugh at me! I deserve it for allowing you to address
me. You consider me a fool. You have said as much before, and you said
other things as well, which were even worse. You insulted me with
suspicion, and used expressions as if I were improper. You know you
did! Bertie Roe!... You never loved me really, I do believe--not as
you made me expect you would--not as a girl should be loved, who gives
up her life and everything to be married to a man. You behaved like a
barbarian! Deny it if you dare!"

"I do deny it, Rose. Could I stand by and see you play the fool with a
contemptible duffer, before the eyes of all Chicago?--see people in
ball-rooms and theatres follow you with their eyes, nudge each other,
and exchange glances, and shrug, as if to say, 'another young wife
taking the turn downhill'?"

"You are insulting!--but I might have expected it. 'Cruelty and
desertion' were the words in the decree."

"I dare you to lay your hand upon your heart and say that I was cruel.
I merely remonstrated--and then you scolded.... You know you did,
Rose. You made home unbearable. I had to leave the house."

"You outraged my feelings. Was I to accept your insinuations of
improper conduct as a polite compliment, or an everyday commonplace of
domestic conversation?... You did not strike me, I admit--the man in
you would restrain you from that; but you did worse!--the things you
said."

"Could I see people taking away your character by a shrug without
giving you warning? Could I tell you about it, as something amusing
and to your credit?"

"It was yourself who goaded me on to do whatever I did. And then to
insult and desert me!"

"I did not desert you. I merely took rooms down town, leaving you in
sole possession of the house until you should come to your senses....
You did not believe that I had deserted you; but you wanted to make me
beg pardon and come back as if I had been to blame."

"And so you _were_ to blame! The Court has decided that, and granted
me my divorce."

"And has your divorce, then, made you happy? Would you have filed your
petition, if you had expected to have it granted? You thought I would
have come and prayed you to withdraw it. I let you take your course.
Was I wrong?"

"You knew you had no defence--had no case to plead--that I was right.
You let judgment go by default."

"Did you imagine that I would plead?--have all our little
altercations, which would have sounded so pitiful in Court, raked out
and exposed before a crew of newspaper reporters, to be read and
chuckled over by the people going home in the tram-cars? Did you
imagine that I would attempt to keep you bound, if you wanted to break
loose from the marriage tie? I would not have you, if I could, against
your will."

"You are very magnanimous, and I--of course I am the
opposite--everything bad, and frivolous, and foolish. I wonder you
should have troubled yourself to address against her will so poor a
creature."

"I have been waiting here all these days, Rose, in hopes of getting
speech of you. You are not bad, or frivolous, or foolish. You are the
only woman I have ever cared for, or ever shall. We have been--not
very wise, shall I call it?--headstrong and obstinate, and neither
would give in; and both, if I may venture to say it, have been
miserable in consequence. Forget and forgive, Rose. Let's try again,
begin the game anew, and profit by sad experience. It is for that I
have been waiting here--to prevent this marriage of yours, if the
people say true, which will make both you and me miserable for ever."

"You are kind; but do you not exaggerate? My marriage at least will
not leave you inconsolable. You have secured the consoler already.
I wish you joy of her. May she make you as happy as you deserve,
and----" But here, to her own astonishment--for Rose had felt proud of
her bravery and calmness throughout the interview--there came a spasm
in her throat, which choked her utterance. The corners of her mouth
began to droop, and her eyes sought the ground.

"Do you mean Maida Springer? This is worse than Horatia Simpkins! I am
sure I have not flirted with Maida. Come, if you like, and ask her;
she is sitting under that tree. She is an acquaintance of very old
standing; that is all. She taught my uncle's children long ago, when I
was a lad. We saw each other constantly when I was home from Harvard
at the vacation. But there is nothing between us--never was. Come, ask
her yourself. She is sitting behind this nearest tree: she will be the
first to wish us joy."

He took Rose's hand to lead her to the spot, and Rose had moved a step
or two before she had recovered self-command enough to resist. The
tree was very close. Whoever sat behind it must have overheard the
conversation, for both had been too intent to keep their voices low.
Rose shrank from meeting the listener. She stopped short, and looked
timidly where the eavesdropper was said to be.

There seemed little which need make her feel uneasy. A woman's
figure--or was it only a bundle of summer clothing? so limp and
collapsed it seemed--lay crouched and huddled together against the
bole. The hat was pushed aside, the head bowed between the knees, and
two slender hands spread out before it to exclude the light. The hair
had come unfastened, and fell in wisps down to the ground, swaying and
quivering in the sobbing tremor which shook the woman's frame.

Rose drew away her hand. "It is too late to talk, Bertie. We have
chosen our roads in life, and we must keep them. But we will think
more kindly of one another now. I am engaged, as you know. I did it
freely, and I must keep my word. I will not spoil the life of
another--of a man who is as fond of me as this one, and so good and
true. We will forgive one another--will we not?--and learn from sad
experience more forbearance in our future lots. There he is coming. I
shall go and meet him. Goodbye. We must not meet again."

She went, leaving Gilbert elated at his success, but dissatisfied with
its incompleteness, and a little doubtful how he ought to return to
Maida Springer. They had been reclining rather aimlessly behind the
tree, when he looked up and saw Rose almost upon them, and alone. It
seemed to be now or never, if he was to have speech with her. He
bounded to his feet without a word to his companion, and her own ears
must soon have told her why. It felt decidedly awkward to return to
Maida; yet what was he to do? He could not follow Rose without
imperilling such way as he had made back to her favour, by inducing
perhaps an ugly scene with Naylor; and having brought Maida there, he
must fetch her back to her friends. It was an uncomfortable task, but
it had to be performed. He hardened his soul, expecting to hear
something unpleasant, composed his features, and turned round to the
tree.

He might have spared his anxiety. The tree was deserted. No one was
near. Far up the slope the flutter of a white gown and streaming blue
veil might be discerned between the trees, in swift retreat, and
Gilbert found that Maida had saved him the unpleasantness of an
explanation.

                            CHAPTER XXIX.

                         "IT IS ALL A MESS!"

It fell hard upon Rose to have to meet Joseph again so immediately
after the passage she had gone through with Gilbert Roe--to pass, with
scarce a pause in which to brace herself together, from the lover of
her youth into the presence of the man to whom she had chosen to
transfer her regard. She had fooled herself in her pique into the
belief that she had trodden down and stamped out the last spark of
kindness for the husband who had been, as she told herself, so hard
and cruel and insulting--the man who could let her untie their
marriage bond, without showing a sign or offering a word of
remonstrance. He was nothing to her now--she had been saying it within
herself ever since their separation--or if anything, only her
aversion. She had been persuading herself that she was an injured
woman, and that it was righteous resentment which she had been nursing
against the unfeeling tyrant who had blighted her early wifehood. She
had resolved that she would never speak to him again, nor even name
him; that she would pluck out the very memory of her first and foolish
love--have done with him for ever, and begin anew. (As if our past,
the foundation of our present, could ever be obliterated!)

When he forced himself upon her so unexpectedly, the anger smouldering
through her year of unmolested separation, the regret and
disappointment grown sour in concealment and suppression, and turned
by silence and defeated pride into what had seemed an inextinguishable
hatred, had burst into a flame of fiercest indignation. It had burst
into flame, but how pitifully soon it had burnt low! It had been but a
fire of straw, blazing up for a moment and sinking as quickly as it
rose; leaving nothing behind, nothing but the emptiness of separation.
The grievances and wrongs and barriers piled up so high between them,
where were they gone to? Vanished utterly away. There had been a
leaping flame and a whirling puff of smoke, and the ground was clear
between them--clear save for the ashes of happiness destroyed for
ever! And there she stood, naked and exposed before her own eyes and
his, stripped of her false pretexts, a vain and headstrong fool, who
in very wantonness had made bonfire of their wedded happiness!

And yet her indignation had seemed so just, her wrongs so deep and
unforgivable! How speedily her wrath had oozed away before a few
words! words not of contrition, scarce even of reproach, but only
common-sense, and spoken by the old dear voice! Where were the bitter
memories now? How could she be so false to herself? Where was her
pride?--that stanch support against which she had been wont to set her
back, ready to outface the world? It had bent and broken, like a
worthless reed, before a few words of the man against whom she had
invoked its aid. "Bertie!" She had resolved to obliterate the memory
of that name; and yet it had passed her lips, and the old caressing
sweetness of the sound was in her ears, and would not go away.

It was not half an hour since the mere sight of him had hardened her
with hate, and made her feel strong, if yet unhappy. Now, she was weak
as water. If she had stayed, she would have given way and yielded--she
could not tell to what--but to anything the old sweet strong influence
in that voice had chosen to command her. But she had escaped, and she
was still free, and she would keep her liberty, whatever it might cost
her peace. At least she thought so.

What would they say, those sympathising friends who had come to her in
her conflict, with their well-meant phrases of support, and told her
she had done so wisely, and shown so brave a spirit? What would they
say to see her lower the lance and go back again to the bondage of her
tyrant? How could she face their pity at her weakness? And then there
were the others, who had disapproved of her conduct--had advised her
to submit, yield something, and make it up; and when she would not,
had turned away from knowing her. They would call her repentant, and
perhaps would turn again to countenance her reformation! That would be
more intolerable even than the pitying surprise of her stancher
friends. No; she must follow out the road she had entered on. There
could be no returning upon the lost steps. And she had so nearly
yielded. It startled her to find she was so weak. She must build a
barrier between the old life and the new, which could neither be
surmounted nor thrown down.

Joseph was close upon her now. He had not been very long away, but he
did not seem in her eyes exactly as he had seemed before. It was not
half an hour that he had been gone, yet he looked more ordinary than
she had supposed him. The redundancy of waistcoat, or rather of waist,
offended her sense of symmetry as it had not done before; and if he
had been just a little taller! Bertie was six-feet-one, and gracefully
slim, and chestnut-haired, while the other's locks were darkening, as
the leaves grow dark before the autumn tints begin to light them up
with the rustiness that comes before decay. It was the difference
between thirty and forty-seven. What a fool she was to notice such
things, and at such a time, when the very contrary was what she would
have wished to notice! She told herself so with vehemence, and bit her
lip, as if that would make her mind it better; but she went on
noticing all the same. When the eye has been turned for a little on
the sun, what a poor, dim, purblind thing does the light of a candle
afterwards appear!

Joseph came on with swinging elastic strides, impatient to be with
her, irradiated with a joyful pride, and beaming on her with smiles of
confidence irrepressible.

"If he would only have been tranquil!" she thought. This exuberance
seemed so utterly out of place. It was a discord in the bland and
half-parental warmth which, she told herself, would have been correct
in view of their disparity of age. "It was bad taste. There was even
an element of ridicule in a venerable Cupid of forty-seven exerting
himself to gambol before her like one of those boy Loves with wings
the artists picture. She had not thought so half an hour ago, but we
live and change so quickly at times. He was too solid for that sort of
thing, and she felt sorry to see him attempt it, for she really
respected and liked him."

"You grew tired of waiting, Rose?"

"Why would he call her by her name just then?" she asked herself,
forgetting that he had been doing so habitually for a week past, and
that she had encouraged him to do it.

"And came to meet me? Forgive me, dearest. I could not help it. Your
own disinclination to be kept waiting, must plead for my impatience to
get my little parcel, that I might present it. I made the hotel people
promise to send it after us, if it should arrive this forenoon. It has
come, but the express man would not part with it till I had signed the
receipt. Then the rascal went to refresh himself, and I had quite a
hunt to find him. However, it is all right now. Shall we turn back and
get under the shadow of the trees?"

"As you like," Rose answered, a little dully.

Joseph tore off the wrappings of his parcel as they walked along,
laying bare the little ring-case. He opened it, and the merry little
stones within, catching the sunbeams, cast them back in a dazzling
gleam beyond his expectation.

Rose saw and shuddered. The glancing ray seemed to pierce her with a
cold sharp pang, like the thrust of steel. It was the token of her
engagement; and that, of a sudden, and without her being aware of an
alteration in her mind, had grown distasteful.

"And now, my dearest, will you let me fit it in its place. It is not
worthy your acceptance; but then, what is? Still it is pretty, is it
not? And seeing that you were kind enough to accept myself, you will
let me slip on my ring. It is an earnest of the other you have
promised to let me give you."

"Not now, Mr----dear Joseph, I mean." How unreadily his name came to
her lips! and half an hour since she had used it freely--had even
liked to use it in a very friendly way, as leading up to the more
intimate connection which was to be established between them. What a
rift between the now and then!

"Do you not like it, dear?" Joseph asked, in a disappointed tone. "I
said it was not worthy either of your acceptance or of my love; but
still, I confess I thought it pretty, and I hoped you would have worn
it."

"Oh, as to that--yes, by all means. It is a lovely ring, the very
handsomest I ever saw. Any one might feel proud to wear it on its own
merits; but you know how whimsical we women are. It is a whim which I
have taken, that I will not put on a ring to-day."

"Let me persuade you out of it, dearest. Let me overbear the whim." He
took her hand in his, drew off the glove, and reverently pressed his
lips upon the fingers, while she stood looking listlessly and sadly in
his face. He took the engagement-finger and attempted to slip on the
ring without more ado; but at the touch of it Rose started and drew
away her hand with a shrinking cry, while Joseph strove to retain it,
and still attempted to slip on the ring.

"It must not be, at least not yet a while, Joseph. I have something
which I must tell you, that will make a difference between us. It
would be unfair to you not to tell you in time, what may influence
your feelings with regard to an engagement between us. And meanwhile,
I give you back your promise, that you may be free to do as you will,
after you have heard me."

"You shall not give it back, Rose. I will not accept it. And more, I
hold _you_ to your promise still. Nothing which you can tell me will
induce me to give you back yours."

"Not if you heard dreadful things against me?"

"I would not believe them. I know you too well for that. What do you
take me for?"

"I take you for a noble-minded man. It is that which troubles me. I am
not worth your caring for."

"You are my own, a part of my very self."

"You would not say so if you knew--that I have been married
before!--if you were told that I am a divorced woman!"

"I would not believe them."

"But it is true."

"What a villain the man must have been!--what a fool!--to cast away
the flower he was unworthy to have worn! But, my poor darling, if this
is so, you have the deeper need of my protecting care."

"But it was I who divorced--him!"

"You have been cruelly used, then. Ah, what you must have suffered! It
shall be all the more my care to make you forget your unhappiness.
Forget it you shall. Let's say no more about it."

"But I must. You do not know how poor a thing you have anchored your
heart to--how fickle and headstrong and vain a creature I have been! I
petitioned for a divorce from my husband."

"And you got it. Is not that a proof that you were in the right?--when
the law granted your demand? What you must have come through! But it
shall be mine to make you forget."

"He--filed no rejoinder, as they call it He let the law take its
course."

"He did not, because he could not. The law has relieved you from an
unworthy mate. Forget it, my poor darling. Forget _him_. We have the
future before us. Forget all the past."

"He refused to plead; but I am not so sure that he could not have
pleaded successfully if he had chosen to do it. My petition was an
outrage to him."

"Do not think it. A woman is not driven to take such a step without
sufficient grounds."

"That is what the judge said; but--ah me!--I do not know."

"What has called up these morbid fancies in your mind, Rose? You were
cheerful an hour ago."

"He--has spoken to me. When you were gone he came to me--and things
seem different now. I am not so sure that I was right, as I used to
be."

"The sneaking villain! Who is he? Where is he? To come molesting the
woman he has wronged, so soon as my back was turned! Kicking is too
good for such a hound. Where is he?"

"You must not ask. What would people say of me, if you and he were to
meet?... But I am upset; my head is splitting. I do not know what I am
saying, or what I do. I will go back to the village inn and lie down."

"We can drive back to Clam Beach. No one will miss us. Come."

"I want to be alone, and think. Do not come with me. Yonder is Lettice
Deane; bring me to her, and then let me leave you."

Lettice was following her own amusement in her own way. She was
holding a kind of auction of her smiles as she walked upon the sands
between Mr Sefton and Peter Wilkie, who vied with each other to
engross her attention, flashing speeches across her, to her infinite
diversion, in their efforts to extinguish one another. It was amusing,
but she cared nothing for either, and was mischievously ready to
disgust them both alike, by yielding to Rose's petition for her
company back to the village.

"Is your head _very_ bad, Rose, dear?" she asked, full of sympathy, as
soon as they were alone. "It must be, to take you away from him so
soon after his present. Or is it a sort of necessary discipline?--in
case of his growing too confident on the head of it? Let me see it.
Everybody knows that the express man was sent after you here. What!
you have not put it on yet? I declare, I think you are rigorous. You
owed him the satisfaction of seeing you wear it, I think, seeing how
much it cost."

"I have not got it. I could not accept it to-day. I have been trying
to have an explanation and tell him everything. He--the other--dropped
upon me suddenly when I was alone and not expecting him, and we
talked--and, oh Lettice! I am in a maze. What am I to do? It seems to
be I won't and I will with me, all the time. I can't do both, and I
won't do either. I am distracted, Lettice. I must go to bed and try to
think."

"Who-o-o----!" Lettice could not whistle as some girls can; but that
long-drawn masculine expression of--of everything at once--of the fat
having fallen in the fire, with general loss, trouble, and confusion,
seemed the only adequate and appropriate one for the occasion, and she
framed her lips and voice to the nearest equivalent.

"And what will you do, dear?" she said, after a considerable pause.

"Don't bother me with questions, Lettie. I do not know in the very
least. I shall go to bed, and try to sleep, and to forget everything.
If one could only forget for always! How good it would be! I am in a
mess. And all from having my way, and getting everything I thought I
wanted. It is all a mess! an irretrievable muddle. Whatever I may do,
it will be sure to be wrong. Oh Lettie! take warning in time; and
don't let your little tempers run away with you, as mine have done
with me."

                             CHAPTER XXX.

                          A CLOSE OBSERVER.

When Rose and Lettice went their way, the three cavaliers found their
occupation gone. They stood an instant looking after the retreating
fair, then turned to face one another; but there was no satisfaction
in view of the witnesses of their discomfiture--each felt small,
rather, and perhaps a little ridiculous. The only plaster for their
grazed self-love was absence from the witnesses; and accordingly each
turned on his heel, going off in quest of some new interest, and
diverging as widely from the other two as was possible.

Joseph strolled despondently back toward the stunted grove, to which
twice already he had bent his steps, but had not reached. He had borne
up bravely enough under Rose's disclosure at the moment. In the thick
of the fight one generally does bear up. The excitement of combat
stirs the blood, and blows fall scarcely heeded on him who struggles
hard to have his way. It is when the battle is over, that the wounds
begin to smart, when the stricken have leisure to feel them. And
Joseph was wounded sore. It crushed him to think that anything could
be said in derogation of the peerless one whom he had found to fit
into' the long-vacant shrine, where the beloved of his youth had sat,
and whose memory, still hovering there, had made it a holy place.
There seemed impiety in associating the new avatar of his love with
the ribald vulgarities of the divorce court, in dragging the blossom
of his worship through its noisome mire. Yet was she the less precious
because her lines had fallen haplessly? Does a jewel lose worth for
having fallen in the kennel? He told himself this, and repeated it
over and over. He vowed that her need of sympathy and support, was a
claim the more upon his honour, and that the claim should be
satisfied; but still it was painful to think that the name of his wife
to be, had been bandied from mouth to mouth as one of the motley crew
who shock chaste ears with their clamour to be relieved from
obligations which if was their own free choice to undertake. It dimmed
the bright promise of that future in which he had been basking so
unsuspiciously, but it should not appal him. He would steadfastly look
forward to all being well; his own faith and hope would of themselves
contribute to a happy consummation; and for Rose, how much she must
have suffered!--how much she needed him!

He had reached the grove at last. His feet were on the turf, and he
was strolling upwards through the trees, buried in deep and not too
sweet reflections.

"Alone, Joseph?" There was much in the tone to irritate. It contained
a suggestion of pity, combined with the "I thought as much," or "I
told you so," with which intimate friends are wont to rub up our
little sorenesses, and make them smart. It was his sister-in-law who
spoke--Susan--who already had expressed her disapproval of his
intended change in life, and who could not be expected to regret any
little unsmoothness in the current of his love. She had risen from a
corner of shade in which she had been encouraging the faltering
advances of Walter Petty to closer intimacy with her girl Margaret.
The two seemed fairly well tackled in conversation, now, and she felt
free to devote a little attention to Joseph and his concerns. She took
his arm, and accommodated her pace to his for a little turn, ignoring
the sudden tightening of his features into an impatient frown.

"'The course of true love,' &c.--you know the rest, Joseph. Where
there is disparity, one must be prepared for little _contretemps_. One
cannot expect young girls to accommodate themselves at once to the
steady jog-trot of their seniors. They would not be so attractive, I
daresay, if one could. She certainly----"

"What are you talking about, Susan?"

"You do not know, eh? Or rather you think I do not know? I have seen
everything--more than you have yourself. I was sitting up here in the
shade, when you were called away a while ago."

"Yes, I was called away. It was annoying, I confess; but I got back
when I had completed my little matter of business. I see nothing in
that which calls for your condolence."

"Of course not, dear Joseph. It was far too cleverly arranged for
that. She certainly is clever--an accomplished actress. I only hope it
may answer, and that you may not find her out to be too clever by
half. A good many people have seen as well as me. It was very well
done--quite dramatic, in fact; or rather, pantomimic--for they were
far too judicious to raise their voices and be overheard."

"Enough, Susan. I detest insinuations. Who are they whose private
affairs you have been watching and prying into? Do you know that you
have been accusing yourself of eavesdropping, mitigated only by your
inability to hear what was said? It is scarcely the pursuit I should
have expected a ladylike person to take up."

"You are rude, Joseph; but I forgive you. One must not expect people
to accept disenchantment with an equable mind."

"You speak riddles. I am in no mood for guessing them."

"Just what I say. You are upset, Joseph, and I am truly sorry."

"I am not upset. I am perfectly well and happy, Susan. It is you who
are absurd. You have your girls' hands to dispose of. It is occupation
enough for any woman. See you do it wisely; and leave me to bestow my
own in peace. I decline your interference."

"You are blind, Joseph. There are a score of people in this wood.
Every one of them must have seen. It is only you, the one who ought to
know, who have not, and do not know. I insist on telling you. You may
not like it, but it is my duty."

"Always a duty--when a woman wants to be provoking."

"I forgive the gibe. The young person you have chosen to devote
yourself to, has a lover."

"Certainly. The lady you stigmatise as a person has me; and I mean to
marry her."

"You and another. Ha! you did not know that! I can read it in your
face. Your back was scarcely turned, when out there bounced from
behind a tree--a man!--that tall slim young fellow you must have
noticed at the Beach any time this last week. He has been devoting
himself to that little spare woman with the blue veil whom nobody
seems to mind. People said they were engaged, and wondered at one with
his good looks bestowing himself so cheaply. Well, as I was saying,
out he bounced upon Miss--what's her name?--Miss Hillyard; and I can
tell you their interview was an animated one. How the colour of both
came and went! There must a great deal have taken place between them.
How he gesticulated! She was comparatively calm. He is an ardent
fellow, I can tell you, Joseph. Better have an eye on him."

Joseph did not know exactly what to say. He felt himself disloyal in
listening; but still he was interested, and if he waited to hear more,
he fancied he should be better able to defend Rose.

"The lady he had left--her with the blue veil--seemed to take her
squire's sudden desertion in very bad part. She started and looked
shocked at his departure, then bent forward where she sat, and looked,
and listened. They were within a few yards of her, and she must have
heard all that passed. The disillusion must have been terrible. I saw
her head bow lower and lower, as though all fortitude were deserting
her; and soon she seemed utterly crushed. She buried her head in her
lap, and clasped her hands above it--a most pitiable spectacle.

"But that was not the worst. He certainly must be a man without pity
or a spark of feeling. He actually had the cruelty to lead the other a
little to one side, where she could have a view of the discarded
rival. Was it not barbarous? This was too much for the other. It stung
her into something like proper self-respect. As soon as the other
turned away--and I will do the Hillyard girl the justice to say that
she betrayed no sign of gratification at her rival's confusion--she
jumped to her feet with a little cry, tied on her hat, and ran away up
the hill, as if to hide herself among the trees. Then Miss Rose seemed
suddenly to remember about you. She dismissed her admirer with the
peremptory assurance of an old hand, who knows exactly what she means
to do, and strolled calmly across the sands to meet you coming back to
her. She must have managed very well. I saw her leaning on your arm as
friendly as possible--a clever girl, but a sad handful, I should
imagine, for the man whose doubtful fortune it may be to get her for a
wife."

"And now you have done, Susan, with your romance? Let me congratulate
you on your talent for 'putting that and that together,' and producing
a coherent fiction from true premisses, which might do credit to the
author of the 'Arabian Nights.'"

"And pray, if the premisses are true, and nothing of my own is added,
how can you venture to suppose that my inferences are astray? You are
infatuated, Joseph Naylor."

"My good creature, the young lady has told me of this interview with
the tall young man which you have described so graphically. It must
indeed have been exciting and full of emotion, but you have entirely
failed to catch its true import; and, as far as I can see, there is no
reason why you should understand it, either you or any of the twenty
other eavesdroppers you mention, who have been gratuitously
interesting themselves in what does not concern them. Miss Hillyard is
suffering from violent headache in consequence of what occurred, and
has returned to the village to lie down. On second thoughts, I believe
I shall follow her, and try if she will not let me drive her back to
the Beach at once. That will be better than encountering the twenty
pairs of curious eyes during the evening, who will want to watch her
every movement, and piece a romance out of every time she looks at her
watch. Goodbye, Susan. Accept thanks for kind intentions on my
account; but do, pray, be more charitable in future. Good-bye,
Margaret. I am going back at once, and shall be asleep when you get
home. Kiss me good-night, child."

Margaret rose to pay the dutiful salute. Joseph kissed her on the
cheek, and finding his lips so conveniently near her ear, he
whispered--

"Walter's buggy will be the first in the line. He will be waiting. Get
down before the others. Jump in; and God bless you!"

Margaret changed colour violently. Her mother, looking on, was
surprised to see an embrace from an old uncle, produce signs of
emotion. "It must be because of the young man sitting by," she thought
sapiently, and drew happy auguries from the circumstance. Those close
observers are so often astray!

When Joseph reached the inn at Blue Fish Creek, he sent up a little
note to Rose, asking if she would not rather come home now in quiet,
than wait through the racket of the evening, to be followed by a
riotous journey after dark with the rest in their overflowing high
spirits. Rose consented, and they drove home forthwith.

How different were Joseph's feelings now, from what they had been in
the morning! Then, everything was bathed in sunshine and hope. The
bare supposition that aught could go amiss did not once cross his
mind. Now, he could not say what had befallen him, but a cloud had
come down and enveloped him, and blotted out the future, and every
certainty from his view, chilling his hopes and even his desires as
with an untimely frost. The ring lay forgotten in his pocket. It did
not occur to him to offer it again. If he had, the probability is that
it would have been accepted, though perhaps without the enthusiasm
which would have made the acceptance of value in his eyes.

Another phase of feeling had arisen in Rose's mind since her walk with
Lettice. Her friend had betrayed a presentiment, that now Gilbert had
had speech of her, he would win her back; and Rose revolted at the
idea of figuring before her friends as a repentant naughty child. No;
she had made her choice, and she would show that she could hold to it.
She might not be happy in the future, but at least she could be
steadfast. And truly, the man beside her as she drove, so truthful and
so good, deserved all the duty and devotion she could devote to him.
If she did not love as once she might have loved, at least he should
never know it. She would be but the more dutiful on that account; she
would even--what seemed the hardest thing of all to her headstrong
nature--even obey him.

She was very near to him then, if Joseph had but known; but he did
not. The old doubleness between his wife of long ago, and this heir to
her place in his regard, had arisen anew within him, and it was still
the older god who held the shrine. He felt regretfully tender and
considerate to his companion by his side, but the enthusiasm of the
morning was wanting.

They spoke little to one another as they travelled along. Rose was
pale and had a splitting headache, and Joseph was consideration
itself. He forbore to disturb her, assisted her to alight when they
arrived at Clam Beach, and expressed a hope that she would be better
in the morning, when they parted and she went up-stairs.

                            CHAPTER XXXI.

                         THE LADY PRINCIPAL.

The Principal of the Female College of Montpelier sat in her
room--office, call it, or study--her seat of authority, absorbed in
business. Her table was littered with papers; the waste-paper basket
overflowed with them. There was ink before her, a pen in her hand. Her
cap sat crooked on her head; her whitened hair was rumpled. The too
active cerebration within had no doubt disturbed the external trimness
of her dome of thought, as phrenologists used to tell us that it
worked ridges and hollows in the bones of the skull. She was deep in
thought. Her grey, intellectual features were tightened in the effort,
and her eye roved vacantly in space in search of those choice forms
which had long made her style the model of literary expression in
Montpelier.

She had spent the morning in compounding a syllabus, or a
compendium--matters in the manufacture of which she was unrivalled.
Now she was considering her address on female self-culture, shortly to
be delivered before the Institute of Emancipated Woman, with a list of
the hundred books which should form the inseparable companions of
every female aspirant to Breadth of View. Her eye wandered to the
terrestrial globe at her elbow--a symbol of her learned office, handed
down from her predecessors in more simple-minded times; and she
reviewed the distinguished literary reputations in remote places and
times--the less vulgarly popular or comprehensible, the better for her
purpose.

Ha! there was the Nile--Egypt--Manetho! A most respectable name
Manetho, and not too much said about him. The only difficulty was,
were his works extant? She was not sure, and her encyclopædia was too
old an edition to make it worth while looking up. Her eye moved
eastward: India? _eureka!_ The Rig Veda,--Max Müller and the 'Asiatic
Review'! She had read all about it in Littel's 'Living Age,' the
pirate's treasure-house.

The Rig Veda should head her list. She had not read it, to be sure;
but neither had those whom she addressed, and they would not be able
to read it, if they were to try--in the original, at least, and she
intended to pour scorn upon the use of translations; but it looked
well at the head of a list, showed comprehensiveness in the lecturer,
and ensured respect from the omniscient critic of the 'Montpelier
Review.'

The 'Zend-Avesta' made a handsome second; but as she did not desire to
smother her audience under the load of erudition, she considerately
offered it as an alternative to the Rig Veda. "A Saga" came next--she
did not specify which. Her familiarity with Scandinavian literature
was not intimate enough to particularise; but as not one of her
audience would know anything about it, that made little difference.
Being minded that nothing she said should savour of the too familiar,
she gave Klopstock the first place in her German list rather than
Goethe; and for the same reason Marlowe led off her English
dramatists, with Shakespeare far down among the ruck. Then there were
Hegel and Haekel, with permission to add the 'Critique of Pure Reason'
for those who relished intellectual nut-cracking. There was to have
been a name or two from every tribe and tongue in Europe; but in her
ignorance she could think of no Russian but Turguenief; and when she
came to the Lapps, Finns, Liths, and Basques, they had no literary
representative whom she had ever heard of. After that she took up a
publisher's list and filled up the remaining sixty places at random.
What did it matter? People would read what they liked or understood.
If they did not understand, it could not influence them one way or
other. She knew as well as you or I do, reader, that wheat is not
grown on pure sand; that loams, clays, moulds, each produce a
vegetation limited by their capacity; that everything will not grow
everywhere, and that, if it could, it would not be worth much. But
while the public laboured under the fad of comprehensiveness, she
recognised that she, its servant, must be comprehensive too, or her
employer would pay her off and get some one else who was up to its
standard. No one person could read, or, if they could, would care to
read, a tenth part of the literature upon her list; but that she
considered the one useful element in what she was about. It introduced
a moral influence. It would keep her audience humble--an end not
always easy to achieve where that audience is feminine, and more
richly endowed with aspiration than with solid learning--and show them
how much there still was which they did not know, notwithstanding
their acquirements.

There came a timid knock at the door, and a second, which the
Principal heard; and laying down her pen she sat bolt-upright and
said, "Come in."

It was Maida Springer who entered.

At the sight of her subordinate looking crushed and wan, the
Principal's aspect softened. Her impatience of interruption gave place
to those motherly instincts which nestled sweet and fresh about her
heart, though usually sheltered and concealed from an uncongenial
world under the dry husk of her superior-woman-hood.

"You--Maida?... I had almost given up hope of seeing you again. But
have you been sick? You do not look much benefited by your stay at the
shore--rather the other way."

Maida looked down. "I am well, Miss Rolph. I arrived by the
night-train. I suppose that accounts for my--for my want of looks,"
and she sighed; but more for the want of looks, than for herself.

"Did my letter miscarry? It is nearly a fortnight since I wrote."

Maida coloured. "I got it, Miss Rolph, and I am come to thank you. I
know I should have written at once; but--I meant to come instead.
Indeed I started, but--when----" Her voice died away. She looked down
more than she had done before, and her colour deepened.

"What was it, my dear? What prevented your coming?"

Maida lifted her head, drew a long breath, and raised her eyes to Miss
Rolph's face. Then the impossibility of uttering what there was to
tell arose before her. She bowed her head till the hat-brim and the
wisp of blue veil came down between her eyes and those of the
Principal. She strained down her arms before her, locked the fingers
of both hands together, and was speechless.

Miss Rolph was scarcely pleased that her kindly meant interest should
be put aside; but she was not the woman to obtrude unwelcome sympathy.
She stiffened back to business, and observed with manifest coldness of
voice--

"Your neglect may prove prejudicial to your interests, I fear; though
perhaps not. It would have been great advancement for you, and quite a
distinguished position, if you had been able to give the course on
political economy and sociology. You would have been the first woman
in this State to enter that important field. You would have made a
name, and become a leader in our sex's emancipation. On the other
hand, I admit that I felt a misgiving as to whether your character was
yet sufficiently formed for the post. The long ages of woman's
subordination have communicated a weakness of moral fibre to the
individual of today, which it requires maturity of years, experience,
and study, to overcome. I have feared at times that I detected some
remains of the old-fashioned missishness in your character, not yet
subdued. A year or two longer in your present duties may be
advantageous. I have arranged with Dr Langenwoert from Boston to
lecture three times a-week next term. After that--who knows?--but it
depends on yourself. The Committee believes, as you are aware, that
female education should be confided to women alone. You have been
appointed a professorial assistant _pro tem_. to Dr Langenwoert. Avail
yourself of your opportunities. Study his methods; and who knows but
you may succeed him?"

"Oh, Miss Rolph, how good you are! Forgive my seeming
thanklessness,--but, indeed--oh, Miss Rolph!"

Maida came forward and took the Principal's hand. Her voice was too
tremulous to be trusted; her eyes were brimming full. She had entered
that room feeling so lonely, desolate, and without a friend; and here,
in her professional chief, with whom her intercourse had been limited
to what related to her duties, was a woman who cared for her, bestowed
consideration, and was kind. She could have kissed the hand--she would
fain have kissed the lips which had spoken to her kindly; but Miss
Rolph was so very superior a woman, so above and beyond female
weakness!--and what was that which she had said just now about
_missish?_

Miss Rolph wheeled round on her pivoted chair, and looked with her
clear, cool eyes in the other's face.

"Maida Springer, you are in trouble! Tell me what it is. Am not I a
woman? Confide in me. I know you have no mother. I would try to advise
you as she might have done, though perhaps I am not quite old enough
for that."

She might have spared the last observation, being fifty-five, while
Maida was but thirty; but, good lady, though undeniably superior, she
was still a woman.

Maida's eyes overflowed. This was kindness unexpected.

"Take a chair, my dear. Draw up close to me, and tell me all." And
when Maida drew close, she laid a hand upon her shoulder, and one
soothingly upon the fingers wringing themselves into knots in
perturbed irresolution.

"I would--I would! But how? I cannot speak of it!"

"When people have done no wrong, there is nothing they need fear to
tell--to a friend. Injuries and mistakes often seem lessened when we
can bring ourselves to speak about them. A burden shared presses with
but half the weight it did before. Confide in me, Maida, Unburden your
trouble."

Maida's tears flowed freely. She made no effort to restrain them. They
softened the dry crust of misery which encased her spirit. Her head
inclined to her consoler. So did her heart in tender gratitude. She
caressed the soothing hand, but still the pent-up words refused to
come. Miss Rolph waited in silence, but found at length that she must
assist if the explanation was to be made.

"You said, Maida, that you intended to come instead of answering my
letter--that you started?"

"I did. I was at Narwhal Junction waiting for the train, when I met a
very old friend on the platform--going to Clam Beach, just as I was
coming away. I could not resist going back with my old friend, it was
so long since we had met. And after that, the matter of the sociology
class escaped my memory."

"Very strange. Is Clam Beach a scene of such rackety dissipation that
people forget their private affairs? I had inferred from your
descriptions that it was quite retired--a place to rest in."

"My friend and I had not met for years. The meeting engrossed me."

Miss Rolph glanced in Maida's face, one sharp short glance, like an
inquisitive bird, and with the flicker of a smile which did not spread
beyond the corner of her mouth, inquired--

"And did--she?--your friend, take as engrossing an interest in you, my
dear? Such friendships are rare, as well as precious."

"I did not say 'she,' Miss Rolph. It was a gentleman."

"I imagined as much, my dear; but you were so hampered by your noun of
epicene gender, that I thought it best to be rid of it."

Maida blushed. "Oh, Miss Rolph! What will you think of me?--of my
fitness as a pioneer in Woman's cause?"

"Think, my dear? That you are a woman like the rest of us. This was a
feature in your nature that seemed missing. The absence of a universal
weakness does not necessarily argue strength. It may arise from
insensibility, and merely show an incomplete nature. I think better of
you, perhaps. Go on."

"I had known him long ago. My first situation, when I began to teach,
was in his uncle's house. He was a student at Harvard, but spent his
vacations at home with us. His cousins were mere children; his uncle
and aunt had their own affairs; I was his sole companion. He taught
me much. It was a happy time. We were both young, fresh and hopeful,
and--well---- He is the only young man I ever saw much of. He expected
to make his fortune right away, and we---- But I cannot speak of
it....

"That was ten years ago. We corresponded--for the first year or so.
After that we lost sight of one another. I came to Montpelier; he--was
making his fortune. He recognised me on the platform at Narwhal
Junction. I was so pleased to find that he remembered me. He asked if
I was married, and he told me that he was not. He went back with me to
Clam Beach--or so I thought. Perhaps I ought to put it the other way,
and say that it was I who went with him; but at any rate we went
together, and we were together there all the time. He knew nobody but
myself, and he did not care to make acquaintances, it seemed; and he
stayed on, though at first he had spoken of leaving in two days.
And so it appeared to me--is there not some excuse for me, Miss
Rolph?--that we were taking up our intimacy just where we had laid it
down before."

"Ah!" said Miss Rolph. The bird-like look of the philosophic
investigator had left her features now, and she was listening with
genuine interest. She had still a heart, away down deep below her
theories and professional fads, and there was perennial interest for
her in a kindness between man and woman; which may have been unworthy
of her position, but was as salt to preserve her nature sound and
wholesome.

"What is his name, my dear? One follows a story so much better for
knowing the names."

"Roe--Gilbert Roe. Has it not a pleasant sound?"

Miss Rolph's eyelids quivered in a momentary start. Then she looked
down into her lap, compressing her lips, and making as if she would
show no sign till all was told.

"He stayed on more than a week. He is there now, I daresay. He was
with me constantly--sat beside me at table. People said it was a sure
case, and congratulated me; and I--well--what else could I think? I
believed them. Looking back now, with my insight cleared by what came
after, I am bound to own that he said nothing in all that time. When I
tried to hark back to the community of feeling that had subsisted
between us long ago, he disregarded and passed it by. I am not
accusing him of behaving badly, remember. It is my own foolish
credulity alone which I have to blame; and oh, Miss Rolph, what
humiliation it has brought on me! It hunted me away home here. I dared
not, for shame, go back to Clam Beach, even to bring away my things."

"I do not follow."

"We went one day--it was yesterday, but it seems like years since, for
the gulf of misery I have waded across since then. There was a
clam-bake at Blue Fish Creek, and we were there. Everybody was there.
We were sitting apart in a shady place, waiting till the heat would
temper down. He was smoking or reading the paper, I forget which. All
of a sudden he jumped up and left me. I looked round. He was
addressing a lady who seemed unwilling to hear him. She tried to pass
on without noticing him. She had taken no notice of him at the Beach,
though they had been living under the same roof for a week. He
persisted in accosting her, and angry words passed between them. She
said she was free of him. He would not admit it."

"Who was the lady?"

"A Miss Hillyard of Chicago or somewhere. I am not acquainted with
her."

"That is my niece! The Gilbert Roe you speak of must be her husband."

"Husband? Ah! that may explain the cruelty of what he did next. And it
was cruel and humiliating to me! And there need have been no occasion
for it, if he had told me at the first that he was married. She
taunted him with my friendship. I heard her. And he--was it manly of
him?--he actually proposed to bring her to me, to ask if there was
anything between us more than old acquaintanceship!" Maida's voice
rose into a cry as she said it. She clenched her hands; and cheeks,
brow, neck, grew scarlet, and then she buried her face in her
handkerchief and sobbed.

"It must be Rose, my niece, and her husband. I would believe anything
that could be told me of them. There never were two such ill-regulated
young things brought together, I do believe--so fond, so foolish, so
obstinate and wayward. There never was such a fiasco as their married
life has proved. Both handsome, both clever, both well off, and each,
I believe, most truly attached to the other; yet neither would forbear
to gratify a whim, neither would submit to be crossed in the smallest
trifle by the other. They squabbled away for not much over a year, and
then the Divorce Court came in and parted them. A pair of unruly
children! It was whipped they should have been, and made promise to
kiss and be friends. Instead of that, they are divorced and
discredited for life, and nothing good need be expected ever to happen
to either of them any more. These ill-considered changes in our
customs are deplorable. It is good to rescue the downtrodden from
oppression, but only evil can come of confounding liberty with
licence."

"Perhaps you may be mistaken," Maida answered, looking up and drying
her eyes. It consoled her to hear her affronters soundly scolded, even
in their absence. "Hillyard is no such uncommon name. This lady passed
for unmarried at the hotel, and they say she is engaged to be married
to a gentleman from Canada. Yes, by the by, it was to remonstrate
about that, that Mr Roe spoke to her."

"So the Divorce Court, even, does not end their squabbles! Whom was
she said to be engaged to?"

"A Mr Naylor--a real nice gentleman, and devoted to her. Every one was
talking about the beautiful presents of jewellery he had ordered her
from New York."

"Naylor? What is he like?"

"He is real nice, I should say, by his looks, and very rich. He has
some nieces with him, well dressed and real aristocratic. Belong to
the first families, I guess, and quite thick with all the first people
at the Beach. No culture to speak of, but high-strung--very!"

"How old is this Mr Naylor, should you suppose? and what is he like?
Is he a tall man, now, for instance?"

"He is not tall--no. Thick-set, almost stout; a heap shorter than
Gil----Mr Roe. Middle-aged. His hair is beginning to turn. Not old,
though certainly not young, but with a nice kindly face, and real
cheerful. I hope she will stick to him. It would be real distressing
if she were to jilt him, and I don't see what call a divorced husband
can have to interfere. What were divorces made for, if not to keep bad
husbands from bothering?"

Miss Rolph had been moving uneasily in her chair. She stood up now,
looking agitated but very firm.

"I believe I know this Mr Naylor. The engagement must be broken off
without an hour's delay. The idea is horrible!... I thought I had done
with this awful girl. When she left her husband, and refused to listen
to right principle and common decency, I washed my hands of her. But
this---- It is an unimaginable horror! When does the next train leave
for Clam Beach, I wonder? How do you go?"

"You cannot go to-night You will not be able to connect," Maida
answered in some disgust. The idea of Naylor's coming in and securing
the lady, and leaving Roe forlorn, which she had begun to conjure up,
was distinctly consoling. She did not like to think of the energetic
Miss Rolph intervening to upset the pleasing possibility.

Miss Rolph spread out a map. "There is Lippenstock, a station where
all trains stop, close by. I can book for there, and drive over in the
evening."

Maida sighed. "If you go, Miss Rolph, would you kindly mention to Mrs
Denwiddie that I am here? You know her, I daresay; you seem to know
every one at the Beach. Say I got a telegram--say anything. She is
sure to be thinking something dreadful about my going away so
sudden-like--without a word, or taking away my things."

Miss Rolph, in her agitation, looked round on Maida. She could not
help smiling, notwithstanding her anxiety. The world is filled with
such a tangle of conflicting interests, and each of us has room in his
little brain only for the few which connect with himself.

"I do not know the lady, my dear; but I shall mention at the office
that you were suddenly called home. I will settle your bill, and bid
them pack up and forward your things."

                            CHAPTER XXXII.

                "YOU MAY TRUST ME TO HOLD MY TONGUE!"

The dance at Blue Fish Creek was a success of its kind--the kind which
might be expected. It was held in the "town hall," a sort of loft
above the station of the village fire-engine, the one large room of
the place; used on Sundays as a church by some sect which had not
attained to a meeting-house of its own, as a singing-school on winter
nights when the younger villagers grew tired of remaining at home, and
as general place of gathering where the people met to discuss politics
or to be entertained by itinerant players.

The hall was crowded and very hot. Three fiddles supplied the
squeaking music of catgut in agony, while the young and active
disported themselves amid clouds of dust of their own raising. The
dances were complicated and strange, being of the kind in which an
earlier generation loved to take exercise; but the motley crowd was
happy--poussetted, chassied, and performed feats which I can neither
name nor spell, with a will.

Margaret Naylor had had a great deal of young Petty's company, and was
rather weary of him. From the moment when her uncle had bidden her
farewell, her attention to the young man's conversation had begun to
wander. Exert himself as he might, he failed to interest her, and he
grew depressed himself in consequence. In the hall he persuaded her to
dance once, but she refused point-blank when he ventured to ask her
again. He felt dispirited, and soon withdrew from the festive throng,
going out into the night, which had fallen dark and starless, and
wandering round within hearing of the fiddles and the stamping feet,
like a Peri shut out of Paradise--detesting the sounds of mirth in
which he had no share, but unable to drag himself away. Even tobacco,
that silent comforter of the miserable, failed to soothe him, and he
hung around the entrance of the hall, to which he had no desire to
return.

It was growing late. The stablemen had put the horses to the vehicles
for the home-going, and ranged them in double row to await the
breaking up of the gathering; but still the fiddlers plied the cruel
bow upon the screeching catgut, and still the steady tramp of the
dancers went on as briskly as ever. Petty lighted a fresh cigar, and
told himself that his time of waiting had nearly expired. As the
thought formed itself, a figure passed him coming down from the hall.
It was muffled, so far as the lightness of summer attire would admit.
Something was drawn over the head which made it unrecognisable as it
passed quickly from under the dim lamp on the stairs into the darkness
without. It stood for an instant accustoming itself to the gloom. He
could see it turn about as if looking for an expected object. There
was an omnibus provided with a lantern in the line of vehicles, which
weakly illumined a little circle around it, and lent a few feeble
indications as to more distant objects. The figure looked around
again, and then, in a tremulous voice raised little above a whisper,
it uttered the one word "Walter!"

Walter Petty's heart bounded into his throat, and beat tumultuously,
like a startled bird, against his ribs. This was an altogether
unexpected turn. She--there was no question as to who she was, when
once that dear voice sounded--she called him by his name! It was her
first time to do it, and he had not dared to hope she ever would. The
cigar was tossed into the gutter in a twinkling, and he was at her
side, too deeply moved to trust himself to speak.

That was unnecessary. Her own excitement compelled her to take the
word.

"Oh quick, Walter! If mamma should miss me, and come out in search!
What a commotion! Hurry! quick!... The buggy in front?--is it not?...
You have everything ready of course? Oh hurry!"

Petty was puzzled What was she up to? Yet it did not matter what. It
was right, or she would not do it. And if there was danger, he would
be at her side. She flew to the front of the line, he striding, almost
running, beside her. She was in the buggy in an instant. He followed.
The reins were in his hands. The stable-boy let go the horse's head.
They were away.

Away, but whither? Home, of course. Where else could she desire to go?
Yet why so much mystery? such anxiety to escape, and steal away? It
must be that detestable Wilkie, who had been so intrusive at
Fessenden's Island. She had been staving him off for a week back, he
thought he had observed. Now her mother was forcing him on her, and
she had run away. What a fine spirited girl! Yet why did all the
mothers run after that cad Wilkie? He was not a gentleman even, and
yet Walter's own mother had been encouraging his attentions to his
sister Ann. A pretty brother-in-law to bring into a family! And to
think the fellow should presume to have two strings to his bow! And
such strings! It made this jolly clatter of hoofs and wheels, this
careering headlong through the night, even more delightful, if that
were possible, to think of the other man left behind and biting his
nails in disappointment.

"Quicker, Walter! quicker! Are we safely away, do you think? Can they
overtake us?" How close she nestled to his side! How strong and
protecting he felt! How heroic, as he peered out in the darkness,
between the ears of his horse, to see if all were clear! The horse
could see the way and take the turns, Walter could not. His driving
was an act of faith; he could but sit and peer, and feel the horse's
mouth, and be alert against a stumble or anything which might befall.
Not seeing, he could not guide. It was late, fortunately, and there
were no other travellers on the road. The night air blew past them
fresh and exhilarating, and the soft pressure of his companion
nestling to his side was an unspeakable delight. She seemed
agitated--unduly, as it appeared to him; but then a woman is a tender
thing, he thought, and how tender and solicitous he would be of this
one, if she gave him the right! He could feel her tremble, and she
spoke short ejaculatory sentences from time to time; not as if she
wanted him to answer--and what was there he could say?--but merely to
relieve her high-wrought feelings.

"I did not think I could have done it, Walter. Only for you I could
have broke away. I feel quite wicked. But surely even mamma has no
right to come in between you and me; and now she certainly must not."

Walter Petty agreed with the conclusion, but was at a loss to divine
the premisses through which it was arrived at. However, they were
going down a steep hill, his faculties were on the stretch as they
jolted down in the darkness, and he had to support the horse,
momentarily in danger of a stumble or upset upon the loose stones
which encumbered the way. He did not answer, and Margaret was growing
accustomed to the situation and recovering her composure.

They passed a wayside tavern whose windows still showed light,
standing at a crossing where four ways met. Margaret recognised it,
and the next moment observing that they turned to the right, she
exclaimed--

"Walter! That is Mollekin's; you should have turned to the left for
Narwhal Junction. If you keep on as we are going, we shall be at Clam
Beach in fifteen minutes."

"Or ten, dear Margaret," Walter answered.

Margaret bounded up in her seat and drew away. Had Walter not clutched
at her gown in time, she must have fallen out.

"Mr Petty! How come _you_ to be here? What trap--what trick is this?"

"You brought me yourself, Miss Naylor. I have complied with your
wishes as far as I have known how. You called me. You seemed to want
my service. I was proud to be of use."

"You? I was to have met---- I did not call you, Mr Petty. How could
you suppose it? I am not intimate with you. We are common
acquaintances. That is all. What right had you to intrude? You have
done me an irreparable injury. I should not have expected this of
you."

"You came out of the hall in haste, Miss Naylor. You spoke to me. You
said 'Walter.' I obeyed. I supposed you wanted to get home."

"You----" Margaret did not finish the sentence. Why should she betray
herself? she thought. He seemed to have no suspicion as to her
intentions. Why should she enlighten him? As he had frustrated her
design, her best course was to leave him in his delusion. It would
prevent gossip in the hotel. She would acquiesce in his supposition,
seeing that her scheme to get away was balked for the present. "I did
not know you in the dark, Mr Petty; I thought you were some one else.
But it is all right. I have been driven nearly crazy by those jarring
fiddles, and the dust and heat. Thanks for your kind readiness to
oblige. I am dizzy with headache. I shall go to my room at once, and
be asleep before the rest get home."

There was a clatter of hoofs behind them. Margaret drew her wraps over
her head, and cowered low in her seat. Was she pursued? Was she
overtaken? A little in front shone the lights of the hotel. How
welcome they were now! A horseman dashed past at full gallop. He leapt
down at the hotel door, and when the buggy drew up, Walter Blount was
there to receive Margaret on alighting.

"You took away my buggy, Mr Petty," he observed, when that gentleman's
countenance came within the circle of light streaming from the hotel
door. "However, you have brought it safely here. Accept my thanks. I
will relieve you now." Then turning to Margaret, "Now, dearest! in
again!" He followed her, and to Petty's astonishment, the pair were
gone.

Joseph Naylor, lounging on the gallery hard by, had seen the passage.
He came forward and laid his hand on Petty's arm, as, standing
stock-still in his bewilderment, he peered into the darkness after the
vanished buggy.

"A strange part you seem to have played in those young folk's
comedy--a tantalising part, and laughable, if people knew about it.
But we will not tell them, will we? They have been long engaged. Mamma
was adverse, perhaps unreasonable. But she will come round. We won't
interfere, to spoil sport. Will we, Petty?"

Walter looked round rather ruefully. "You may trust to my holding my
tongue, Mr Naylor. My own part in it has not been so distinguished
that I need wish it known."

The runaways were on the road to Lippenstock. Walter Blount had spent
the evening in the hall ready to follow Margaret as she went out. He
had missed her, and waited on, till the party broke up not long after.
Then he had found that his buggy was gone, and not seeing the lady,
surmised she might be in it--might have got in to await him, and
allowed the horse to bolt. He had difficulty in procuring a horse to
follow, but in the end succeeded in bribing the man to take a leader
out of one of the omnibuses, under a storm of reproaches from the
outraged passengers, and had galloped to the Beach in hopes of
overtaking and reclaiming his missing "rig"; and he had succeeded,
recovering both outfit and passenger.

"Oh, Walter! what luck!" cried Margaret. "I thought that ridiculous Mr
Petty had spoiled everything. His name is Walter, it seems; and when I
called you, he answered. He should have known I would not call him by
his name. We must hurry, though. Everybody will know, now, as soon as
they get home. I see we are on the road to Lippenstock."

"Yes. Why should we risk meeting them, even in the dark? But I do not
think young Petty will say anything. He seems a decent fellow who
would not do a shabby thing; and he is not likely to tell an adventure
in which he plays so ridiculous a part. To carry away a lady for
another man!"

                           CHAPTER XXXIII.

                   SUSAN IS EQUAL TO THE EMERGENCY.

Mrs Naylor was late of coming down-stairs next morning, but she took
no special notice of Margaret's not having come to inquire for her,
further than to prepare herself with a taunt at undutiful children
against the moment when they should meet. Her empty chair at dinner,
however, told that something was amiss; and Lucy could give no
information, further than that Margaret had not slept at Clam Beach
the previous night.

"Not slept? What do you mean? Have you been keeping this from me all
these hours? Why did you not tell me at once?"

"Because you make such a fuss, mamma. It was as much as my peace for
all day was worth to disturb you."

"You take it coolly. You must know where she is?"

"No indeed, mamma. She was under your own wing when I saw her last.
You sat on one side of her, and Mr Petty on the other. If she has
broken away at last from such close _surveillance_, it is not very
surprising."

"Has your sister run away, my dear?" asked Mrs Wilkie across the table
of Lucy. Then, turning her eyes defiantly on the mother, with whom,
since their last set-to, she could scarcely be said to be on speaking
terms, she added, "I gave you warning, ma'am, about certain on-goings;
and ye were scarcely ceevil to me on the head of it. Who's right now?
I'd like to know."

"Whist, mother!" said her son, pulling at her gown under the table.
"Let people settle their own hash."

"They would have mixed my son up in their hash, and done for him, if
they could. I'll show them I see through them and their pretensions,
now when they're fand out, and know what a little-worth crew they
are."

Joseph Naylor overheard, and could not restrain a smile, which excited
the indignation of his sister-in-law almost beyond control.

"I remember your polite expressions, ma'am," she said; "but there are
distinctions which make a difference. The gentleman you then chose to
speak of disrespectfully, coupling his name with Miss Naylor's in a
most unwarrantable manner, is fifth son of a deputy-lieutenant and
Custos Rotulorum in Memicombshire, England. You have not been used to
meet gentlemen of his station, and had better not refer to them.
Ignorance becomes ridiculous when it forces itself into notice."

"The fifth son of a tirlie-wirlie, is he, ma'am? I think little of
that. I'd have ye know that my son has a tirlie-wirlie of his own, if
it's a cairidge ye mean. The fifth son of people with a cairidge isn't
much. He'd have to ride outside on the dickie beside the driver, I'm
thinking."

Mrs Naylor was dumb. It is useless to retort on people who do not, or
who will not, understand.

At that moment a telegram was brought to Joseph. He tore it open, read
it, and handed it to his sister-in-law.

"This is from Margaret," he whispered. "Control yourself, and do not
give the people room to snigger at your expense."

The telegram was dated Gorham, New Hampshire. It ran: "Married at
eleven this morning. Margaret Blount."

Mrs Naylor read, and but for the sudden flushing of her features,
controlled herself from any outward betrayal of displeasure. It is the
one unmixed good which comes of living in public, that people are
compelled to suppress their manifestations of feeling; and, driven by
stress of circumstances to seem calm, the more speedily become so
really. Reason, unimpeded by emotion, which is nourished on its own
manifestations, comes sooner to the rescue, and shows how few
miscarriages are worth the distress we are apt to give ourselves over
them. In pretending before observers to make light of a
disappointment, we involuntarily give heed to our own words, and come
to think less of it than otherwise we should have done. Mrs Naylor's
mind, instead of dwelling on her provocation, was forced to conceal
the wound from the impertinently curious, and thereby dividing itself
upon two views of the subject--the grievance and its concealment--was
less disturbed by either.

The first idea which came distinct to the surface, through her mental
perturbation, was an appreciation of her own good sense; and her good
fortune, in having boasted, immediately before having received this
news, of her son-in-law's high connections. Now that the young man was
indissolubly knotted to her family, and she must make the most of him,
the Custos Rotulorum, with his ancestral hall in Memicombshire, was
the sheet-anchor of his claim to consequence. If it was an ideal
claim, instead of the grossly real one she had desired for her
daughter's husband, it was infinitely finer in kind; and she prepared
to take it up, and brandish it vigorously, to cow and overpower
impressible minds, and suppress colonial pretension.

She began to feel quite imperial, after a little trying, and when
dinner was over, had come to feel that a Custos Rotulorum made an
infinitely finer father-in-law for her girl than all the judges in the
Dominion rolled into one could have done. When the ladies gathered
up-stairs, therefore, she played her best card, under the
circumstances, with quite a good heart; she showed them her telegram,
and claimed their congratulations. She talked effusively of "an old
attachment"--"two romantic children, who could not bring themselves to
profane the interchange of their holy vows, with the garish
vulgarities of orange-blossoms and Brussels lace, bride's-maids,
breakfast, and speechifying, but had resolved to go away by themselves
and be married in peace." "She had been persuaded to keep their secret
and say nothing." "They were away on their wedding tour, now; but she
was still under promise to reveal no more." "They might have gone to
California or to visit the Custos Rotulorum," she would not say which,
but she let it be inferred that it was England and the ancestral hall,
to which their happy steps were bent.

The ladies thus unexpectedly called on for congratulations paid them
at once--they could not help themselves; but they paid them perhaps a
little grudgingly, feeling injured at having been balked of the
preliminary tattle. Had it been sympathy and condolence which Mrs
Naylor claimed, they could have opened their hearts much more freely.
They could have mingled a tear or two quite comfortably with hers, and
felt deeply interested in the new sensation; but that two young people
should go away and get married, without telling anybody, and then that
it should turn out a right, proper, and desirable union, was treating
them very badly, in the dearth just then of pleasurable excitement.

Joseph Naylor was the only person who fully enjoyed the scene, as he
walked upon the gallery with Rose, and looked in through the open
windows. What a remarkable woman was this sister-in-law of his, to be
sure! and how little he had been aware of those reserves of strength
and quickness which she was now displaying to such good purpose!
Accustomed in the family circle to have her way, and to overbear
opposition with petulance, peevishness, indignation, or convenient ill
health, as best suited, it had not occurred to him that for once she
could act like a sensible woman and bravely accept the inevitable. He
had dreaded an explosion, a scene, perhaps a fainting-fit and general
commotion, when in helpless trepidation he had handed her that
telegram; and here she was, with a smiling face, claiming felicitation
on the overthrow of her plans and wishes, and actually taking credit
for a result which had worked itself out in defiance of her
opposition.

"There is not an acrobat in Barnum's circus," he said, "who could have
turned a somersault as neatly. I could not have believed our Susan
capable of so sudden a change of front. A woman of her talent and
resource is hid away and completely lost in a small place like Jones's
Landing."

Rose agreed with him, and was vastly interested in the whole affair.
She dwelt on it, recurred to the different points and stages,
discussed, analysed, and combed out every detail separately to its
greatest length. It gratified Joseph that she should concern herself
so warmly in his family affairs, but he would have been glad if her
interest had been sooner satisfied. She contrived that the
conversation should not progress, as it naturally would have done,
from Margaret's love-passages to their own. Even the night on
Fessenden's Island was not able, as Joseph had felt confident that it
would be, to withdraw her thoughts from the runaways to their own
tender affairs. When he endeavoured to transfer the interest, she
returned with renewed curiosity to ask where Margaret and Blount first
met, and from that digressed still further, to demand full particulars
of his circumstances, birth, and parentage. She was as charmingly
companionable as she always had been; Joseph loved and adored as he
always did; but he could not draw her on to the closer and more
personal topic on which he yearned to hold converse.

That topic--their engagement--was one to which this afternoon she had
an insuperable, and, as she told herself, an unreasonable repugnance
to reopen at the present moment. Come it must, eventually, and she
would welcome it; but not to-day. A shadow was upon her, the shadow of
Bertie Roe, an influence to which she was resolved that she would not
yield, but which yet had power to cast an unattractiveness and dimness
over all beside. She had broken with that man for ever, had she not?
but she had spoken with him, in dismissing him, and the converse of
all the world beside had lost its relish. She felt, but would not own
it. Had she not announced openly her new engagement? and was she, like
some poor-spirited slave, to break it off and go back, because her old
tyrant had chosen to lift his finger? What would her friends, the
world, the free-thinking and strong-minded who had applauded her
spirit, say to see her go back to bondage and resume her chains? She
chafed to think of it, and tried to lash herself into new anger
against her husband. And she had felt so strong in her resolve, all
through the bygone week! To think that a few words, and a little
pleading, should have weakened her like this! She was growing unworthy
of her former self. How dim and indistinct her wrongs had grown since
yesterday, when that sweet insidious voice had taken on itself to
explain them away! Why had she listened?... And until yesterday, the
sight of the woman he was always walking with had made her strong; but
that crouching figure under the tree, seen yesterday, who could fear
that? How feel jealous of aught so forlorn? There was a little triumph
in it, that Bertie should have been brought so low; but she missed the
tonic and strengthening influence which had been thus dispelled. She
was resolved to resist, to have done with Bertie Roe; but there was a
strange diffidence of the strength within her, which she would not
acknowledge to herself, but still was aware of, foreboding general
collapse.

Trying to keep up this waning strength, she worked hard at being
interested in Joseph and his family, especially in the family; that
was the easier subject of the two, and it avoided comparisons,
dangerous at this moment--comparison of years, of stature and physical
endowment, which told against him.

And so Joseph and Rose worked out this day in ostensible amity and
intimacy, but with an inward doubt burrowing and working like hidden
currents in spring beneath the ice, eating it away, and honeycombing
the solid mass, which still looks huge and immovable as ever; and will
continue so to seem, till comes the end, and with a crash the massive
structure crumbles and melts and disappears.

                            CHAPTER XXXIV.

                        MISS ROLPH IS SEVERE.

It was growing late at night. The proprietor and his clerk had
concluded the labours of the day, and were arranging with the
house-steward the bill of fare for the morrow. The male guests were
up-stairs in the parlours with the ladies, or else had secluded
themselves to play poker in private rooms, in accordance with the
rigorous house-rule against gambling. Gilbert Roe alone paced the
lower corridor, smoking cigar after cigar, which failed to soothe
him--restless and woebegone, waiting on for he knew not what, unable
to tear himself from the dreariest quarters in which he had ever
sojourned.

He was not popular with the men. He took no interest in their
amusements, having other cares at this time, and they voted him
unsociable and of no account. Since Maida's disappearance, the few
lady guests with whom he was acquainted had asked him where she was;
and on his declaring that he did not know, they had turned away with a
frightened and suspicious glance, as though they suspected him of
having made away with her. He wandered about the house like another
Cain, suspected, dreaded, and shunned, as though there were a mark of
warning and of evil on his brow; but he would not go away while Rose
remained an inmate of the house. He had an impression that there was
an influence within her doing battle on his behalf--he had detected
her furtive glances more than once wandering towards him, and averted
again ere he could meet them, and he would not go away; but the
waiting was inexpressibly dreary in the meantime.

The rumble of wheels was heard outside; a vehicle stopped before the
door. The porter, drowsing in his corner, started to his feet and ran
down to carry in baggage, and the landlord followed to inspect the
untimely arrival. It was a tall spare lady, dressed in black, who
walked straight to the desk and registered herself, "Principal Rolph,
Female College, Montpelier;" then asked to have Miss Springer's bill
made out, that she might settle it, and desired that lady's effects to
be packed up and forwarded.

Having finished her business with the clerk, she turned to follow the
bell-boy to her appointed chamber, and met Roe straight in the eye, as
he wearily paced the tiles, counting the minutes in their lagging
flight, till his hour should arrive for turning in.

"Bertie Roe! Ha! you may well look guilty and ashamed to face me. You
did not expect to see me here, I reckon."

He held out his hand to her, though his look on meeting was scarcely
one of welcome.

"We will dispense with hand-shaking, all things considered. We can
neither of us be very pleased to see the other; but you need not pass
on. I mean to speak my mind to you before I let you go."

"Speak on, Miss Rolph. It is natural you should feel strongly against
me. I will not even tell you that it was not my fault. That would seem
like casting reflections where I promised and still wish to defend."

"That sounds proper enough; but I have more against you than you
think--another instance of your misconduct. What possesses you, Bertie
Roe, to go prowling and ravening about the world like this?--blighting
the lives and devastating the affections of trusting women? Why do you
do it? What pleasure can you feel in crushing a girl's self-respect,
and making her feel shameless and a fool?"

"She does not feel one bit like a fool, Miss Rolph; and her
self-respect is not crushed at all. Far from wishing to crush her, I
am ready to humble myself, and take the blame of what I did not bring
about, and, heaven knows, had no wish should happen."

"Then you did not wish Maida Springer to run away as she did? If she
had stayed, would you have proposed to marry her? You took a curious
way to show your intentions."

"Maida Springer! What have I to do with _her?_ And what have _you_ to
do with Maida Springer?"

"She is a particular friend of mine. I have a high opinion of Maida
Springer, and I think you have behaved to her like a ruffian."

"We are old friends. I have always wished her well, and she wishes me
well, I am sure. An unkind word has never passed between us, and we
have been constantly together for--let me see--all the time I have
been staying here."

"I know that; and when a single man devotes himself in that open way
to an unmarried woman, what does it mean, if not marriage? Was it
honourable of you, Bertie Roe, to behave like that?"

"I do not consider myself a single man, Miss Rolph. I never
shall--unless--unless--which God forbid!"

"Did you tell her you did not consider yourself single?"

"How could I, Miss Rolph? Do you think a man is made of wood and
leather?"

"Then you left her to believe that you were single, Bertie Roe; and
you should be ashamed of yourself. You told her--I have it from
herself--that you were not married."

"Neither am I, Miss Rolph. The Divorce Court has annulled my
marriage."

"You have behaved dishonourably, Bertie; and with callous cruelty
besides, from what she told me, in betraying her weakness as you did,
to the other. It was not a manly act, let me tell you. I expected
better things of you."

"How could I know, or even suspect? Do you take me for so conceited an
ass that I must needs suppose every woman I converse with is in love
with me?"

"That will not do, Bertie. You are not such a stripling as not to know
that girls expect to marry, that society forbids them to make the
advance, and that if a man pays them undivided and conspicuous
attention, they are entitled to believe that he means something."

"I never thought of that, Miss Rolph. If you will believe me, there is
but one woman in the world I can ever feel towards in that way."

"And a pretty way you took to show your love!--deserted her--judgment
by default--'cruelty and desertion'!"

"What could I do? She would not listen to reason. I could not let her
name be dragged through the law reports in company with those of all
the worst people in the State. No; you must acknowledge, Miss Rolph,
that I showed forbearance and consideration there, at least. What
would the charming little tempers we both remember have looked like,
after being carded out and hackled by a pair of foul-mouthed lawyers?
They would have made her a laughing-stock to the whole country. I know
I was right in letting judgment go by default, though it went sorely
against my grain to do it."

"And now you see the consequence. She is engaged to marry another
man."

"But you will not let her, Miss Rolph? You will insist on her giving
me another chance. I am confident she will never be fond of any one
else as she was fond of me, and still is in her heart, if she would
listen to its promptings."

"That you may bicker together incessantly, and quarrel anew?--like a
pair of spoilt children, to be a scandal to decent people?"

"Ah! that is over, you may rely, Miss Rolph. I venture to assert that
we have both suffered too deeply in our separation ever to let the
bond, if it should be renewed, fret us again. Such patience as we
shall have with one another, will be a sight to see. You will help us
to make it up, Miss Rolph? Your advice goes a long way with her."

"I fear not. I have tried ere now, and had my interference declined
with thanks. I cannot attempt to make it up between you and her. In
fact I had resolved to wash my hands of her altogether; but for other
reasons, this new engagement of hers must be broken off, though I
shall not approach _her_ on the subject--in the first instance, at
least. I shall go to the gentleman."

"Only break it off, dear Miss Rolph, and you have my lifelong
gratitude--and hers too, though it seems a bold assertion; but I have
seen signs of relenting, and I believe it is pride, and the fear of
being laughed at, which chiefly keep up the estrangement."

"We shall see, Bertie; but you do not deserve it," said Miss Rolph,
attempting to keep up the rigour of her first words, though the
friendliness of her nod and smile at parting belied the pretence.

                            CHAPTER XXXV.

                              MILLICENT.

Next morning, Joseph Naylor was disturbed in the act of shaving by the
intelligence that a lady desired to see him, and that she was waiting
his coming down-stairs in one of the parlours.

"A lady? Who is it? What does she want?" he inquired of the black boy
who brought the message.

"Principal of the Female College at Montpelier, sah."

"Never heard of the institution. Some one drumming up for pupils, I
suppose. My nieces are rather old to put to school. They would not go
if I tried to put them. Why does she not apply to their mother? Susan
never did allow me to interfere about the schools--or anything else,
for that matter, when she could manage without me."

He finished his dressing quickly, however, and hastened down-stairs.

In the parlour stood a tall, grey woman, clad in black, awaiting him.
He advanced with a low bow and a look of inquiry. The lady looked
earnestly in his face, coming forward to meet him with extended hand.

"You do not know me, Joseph?"

Joseph stared in surprise at so intimate a form of address; yet there
was a tone in the voice which seemed not unfamiliar, though he could
not connect it in his memory with any particular time, place, or
person.

"I am changed, of course,"--it was still the lady who spoke,--"but so
are you. Try if you cannot recall. It is five-and-twenty years since
we last met."

"You have the advantage, ma'am."

"My name is Millicent Rolph. You know me now?"

"You? Do you mean that you are Lina's sister?"

"I am, Joseph--your sister-in-law. You cannot have forgotten our last
meeting at the old home in New Orleans?"

"I can never forget the last time I met Millicent Rolph; but I trace
no resemblance between you and her. She was a woman of thirty,
dark-haired, large, handsome; you--do not resemble her."

"She was thirty twenty-five years ago, and you were twenty-two. The
years have left their mark upon us both. I cannot but be changed. I
have come through the troubles of a lifetime. There was the war, and
mother's death, and the ruin of our affairs in New Orleans; and there
have been trials and much hard work since then, to change me into the
spare, elderly, white-haired woman you see now. You are changed too,
though life has dealt less harshly, I should judge. Yet I recognised
you at once, though I had prayed that I might not--that you might
prove to be another man, bearing by accident the name of my
brother-in-law.... We were such friends once, Joseph, in the long ago.
Sitting under the shade of the magnolias in the dear old garden, with
Lina between us----"

"Have done, Millicent! I confess now that it is you. I recognise your
voice. But do not stir up old memories. They haunted me like ghosts
for more than twenty years. It is only recently that I have been able
to lay them.... Let them lie. You weighed me down with misery enough
when last we met. Do not refer to it. I had rather we had not met now.
It is like reopening a grave, even to hear you speak. It brings back
all I would forget--all I have been cheating myself into believing
that I had buried and got rid of at last."

"I can understand the feeling."

"What can I do to serve you? Tell me; but let us part at once. I will
do anything, but I cannot stand here listening. Your voice is heavy
with memories like forebodings; my heart sinks at the very sound.
Speak, and let me leave you. What do you want?"

"I want nothing, Joseph--nothing for myself. It is for your own sake I
am come, and it tears my heart to say the things I have to tell you."

"You said something like that when you acted so cruelly before, you
and your mother; but you did not spare me."

"I am come to warn you, Joseph, against this marriage you propose to
make."

"You are? Have you not injured me enough in my affections already? Are
five-and-twenty years of widowhood not enough to have inflicted on one
who never knowingly offended you? What wrong have I done you, that you
should persecute me like this?"

"Joseph, I always loved you like a sister. It crushes me to be made
the herald of your disappointments; but I have no choice."

"I will not listen to you. You shall not put me from Rose as you did
from Lina. Let me pass."

"You cannot marry Rose. You must stop and hear me;" and she planted
herself between him and the door.

"Then I must escape by the window; and there she is, standing at the
farther end of the gallery. How spirited and sweet she looks--how like
our Lina!... Millicent, you will pity, and not come in between? Look,
she sees us! She starts. She is coming to us with that pretty shyness
which seems half defiance. One would think she knew you well,
Millicent?"

"She does, Joseph. Listen to her when we meet; it will save a world of
painful explanation."

Rose came forward, not very quickly, though pride forbade her
faltering. She held her head erect, and her colour was heightened; but
her eyes were far from steady, and for all her endeavours to outface
the situation, betrayed an inclination to seek the ground.

"You here, Aunt Millicent? I did not know that you and Mr Naylor were
acquainted."

"_Aunt_ Millicent? Are you two related, then?" gasped Joseph, his
nether jaw falling.

"She is your own daughter, Joseph Naylor! It was to tell you so that I
sought you out--to preserve you from the hideous mistake you were
about to make. But oh! it breaks my heart that I should be your
messenger of evil tidings again."

Joseph leant against the window-jamb, looking very pale, and uttering
a sigh so deep that it sounded like a moan.

"Do you mean that she is Lina's child?" he said, after a pause.

"Yes; and yours."

"I never was told that I had a child. You might have told me that,
when you told the rest."

"Would it have been easier, think you, to bear the loss of Lina, if
you had been told that we were keeping you from your child? If we had
told you of her birth, perhaps you might have claimed her. Lina must
have learnt everything. She would have died of shame and remorse."

"When was the child born?"

"The day the news reached us of her father's loss at sea; her birth
was hastened by the news. The mother nearly died. She fell out of one
fainting-fit into another, till exhausted nature could endure no more.
For days her life hung trembling in the balance, and then the sight of
the baby turned the scale. There was something to live for--something
that seemed part of you. We took them North. The baby throve, and for
her sake poor Lina took heart and tried to live."

"And you deprived the child even of its father's name?"

"Hillyard adopted her. Lina had no other family. She lived five years
only after that marriage."

"Why did you not restore her to me when her mother died?"

"We could not, Joseph: the world is so big. Where were we to look for
you? You came no more to New Orleans. By-and-by the war drove us
North, and reduced us to poverty. Mother died. I went to live with
Hillyard and bring up the child. He was devoted to her. They were
everything to one another. It would have been cruelty to interfere."

"You seem to have had pity for every one but me, Millicent. Could this
Hillyard's rights in the child compare with mine?"

"You had gone out of our lives, Joseph. We knew--that is, I
knew--little about your family, except that they lived somewhere up in
Canada. That was too far away for us, living in New Orleans, to take
much interest in. Afterwards, when I lived with Hillyard in Canada,
near Sarnia, I did not remember, or know how to set about inquiring."

"You might have been more considerate, Millicent. You have had a care
for every one but me. I do not deny that you do your duty in
interfering to prevent me from marrying my own daughter; but you
should have begun sooner. To find an intended wife changed into a
daughter is--is--is a shock!"

"You will bear it, Joseph, like the man you are. In any case, you
could not have married this headstrong girl: she is another man's
wife."

Rose flushed, but said nothing. She and her Aunt Millicent had been
accustomed to each other's contradictious speeches all through life.
It was Joseph who came to the rescue of his new-found daughter.

"You should not speak so, Millicent, of your sister's child. You may
not hold with divorces in general, but you should keep quiet in this
case. If the law of her country declares her single, there is no
gainsaying it."

"That is just where the impediment stands, Joseph; for I have taken a
lawyer's advice. She is a single woman in the United States, and a
married one in British territory. She was married at Sarnia in Canada.
She is Bertie Roe's wife wherever British law prevails, seeing that
she was granted her divorce on grounds which a British court will not
allow. See the scrape your daughter is in! and use a father's
authority to send her back to her husband."

Rose tried to grow angry. She turned upon her aunt with a frown, to
repudiate the proposal and declare she would never go back. But the
words failed her; a strange, sweet weakness stole through every limb.
She felt conquered without knowing how, or desiring to know why. She
covered her face and burst into tears.

Millicent saw her opportunity. While father and daughter were still
struggling with themselves to regain composure, she sent for Roe,
presented him to his father-in-law, and explained the legal position
of his relation to his wife.

The wife kept her face concealed in her handkerchief, but she relented
so far as to let Bertie take her hand. To all expostulation she
declared that she could not do more. "Was she to make herself the
laughing-stock of the house? She was on American ground, where
Millicent herself acknowledged she was free; and she would remain so,
or go right away from everybody, if they teased her any more."

It was concluded at length that they should return to Canada that very
day. Roe, Mrs Naylor, Lucy, and Millicent, accompanied Rose and her
father; and Blount and Margaret were telegraphed to meet them at
Jones's Landing. There, away from the curious eyes of fellow-guests
who had been witnesses, if unconscious ones, of their little comedy,
the party at once fell into their readjusted relations with one
another. Joseph, with a grown-up and married daughter, naturally took
the position of benevolent patriarch and head of the family. He
associated Blount in his business, thereby securing that his niece
should not be carried away into the wilds, and contenting his
sister-in-law Susan, who thereafter maintained in private to Lucy that
she had carried her point after all, notwithstanding the seeming
defeat; as, but for the stand which she had made against Margaret's
living in the woods, it never would have occurred to Joseph to provide
for Blount, and settle the pair beside her at Jones's Landing.

From the moment Rose got into the railway at Narwhal Junction, she
slid contentedly back into Mrs Roe. No one ever again alluded to an
estrangement between the married pair, and Jones's Landing was left in
total ignorance that their married life had ever been other than the
even, trustful, and happy existence which it had now become. The two
seemed never apart, never weary of each other's society, yet never in
each other's way in fulfilling the duties of social life. The only
separation which took place between them was when Gilbert returned to
Chicago to wind up his affairs there, preparatory to settling in
Canada beside his father-in-law. Rose shrank from meeting again the
aiders and abettors who had encouraged her matrimonial escapades, of
which she was now thoroughly ashamed, as well as the friends who had
disapproved of her conduct. Having sealed a peace with her husband,
she was fain to forget that they had ever been divided. Scenes and
persons associated with the estrangement had become alike detestable
to her; she wished never to see or hear of them again. The only
occasion on which she has ever recurred to that miserable year of her
life was when, about twelve months after their establishment at
Jones's Landing, she came unexpectedly upon Bertie writing a letter,
with a case containing jewellery lying open on the desk beside him.

"What a lovely bracelet, Bertie!"

He looked up, colouring and confused, and drew the blotting-paper
across his letter.

"And you are writing! To whom, pray? Sending valuable presents to
ladies, and not a word to your wife. There was a time--when,--but
never mind. Who is it you are writing to?"

"It is--but you never heard the name--Mrs Langenwoert."

"No. Where did you know her?"

"Do you remember the little schoolma'am at Clam Beach?--the last
lady you did me the honour to be jealous of? She is to be married
to-morrow."

                               THE END.

                PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS.

End of Project Gutenberg's True to a Type, Vol. II (of 2), by Robert Cleland