Chapter XVII…

Chapter XVII

The next morning, about eight o'clock, the only covered carriage of which Gracias could boast drove up to the door of East Angels. From it descended (it really was a descent, for the carriage had three folding steps) Evert Winthrop, then Garda, then Mrs. Carew, to meet, gathered in the lower hall near the open door, Dr. Kirby and his mother, the Rev. Middleton Moore, Madam Ruiz, Madam Giron, and, in the background, Pablo and Raquel. Margaret was not there, nor Celestine; but Looth's head peeped over the old carved railing at the top of the stairway, and outside, gathered at the corner of the house, were Telano, Aunt Dinah-Jim, Maum Jube, and Cyndy, furtively looking on. Dr. Kirby's face was dark. Mr. Moore, who always preferred that everything should be as usual, was doing his best (in opposition to the Doctor) to keep it usual now; of course they had been anxious; but Garda was found, he did not see why they should continue to be distressed. Little Mrs. Kirby, in her neat brown bonnet with little brown silk cape, looked apprehensive. Madam Giron (with some hastily donned black lace drapery over her head) and Madam Ruiz appeared much more reserved than was usual with them.

The arriving Betty alone was radiant; but she shone for all. She half fell out of the carriage in her haste, and almost brought Evert Winthrop, who was assisting her, to the ground. Garda, while waiting a moment for these two to disentangle themselves, glanced at the assembled group within, and, smiling at their marshalled array, waved a gay little salutation to the Doctor, who was advancing to meet them. But the Doctor was in no mood for such light greetings; in majestic silence he came forth, representing the others, representing Gracias-a-Dios, representing himself.

Winthrop detested scenes, he was much annoyed that these people had (as he said to himself) thought it necessary to make one. But he saw that he could not prevent it, they had made up their minds to take it in that way; if he did not speak, the Doctor would, and it was better to speak first and speak lightly, and by ignoring their solemnity, break it up, than be put through a catechism on his own account.

"Ah, Doctor," he said, "good-morning; we have had an accident, as you see, and are rather late. But it isn't of as much consequence as it might have been, because Garda has given me the right to take care of her; she has promised to be my wife."

It was out--the great news! Betty Carew fell to kissing everybody in her excitement, and saying, tearfully, "Isn't it--isn't it beautiful?" Old Mrs. Kirby walked back, and meekly sat down on the bottom stair; she was pleased, but she was also extremely tired, in the reaction she was becoming conscious of it; though deeply interested, her principal hope now was that somebody would think of breakfast. Madam Giron (generously unmindful of her missing horse) and Madam Ruiz came forward together to offer their congratulations; at heart they were much astonished, for they both thought Winthrop far too old for Garda; they tried not to show their surprise, and said some very sweet things. But Mr. Moore was the most startled person present, Winthrop's speech had seemed to him the most unusual thing he had ever heard. He walked up and down several times, as if he did not quite know what to do. Then he tried to present a better appearance in the presence of all these friends, and stood still, rubbing his hands and saying every now and then, in a conciliating tone (apparently as much to himself as to any one else), "Why yes, of course. Why yes."

These little flurries of words, movement, and embraces had gone on simultaneously; and Winthrop had all the time been trying to lead the way towards the stairs. Dr. Kirby had not spoken a syllable, either in answer to Winthrop's first speech, or Betty's tearful "Isn't it beautiful?" or Mr. Moore's "Why yes." But now he found his voice, and drawing Garda--who had kept on laughing to herself softly--away from the women who were surrounding her, "Come up-stairs, Garda," he said; "this open hall is no place for a serious conversation."

It occurred to Winthrop that he might have thought of this before.

Meanwhile the large heavy Looth had gone on a thunderous run through the whole length of the upper hall, on her way to a back staircase, in order to get down first and tell the news to Telano, Aunt Dinah, and the others. For Pablo and Raquel held themselves aloof from the new servants (though kindly allowing them to do the work of the household), and it gave Looth joy to forestall them. Pablo and Raquel were of the old regime, they held their heads high because they were not receiving wages, but "b'longed to de place;" they had small opinion of "free niggahs" still, and were distinctly of the belief that "man's payshin" was an invention of the Yankees, which would soon come to an end. "Den we'll see squirmin'--ki!"

When the friends were re-assembled in the drawing-room up-stairs, Dr. Kirby said, with gravity, "Let some one inform Mrs. Harold."

Winthrop repressed a movement of impatience; the little Doctor with his magisterial air, the tall, lank clergyman trying to conciliate his own surprise, Mrs. Carew with her ejaculations and handkerchief, the two Spanish ladies, who, as it was a sentimental occasion, stood romantically holding each other's hands, even poor tired little Mrs. Kirby, folded up quiet and small as a mouse in her chair--they all seemed to him tedious, unnecessary. Then his glance reached Garda, who was looking at him over the low bulwark of the Doctor's shoulder. His face softened, and he smiled back at her, evidently they must let these good people have their way.

But Garda was less patient. "I shall go myself to find Margaret," she said; and slipped from the room before the Doctor could stop her.

"I don't think she will come back immediately," said Winthrop, smiling a little with recovered good-humor at the solemn face the Doctor turned towards him. "If these friends will kindly excuse me, I should like to go to my room for a while, as I have been up all night; perhaps you will come with me?" he added to the Doctor;--"for a moment or two."

It was not at all the Doctor's idea, this easy "moment or two," of the formal interview which should take place between the suitor and the guardian. But neither had it been at all to his taste--Winthrop's first remark that they were "rather late." Rather late--he should think so, indeed! About fifteen hours. However, his genuine fondness for Garda induced him to waive ceremony, and he prepared to follow the northerner who, with a courteous bow to the others, was turning to leave the room.

But they would not let him go so, they must all shake hands with him again. Madam Ruiz and Madam Giron turned their lovely eyes upon him, and said some more enchanting things; Betty, taking his hand in both of hers, gave him her blessing. Mr. Moore's clasp was more limp; he was a very sincere man, and did not know yet whether he was pleased or not. He did not think Penelope would know. When Winthrop and Dr. Kirby had left the room, he took leave of the ladies, mounted his pony, and started on his return to Gracias; perhaps, after all, Penelope would know. Madam Ruiz and Madam Giron went next, not aware that the tidings they carried would bring another access of that terrific rage to Manuel when he should hear it (in Key West), and a heavy conviction that the world's last days were certainly near to poor stiff Torres. Betty Carew was to remain; to her, when they were alone together, Mrs. Kirby, waiting for Reginald, confided her need for breaking her fast.

"And I'm famished too," said Betty, wiping her eyes decisively for the last time, and putting away her handkerchief; "only one doesn't remember it now, of course, at such a time as this." (But Mrs. Kirby thought she did remember.) "We had a little something before we started, at my house--where dear Evert in the sweetest way brought Garda, as soon as they reached Gracias; but it was only a little, and I'll go directly out now myself and speak to Aunt Dinah, as Mrs. Harold and Garda are talking, I reckon--yes, indeed, they've got something to talk about, haven't they? and what a comfort this will be to Mrs. Harold, coming so soon after her taking charge of the dear, dear child, and making her more than ever one of the family, of course; and Katrina too, what a comfort it will be to her to have her dear nephew so delightfully married! But there, I'll go out and speak to Aunt Dinah; 'twon't be long, Mistress Kirby; 'twon't be long."

Mrs. Kirby hoped it would not be; she sat very still in her low chair, it seemed to help her more if she sat still. She was seventy-five years old, and a very delicate little woman; her last meal had been taken at five o'clock of the afternoon, or, as she would have said, of the evening, before. She had been up all night, having started with her son for East Angels soon after Telano had appeared at their door late in the evening, saying that Garda had not come home, and Mrs. Harold wished to know if she were with them; Reginald, though in his mental perceptions so keen, was very blind at night as regarded actual vision; in consequence they had missed their way, and after long meandering wanderings over the level country in various directions through the soft darkness, behind their old horse June on a slow walk (her white back was the only thing they could either of them see), they had found themselves at dawn far away from East Angels, so that they had only been able to arrive there half an hour before Garda herself appeared. They had found several of their friends already assembled, and had learned from them that word had been sent down from Gracias that Garda had reached Mrs. Carew's house in safety, with Evert Winthrop; and that all three would soon be at East Angels.

This news had occasioned much relief. Also some conjecture. But Reginald Kirby did not conjecture when they told him the tale, he maintained an ominous silence. Too ominous, Mr. Moore thought: let ominousness be kept for one's attitude towards crime. The truth was that Mr. Moore, much as he admired Dr. Reginald (and he admired him sincerely), thought that he had just one little fault: he was disposed at times to be somewhat theatrical. So he spoke in his most amiable way of Garda's adventure being "idyllic," and turning to the Doctor, added, pleasantly, "Why so saturnine?" And then again (as it seemed to him a good phrase), "Why so saturnine?" And then a third time, and more playfully, as though it were a poetical quotation, "Why?--tell me why?"--which was indeed imitated from one of Penelope's songs, "Where, tell me where,"--referring to a Highland laddie.

The Doctor glared at him. Then he took him by the button and led him apart from the others. "Sir," he said, frowning, "you can take what stand you like in this matter, you are a clergyman, and a certain oatmealish view of things becomes your cloth; but I, sir, am a man of the world, and must act accordingly!" And leaving the parson to digest that, he returned to his post at the door.

When Betty came back from her interview with Aunt Dinah she brought with her a piece of hot corn-bread; "I thought you might like a taste of it," she said. Mrs. Kirby was very glad to get it; she sat breaking off small fragments and eating them carefully--Mrs. Rutherford would have said that she nibbled. "Yes, the sweetest thing!" continued Betty, seating herself broadly in an arm-chair, and searching again for her handkerchief. "Let me see--you and the Doctor started down here about midnight, didn't you? Well, of course we didn't feel like going to bed, of course, not knowing where our poor dear child might be, and so I went over and sat with Penelope Moore; and Mr. Moore very often went down to the gate, and indeed a good deal of the time he stayed out on the plaza; Telano's coming up from here had let everybody know what had happened, and many others sat up besides ourselves, and some of the servants got together with torches and went out on the barren to look, only Mr. Moore wouldn't organize a regular search, because he supposed that was being done here under the Doctor's directions, he never dreamed you hadn't got here at all! At length, when it was nearly three, Mr. Moore came in and said that he thought we had better go to bed and get what sleep we could; that we should only be perfectly useless and exhausted the next day if we sat up all night" (here little Mrs. Kirby heaved a noiseless sigh); "and so I went home, and did go to bed, but more to occupy the time than anything else, for of course it was simply impossible to sleep, anxious as I was. But I must have dropped off, after all, I reckon, because it was just dawn when Cynthy came up to tell me that Mr. Moore was down-stairs; I rushed down, and he said that Marcos Finish, the livery-stable man, had been to the rectory to say that Bartolo Johnson had come to his house a short time before, knocked him up, and told him that the northern gentleman and Garda were ten miles out on the barren, and that he had been sent in to bring out a carriage for them. He confessed--Bartolo--that he ought to have been there hours before, as the gentleman had sent him in on his own horse not much past eight in the evening. But, on the way, he had to pass the cabin of one of his friends, he said--a nice friend, that wild, drinking Joe Tasteen!--and Joe stopped him, and he intended to stay only a moment, of course, which soon became many minutes as the foolish boy lay on the floor in a drunken sleep, while two of Joe's hangers-on, though not actually Joe himself, I believe, made off with the horse. Of course it was a regular plot, and I'm afraid Mr. Winthrop will never see that horse again! When Bartolo did at last wake up, he came in to Gracias as fast as he could scamper, and went straight to Marcos's place and told all about it--the only redeeming feature in his part of the affair--and Marcos got out his carriage, and sent one of his best men as driver, with Bartolo as guide, and then he went over to your house to tell the Doctor, and not finding him, came on to the rectory, and Mr. Moore told him that he did wrong not to come to him before sending the carriage (but Marcos said Bartolo wouldn't wait), because he himself would have gone out in it after Garda, of course. This was the first we knew, in Gracias, of Mr. Winthrop's being with the dear child, and it did seem so fortunate that if they were to be lost at all, they should happen to be lost together. Mr. Moore thought, and so did Marcos Finish, that they would drive directly here, without stopping in Gracias, and so he rode down at once; and I was coming down myself, later, only they did that sweet thing, they stopped after all, and came to me. There they were in the drawing-room when I hurried down, Garda laughing, oh, so pretty, the dear! As soon as I knew, I took her in my arms and gave her a true mother's blessing. Oh, Mistress Kirby, how such days as this take us back to our own spring-time, to the first buddings and blossomings of our own dear days of love! I am sure--I am sure," continued Betty, overcome again, and lifting the handkerchief, "that we cannot but remember!"

Mrs. Kirby remembered; but not with her lachrymal glands; it was not everybody who was endowed with such copious wells there, suitable for every occasion, as Betty had been endowed with. She nodded her head slowly, and looked at the floor; she had finished the corn-bread, and now sat holding the remaining crumbs carefully in the palm of her hand, while, in a secondary current of thought (the first was occupied with Garda and her story), she wished that Betty had brought a plate. "Do what I can," she said to herself, "some of them will get on the carpet."

Garda, escaping from the Doctor, had gone to Margaret's room; she had not much hope of finding her; her not having been present to greet them seemed to indicate that she was with Mrs. Rutherford, and "with Mrs. Rutherford" was a hopeless bar for Garda. But Margaret was there.

Garda ran up to her and kissed her. "The only thing I cared about, Margaret, was you--whether you were anxious."

"How could I help being anxious?" Margaret answered. "It was the greatest relief when we heard that you had reached Gracias." She was seated, and did not rise; but she took the girl's hand and looked at her.

Garda sat down on a footstool, and rested her elbows on Margaret's knee. "You are so pale," she said.

"I am afraid we are all rather pale, we haven't been to bed; we were very anxious about you, and then Aunt Katrina has had one of her bad nights."

But Garda never had much to say about Aunt Katrina. She looked at Margaret with an unusually serious expression in her dark eyes; "I have something to tell you, Margaret. You know how wrong you have thought me in liking Lucian as I did; what do you say, then, to my liking somebody who is very different--Mr. Winthrop? What do you say to my marrying him? Not now; when I am two or three years older. He has always been so kind to me, and I like people who are kind. Of course you are ever so much surprised; but perhaps not more so than I am myself. I hope you won't dislike it; one of the pleasantest things about it to me is that it will keep me near you."

Margaret did not say whether she was surprised or not. But she took the girl in her arms, and held her close.

"How much you care about it!--I believe you care more than I do," said Garda, putting her head down on Margaret's shoulder contentedly.

"No," answered Margaret, "that is impossible, isn't it? It is only that those who are older always realize such things more."

"Well, I don't want to realize anything more just at present," said Garda. She left her friend, and standing long enough to lift her rounded arms above her head in a long stretch, she threw herself down on a low couch. "Oh, I'm so sleepy! And I'm hungry too. I wish you would let me have my coffee in here, Margaret; then I could talk to you and tell you all about it. Don't you want to hear all about it?"

Margaret had risen to ring for Telano. "Of course," she said, as she crossed the room.

"Let me see," began Garda, in a reviewing tone. "I went to sleep. Then I woke up; and after a while I got frightened." She put her hands under her head and closed her eyes. Presently she began to laugh. "That's all there is to tell; yes, really. I got frightened--the barren was so dark and so large behind me."

She said no more. As she had once remarked of herself, she was not a narrator.

Margaret did not question her; she was clearing one of the tables for the coffee.

After a while Garda, still with her eyes closed, spoke again: "Margaret."

"Well?"

"You will have to tell me all the things I mustn't say and do."

"You will know them without my telling."

"Never in the world."

A few minutes more of silence, and then Garda's voice a second time: "Margaret."

"Well?"

"Tell me you are pleased, or I won't go on with it."

"Oh, Garda, that's not the tone--"

"Yes, it is. The very one! Don't be afraid, we like each other, he likes me in his way, and that will do; that is, it will do if you will tell me how to please him."

"You must ask him that."

"Oh, he'll tell; his principal occupation for a long time is going to be the discovery of my faults." But as she looked up at Margaret, re-awakened and laughing, it did not seem to the latter woman that he would be able to find many.

In any case, he had not set about it yet. As he went through the hall towards his room, accompanied by the Doctor, "I take it that it's hardly necessary, Doctor," he said, "to formally ask your consent."

The Doctor waited until they had reached the room, and the door was closed behind them. "I think it is necessary, Mr. Winthrop," he answered, gravely.

"Very well, then. I ask it," said the younger man. And his voice, as he spoke, had a pleasant sound.

The Doctor had liked Evert Winthrop. There were two or three things which he should have preferred to see changed; still, faults and all, he had liked him. And he liked his present demand (though by no means the manner of it); the Northerner was taking the proper course, he had taken it promptly. Nevertheless the idea was impossible, perfectly impossible, that Garda, the child whom they all loved, the daughter of Edgar Thorne and all the Dueros, could be carried off by this stranger without any trouble to himself, at an hour's notice! And that he, Reginald Kirby, should be asked to give his consent to it in that light way! Give his consent? Never!

The Doctor's feelings were conflicting. And growing more so. He looked at Winthrop, and thought of twenty things; at one instant he felt a strong desire to knock him down; the next, he was grateful. He said to himself, almost with tears, that at least it should not be so easy, there should be obstacles, and plenty, of them; if there was no one else to raise them, he, Reginald Kirby, would raise them. He found it difficult to know what he really did think with any clearness.

But Winthrop was waiting, he must say something. "Edgarda is very young," he began, in rather a choked voice.

"I know it. I should, of course, wait until she was older--at least eighteen."

"Two years," said the Doctor, mechanically.

"Yes, two years."

"And in the mean time?"

"In the mean time we should, I hope, go on much as we are going now; she is in Mrs. Harold's charge, you know."

The southerner thought that this also was spoken much too lightly. "Would your intention be to--to educate her further?" he asked, bringing out the question with an effort. It seemed to him that he never could consent to that, to have their child carried off, while still so young and impressible, and subjected to the radical modern processes that passed as education for girls at the high-pressure North.

"No," Winthrop answered, divining the Doctor's thought, and smiling over it, "I have no intentions of that kind, how could I have? If Garda should choose to study for a while, that would be her own affair, and Mrs. Harold's. She will be entirely free."

"Do you mean that you will exercise no authority?"

"None whatever."

"Then you do not consider it an engagement?" said the Doctor, drawing himself up belligerently.

"As much of an engagement as this: she has said that she would be my wife at the end of two years, if, at the end of two years, she should find herself in the same mind."

"For God's sake, sir, don't smile, don't take it in that way! At what are you laughing? It cannot be at Garda, it must be therefore at myself; I am not aware in what respect I am a subject for mirth." The Doctor was suffocating.

"You don't do me justice," said Winthrop, this time seriously enough. "I ask you, and with all formality, since you prefer formality, for your permission, as guardian, to make Edgarda Thorne my wife, if, at the end of two years, she should still be willing."

"And if she shouldn't be? She is a child, sir--a child."

"That is what I am providing for; if she shouldn't be, I should not hold her for one moment."

"And in the mean time do you hold yourself?" The Doctor was still fiery.

"I hold myself completely."

"Do I understand, then, that you consider yourself engaged to her, but that she is not to be engaged to you?"

"That is what it will amount to. And it should be so, on account of the difference in our ages."

There was a silence. Then, "It is an honorable position for you to take," said Kirby.

He had forced himself to say it. For, now that he was sure of this man (he had really in his heart been sure of him all along, but now that he had it in so many words), and his anxieties of one sort were set at rest, he could allow himself the pleasure of freely hating him, at least for a few moments. It was not a violent hate, but it was deep--the jealous dislike, the surprised pain, which a father who loves his young daughter has to surmount before he can realize that she is willing to trust herself to another man, even the man she loves; what does she know of love? is his thought--his fair little child.

Winthrop did not appear to be especially impressed by the Doctor's favorable opinion of him--of him and his position. He went on to define the latter further. "I think it would be more agreeable for us all now, Garda herself included, if she could be made independent, even if only in a small way, as regards money. I had not intended, as you know, to buy all the outlying land of East Angels; but now I will do so; it is just as well to have it all. The money will be in your charge, of course; but perhaps you will allow me to see to the investment of it, as I have good opportunities for that sort of thing? I think it is probable that we can secure for her, between us, a tolerable little income."

"As you please," said the Doctor. Then he tried to be more just. "Very proper," he said.

This was the only allusion between them to the fact that the suitor was a rich man. And Winthrop, often as Kirby's unnecessary (as he thought) ceremonies had wearied him, forgave it all now in the satisfaction it was to him to be considered purely for himself--himself alone without his wealth; yes, even by an unknown little doctor down in Gracias-a-Dios. He felt quite a flush of pleasure over this as he realized that the interview was coming to an end without one word more on this subject, apparently not one thought. He shook hands with the Doctor warmly; and he felt that all these people would talk and care far more about what he was personally than about what he possessed. It was very refreshing.

The Doctor allowed his hand to be shaken; but his feeling of dislike was still enjoying its season of free play. He looked at the younger man and felt that he detested him, he had a separate (though momentary) detestation for his gray eyes, for his white teeth, his thick hair, his erect bearing, he wanted to strike down his well-shaped hands. This stranger (stranger, indeed; a few months ago they had never heard of him) was to have Garda, carry her off, and make what he chose of her; for that was what it would come to. He, as guardian, might raise as many obstacles as he pleased; but if the child herself consented, what would they amount to? And the child had consented--this stranger! A mist rose in his eyes. He turned quickly towards the door.

"I am afraid you have had no breakfast," said Winthrop, courteously, as he followed him.

The Doctor had not thought of this, he seized it as an excuse. "I will go and ask for something now," he said, and, with a brief bow, he left the room. In the hall outside, in a dark corner, he was obliged to stop and wipe his eyes. Poor Doctor! Poor fathers all the world over! They have to, as the phrase is, get over it.

Before Gracias had been formally apprised of Garda's engagement, Mr. and Mrs. Moore came down to East Angels to see Margaret; they came, indeed, the morning after Winthrop's interview with Dr. Kirby, and explained that they should have come on the previous afternoon if they had been able to secure old Cato and his boat. It was no small thing for Mrs. Moore to make such a journey; and Margaret expressed her acknowledgments.

"It is, in fact, an especial matter that has brought me down to-day," answered Penelope. "Would you allow Middleton to go out and look at the roses? It is a long time since he has had an opportunity of seeing them." When Middleton had departed, his wife, who was established in an easy-chair with her own rubber cushion, disguised in worsted-work, behind her, went on as follows: "I have come, Mrs. Harold, about this reported engagement between our little Garda and your cousin Mr. Winthrop" (Winthrop and Margaret had ceased to disclaim this relationship which Gracias had made up its mind to establish between them). "When Middleton returned from here yesterday, he told me what Mr. Winthrop had said--when they first reached here, you know--and we talked it over. Middleton was pleased, of course" (Penelope had known, then)--"I mean with the general idea; as he has the highest esteem for your cousin. But while we were still talking about it--for anything that so nearly touches Garda touches us too--we thought of something, which, I confess, troubled us. Edgarda is lovely, but Edgarda is a child, or nearly so; what is more, we remember that your cousin has always treated her as one. Now a man doesn't care for a child, Mrs. Harold, in the way he cares for a wife, and Middleton and I are both firmly of the opinion that only a love that is inevitable, overwhelming" (Penelope emphasized these adjectives with her black-gloved forefinger), "should be the foundation of a marriage. Look at us; we are examples of this. I couldn't have lived without Middleton; Middleton couldn't have lived without me--I mean after we had become aware of the state of our feelings towards each other. And we both think this should be the test: can he live without her?--can she live without him? If they can, either of them, they had better not marry. Of course, as to what may happen afterwards" (Penelope had suddenly remembered to whom she was talking), "that is another matter; things may occur; we may not be responsible for differences. But, as a beginning, this overmastering love is, we are convinced, the only real foundation. Now, does your cousin care for Garda in this way? That is what we ask. And if he does not, is there any reason that could have influenced him in making such an engagement? At this point of our conversation, Middleton repeated to me a remark of Dr. Kirby's--which I will not particularize further than to say that it contained the Kirbyly coined word--oatmealish. But it was that very epithet that made us think that he had the--the worldly idea that what had happened would cause remark in Gracias, unless it could be said, by authority, that the two persons concerned were formally engaged to each other. Now, Mrs. Harold, that is a complete mistake. You and your cousin, all of you, in fact, are strangers, you do not know either Gracias-a-Dios, or Reginald Kirby, as we do. Gracias will not remark; Gracias has no such habits; and Reginald Kirby's views must not be taken in such a serious matter as this. Much as we like Reginald Kirby, indisputable as is his talent--and we consider him, all Gracias considers him, one of the most brilliant men of the time--he is in some of his judgments--I regret to say it--but he is light! When he speaks on certain subjects, one might almost think that he was" (here Penelope lowered her voice) "French! And so Middleton and I have come down to-day to say that your cousin must not be in the least influenced by anything he may have suggested. Gracias will not comment; Middleton, speaking (through me) as rector of the parish, assures you of this; and he knows our people. I hope you will not think us forward; but we could not possibly stand by and see Garda so terribly sacrificed--married to a man who does not love her in the only true way. And all on account of a misconception!"

"I don't think Evert was influenced by anything Dr. Kirby said," Margaret answered.

"Or would say?"

"Or would say."

"You think, then, that the idea of possible comment in Gracias had nothing to do with it?"

"I don't know anything about that, Mrs. Moore. But I do think that Evert has long been interested in Garda."

"Oh, interested. We are all interested."

"I mean he has cared for her."

Mrs. Moore shook her head, and folded her hands decisively. "That is not enough," she answered. "The question is--does he love her?" And she drew in her small lips so tightly that there was scarcely any mouth visible; only a puckered line.

"You'll have to ask him that," said Margaret, rising. "I am going to get you a glass of wine."

"Now that is the only unkind thing I have ever heard you say, Mrs. Harold. Of course we cannot ask him; his position forces him to say yes, and we should know no more than we did before. But could you sit by--I ask you as a woman--and see Garda sacrificed?"

"It wouldn't be such a sacrifice--marrying Evert Winthrop," said Mrs. Harold, in a tone which was almost sharp.

"It makes no difference who it is, if he doesn't love her," responded Penelope, solemnly; and she believed with all her heart in what she said. She looked at Margaret; but Margaret's back was towards her. She rose, and with her weak step crossed the room to where Margaret was standing, taking some cake from Mrs. Thorne's shining old mahogany sideboard.

This champion of love, as she made her little transit, was seen to be attired in a gown of figured green delaine, the plain untrimmed skirt, which was gathered at the waist, touching the floor. The upper part of this garment had the appearance of being worn over a night-dress. But this was because Penelope believed in all persons presenting themselves "exactly as Nature made them." She therefore presented herself in that way; and it was seen that Nature had made her with much shoulder-blade and elbow, a perfectly flat chest, over which the green gown was tightly drawn, to expand below, however (with plenty of room to show the pattern), over one of those large, loose, flat waists concerning which the possessors, for unexplained reasons, always cherish evident pride. In the way of collar, Penelope had a broad white ruffle, which, however, in spite of broadness, was loose enough in front (though fastened with a large shell-cameo breastpin) to betray, when she turned, two collar-bones and an inch of neck below. An edge of black lace, upon which bugles had been sewed, adorned her sleeves; she wore a black silk bonnet with a purple flower, and black kid gloves with one button. Her black shawl, with a stella border, lay on a chair.

"Dear Mrs. Harold," she said, when she reached the sideboard, "we are thinking only of Garda. Do content us if you can,--relieve our anxiety; we have the most complete confidence in you."

"There's no reason why you should have it."

But the southern woman took her hands. "Something has vexed you, of course I don't know what; we should be very fond of you, Margaret, if you would let us; perhaps some day you will let us. But this, meanwhile, is another matter, this is about Garda."

"Yes, it's another matter," answered Margaret. She drew her hands away, but her voice took on its old sweetness again. "Don't feel in the least troubled, Mrs. Moore; there's no cause for it. If you want my opinion, here it is: I think he loves her; I think he has loved her, though possibly without knowing it, for some time."

And, ringing for Telano, she gave her orders about the wine, and sent for Mr. Moore--in case he had completed his inspection of the roses.

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Chapter XVIII

One beautiful morning towards the last of November three skiffs were making their way up a tide-water creek which led into Patricio towards its southern end. The little boats were each propelled by one person, who stood erect facing the prow, and using, now on one side, now on the other, a single light paddle; the stream, though deep, was not wide enough to allow the use of two oars, and it wound and doubled so tortuously upon itself that the easiest way to guide it was to stand up and paddle in the Indian fashion. At the stern of each boat, seated on the bottom on cushions, leaning back in the shade of a white parasol, was a lady; Margaret Harold, Garda Thorne, Mrs. Lucian Spenser.

Mr. Moore was propelling the boat in which Mrs. Spenser was reclining; Lucian's skiff held Garda; Torres had the honor of piloting Mrs. Harold. The skiffs were advancing together, though in single file, and the voyagers talked.

"How delightful it is that one never has to speak loud here!" said Margaret; "the air is so still that the voice carries--all out-doors is like a room. I believe it's our high skies at the North, as much as the clatter of our towns, that make us all public speakers from our cradles."

"I don't agree with you; that is, I don't if you mean that you prefer the southern articulation," said Mrs. Spenser.

"Yet I'm sure you prefer mine, Rosalie," said her husband, laughing.

"You're not a real southerner, Lucian."

"Oh yes, I am. But even if I'm not, here's Miss Thorne; she certainly is."

"Miss Thorne is Spanish," answered Mrs. Spenser, briefly; "she doesn't come under the term southerner, as I use it, at all; she is Spanish--and she speaks, too, like a New-Englander." Then feeling, perhaps, that this statement had been rather dry, she turned her head and gave Garda a little bow and smile.

"You have described it exactly," said Garda, who was letting the tips of her fingers trail in the water over the skiff's low side. "Try this, Margaret; it makes you feel as if you were swimming."

"The southern pronunciation," went on Mrs. Spenser, in a general way, "I do not admire." (She spoke as though combating somebody.) "And they have, too, such a curious habit, especially the women, of talking about their State. 'We Carolinians,' 'We Virginians,' they keep saying; and when they are excited, they will call themselves all sorts of names--'daughters of Georgia,' for instance. Imagine northern women speaking of themselves seriously (and the southern women are as serious as possible about it) as 'We daughters of Connecticut,' 'We daughters of Nebraska.' We care about as much, and think about as much of the especial State we happen to live in, as the county."

"The more's the pity, then," said Lucian. "That State-feeling you criticise, Rosalie, is patriotism."

"The northern women are quite as patriotic, I think," said Margaret. "But it's for their country as a whole, not for the State. And for their country as a whole, Mrs. Spenser, haven't you heard them use fine language, occasionally? I have; 'Columbia,' and the 'Starry Mother,' the 'Home of the Free,' and so forth."

Margaret had made remarks of this sort a good many times since the arrival of Lucian and his wife, three weeks before; she compared them in her own mind to the cushions in bags of netting which sailors are accustomed to let down by ropes over a ship's side as she enters port, to prevent too close a grazing against other ships. Not that Lucian and his wife quarrelled, a quarrel requires two persons, and Lucian quarrelled with no one; he had possessed a charming disposition when he first visited Gracias, he possessed a charming disposition still. Nor did it appear that his wife thought otherwise, or that she wished to quarrel with him; on the contrary, any woman could have detected immediately that she adored him, that she had but the one desire, namely, to please him; her very irritations--and they were many--came from the depth of this desire.

She was a tall woman, rather heavy in figure, though not ill made; she had a dark complexion, a good deal of color, thick low-growing dark hair, heavy eyebrows that almost met, very white teeth, and fairly good, though rather thick, features. With more animation and a happier expression--an occasional smile, for instance, which would have revealed the white teeth--she might have passed as handsome in a certain way. As it was, she was a woman who walked with an inelastic tread, her eyes had a watchful expression, her brow was often lowering; her rather long upper lip came down moodily, projecting slightly over the under one, which was not quite so full. She had stout white hand, with square fingers. Her large shoulders stooped forward a little. She was always too richly dressed.

When Rosalie Bogardus had insisted upon marrying Lucian Spenser the winter before, all her relatives had shaken their heads; they were shaking them still. The sign of negation had signified that, to their minds, Lucian was a fortune-hunter. Not that they had meant to insinuate that Miss Bogardus had not sufficient personal charm to attract for herself; on the contrary, they all thought Rosalie a "handsome woman;" but the fact still remained that she had a good deal of money, while the young engineer had not one cent--a condition of things which they could have pardoned, perhaps, if he had shown any activity of mind in relation to obtaining the lacking coin. But here was where Lucian, so active (unnecessarily) in many other matters, seemed to them singularly inert. The truth of the case was not what the relatives supposed; money had had nothing to do with this marriage, and love had had everything.

Rosalie had been a silent, rather dull-looking girl, with a brooding dark eye which had a spark slumbering at the back of it; she had a deep-seated pride which never found its outlet in speech, and she had led always a completely repressed life among her relatives, who were kind enough in their way, but who did not in the least understand her. The girl had the misfortune to be an orphan. Her disposition was reserved, jealous in the extreme; but, as is often the case with reserved women, there was an ocean of pent-up tenderness surging below, which made her sombre and unhappy; for indiscriminate friendship she had no taste, while as to the more intimate ones, she had always found herself forced, sooner or later, to share them with some one else, and the pain her jealousies had given her upon these occasions had been so keen that she had learned to abstain from them entirely; it was easier to live quite alone. When, therefore, at last she believed that she was loved, loved for herself, these long-repressed feelings burst forth; like the released spirit of the magician's vial, they expanded and filled her whole life, they could never be put back in their prison again.

Five years before, Miss Bogardus had met Lucian Spenser at the White Mountains. For a number of weeks they had been thrown together almost daily in excursions and mountain walks, and the young engineer, with his easy, happy temper, his wit and his kindness, had seemed to her the most agreeable person she had ever met. There happened to be no one else there at the moment whom Lucian cared to talk to; still, it was really his good qualities rather than this mere accident of there being no one else that led him on. For he had divined the unhappiness under the pride, he could not resist the charity (as well as the small entertainment to himself, perhaps, in the absence of other diversions) of drawing a smile from that dark reserved face, a look of interest from those moody eyes; yes, it even gave him pleasure to put some animation into that inert figure, so that the step grew almost light beside his. For Lucian had endless theories about the possible good points of the people he met; he was constantly saying of plain women that if they would only be a little more this or a little less that, they would be positively handsome. And he fully believed in these possibilities; perhaps that was one of the reasons why he was so agreeable; it is such a charming talent--the divining the best there is in everybody. At any rate, he was so genuinely kind-hearted, so proselytingly so, if the phrase may be used, that it gave him real pleasure to make people happy, even if it were only for the moment. Of possible reactions he never thought, because he never had reactions himself; if one thing had come to an end, was it not always easy to find another? Easy for him.

He cared nothing about Miss Bogardus's money, as in reality he cared nothing for Miss Bogardus herself. But when the weeks of their mountain life were over, Miss Bogardus found that she was caring for him, though (as he would have honestly and earnestly maintained if he had known it) he had never in the least tried to make her. He had only tried to make her happier; but with Rosalie Bogardus that was the same thing, she had passed, owing to him, the one interesting summer of her dull rich life. She did not know that she could be so light-hearted, she did not know that any one could be; she had had the vague idea that all persons must go more or less unsatisfied, and that this was the reason why so many women (if they had not children to bring up) took to good works and charitable societies, and so many men to horses and wine. Her life had been extremely dull because the people she lived with and those she saw frequently (as has been said, she had never been a woman who made many acquaintances) were all dull; and she had not had among them even the secondary importance which money often bestows, because they were all rich themselves. In addition, there were in the same circle younger cousins much handsomer than she had ever been. The summer she had first met Lucian she was twenty-seven years old; her relatives had become accustomed to the unexciting round of her life--at home in the winter, at the mountains in the summer; a few concerts, some good works; they looked for nothing new from her; she was "only Rosalie" to them. She had every comfort, of course, every luxury; it never occurred to their minds that she might like also a taste of the leading role for a time, a taste of life at first hand; families are very apt to make this mistake regarding the left-over sisters and daughters whom they shelter so carefully, perhaps, but also so monotonously, under their protecting wing.

That summer Lucian was twenty-three; but, tall, handsome, and in one way very mature, he had looked quite as old as he did now, five years later. He was always sunny, always amusing; he had not been in the least afraid of her, of her age, her moodiness, or her money, but had joked with her and complimented her with an ease which had at first disconcerted her almost painfully. He had noticed and criticised her reserve; he had discovered and praised her one little talent, a contralto voice of smallest possible compass, but some sweetness in a limited range of old English songs; he had teased her to make him a pocket pin-cushion, and then when her unaccustomed hands had painfully fashioned one (on her own behalf she never touched a needle), he had made all manner of sport of it and of her. He had helped her dry-shod over brooks (unexpectedly she had a pretty foot), standing ankle-deep in water himself; he had gone miles for some dark red roses, because one of them would "look so well" (as it did) in her hair; he had laughed at her books, and made her feel, though without the least approach to saying so, that she was ignorant; made her realize, simply through her own quickened sense of comparison, that she, Rosalie Bogardus, who belonged among the "best people," and who had enjoyed what is vaguely but opulently summed up as "every advantage," was yet an uncultivated and even a stupid sort of person, by the side of a certain young idler, one who had no background whatever (so her relatives would have said), no connections, no ambitions or industry of the tangible sort, and no money; no appreciable baggage, in short, with which to go through life, save a graceful little talent for painting in water-colors, and the most delightful disposition in the world. Her relatives would have added--an immense assurance. But Rosalie did not call it that; to her it seemed courage--courage indomitable, was the term in her mind.

She over-estimated this trait in Lucian, as she did one or two other traits; he himself would never have dreamed of being so brave as she supposed him to be. He was brave enough, physically he had never known a fear; but that it was indomitable courage which made him smile so light-heartedly in the face of fortunes so modest--that it was a splendid defiance--this was where the slow, silent, passionate-hearted Rosalie was entirely mistaken. It was temperament more than anything else. But it was natural that she should fall into this error, brought up as she had been among people who were immovably set in all their ideas, proud of their mediocrity (they called it conservatism), who had inherited their wealth through several generations, and who, while close and careful in all their ways, enemies to everything in the least like extravagance, were yet fully of the opinion that respectability as well as happiness depended upon an unassailable foundation of fixed income; having always lived in this atmosphere, and possessing small talent for remarking anything outside of her own narrow little world, it was impossible for Rosalie Bogardus to grasp at once a plan of life which differed so widely from the only one she knew. She could not conceive the idea at first of a person like Lucian living on with contented enjoyment, day after day, without any fortune, any hope of inheriting one, or any effort towards obtaining one. She knew people, of course, who had no fortunes; but if young, as he was, they were all engaged in either planning for them, waiting for them, or working for them, with more or less eagerness and energy. Lucian appeared to be neither waiting nor working, and the only plan he had with regard to such matters was to go back to the office of the company that employed him (because he must), when his summer should be ended; so long as he was earning his mere living from year to year (not a difficult task, as he had no very extravagant tastes, and only himself to provide for), he seemed to think that he was doing sufficiently well as regarded material things--always to him subordinate: a state of mind which Rosalie's relatives, if they had known it, would have deemed either a negligence that was almost criminal, or downright idiocy, one or the other. Rosalie herself, not conceiving such an unambitious creed in a nature so rich, idealized what she did not understand. She dressed up this lack of energetic acquisitiveness, and made of it fortitude; in her long reveries she grew at last to think of it in unspoken words which, if written down, would have been almost poetry.

But though she thus idealized his bravery, she did not have to idealize his kindness; that had been real. He had not cared about her money, she had divined that; what he did had been done for herself alone. When, therefore, they met again, as they did in the winter, the acquaintance continued to grow because she fostered it; she had had time to think everything over, to realize what it would be to live without it, during the four months that had passed since they parted. Lucian, responsive and delightful as ever, and never so conceited (this is what he would have called it) as to bring that pretentious thing, conscience, into such a simple matter as this, lent himself, as it were, to her liking for the time being, whenever he happened to see her. With him it was a temporary and even a local interest, and he supposed it to be the same on her side; when he thought of the part of the city in which she lived, he thought of her: "Second Avenue--oh yes, Miss Bogardus;" but he did not think of it or of her for days together, he was a man who had a thousand interests, who roamed in many and widely differing fields. Meanwhile Miss Bogardus thought of him without ceasing; she lived upon his visits, going over in her own mind the last one, and all that he had said, or failed to say, upon that occasion, until he had come again; she dwelt upon every look and gesture, and made the woman's usual mistake of giving a significance to little acts and phrases which they were very far from having. Lucian did not in the least realize that he was the subject of so much reverie; nor did he in the least realize the absorbed, concentrated nature with which he had to do. His life moved on with its usual evenness; for three-quarters of the day he occupied himself in a third-story office, then he sallied forth to see what the remaining hours held for him in the way of entertainment. It is but just to say that generally they held an abundance; other people liked him besides Rosalie Bogardus, he was a man who, from first to last, was dear to very many. About once in so often he went to see his friend of the summer; he no longer thought of her as a person who needed his help especially; but he knew that a visit pleased her, and, when other things were not over-amusing, he would go for a while and give her that trifling pleasure. He never dreamed that it was a great one.

Long afterwards the character of Lucian Spenser was summed up as follows by a man of his own age who had a taste for collecting and classifying characteristics; he even ventured to think such collections almost as interesting as old china. "He was the most delightful and lovable fellow I have ever known; and a great many persons thought so besides myself. But he never was hampered with, he never took, a grain of responsibility in his whole life. This not from selfishness, or any particular plan for evading it; he simply never thought about that at all."

This was true. Even in the case of so serious a thing as his marriage, the responsibility was all assumed by Rosalie.

How she came to have the idea that he loved her, she herself alone could have told. Probably she was deceived by his manner, which was often intangibly lover-like simply through the genius for kindness that possessed him; or by the tones which his voice fell into now and then when he was with any woman he liked, even in a small degree. All this was general, for women in general; but poor concentrated Rosalie, who seldom saw him with other women, thought that it was for one. However her belief had been obtained, it was a sincere one; and she accounted for his silence by saying to herself that he would not speak on account of her fortune. Here again she completely misjudged him; southerner as he was, Lucian's thoughts did not dwell upon money; southerner as he was, too, twenty fortunes would not have kept him from the woman he loved. But, once convinced in her own heart, Rosalie no longer fought against her love for him--why should she? It was the one bright spot of her life. It was possible, after all, then, for life to be happy!

She worshipped every glance of his eye, every word that he spoke; it was pathetic to see the adoration which that repressed nature was lavishing upon a nature so different from its own. But no one saw the adoration save Lucian, she concealed it from all the world besides. For a long time even he did not see it--he was so accustomed to being liked. When suddenly he did become aware of it (long after the evil was done), he left her and left New York. There had never been a word of explanation between them.

Rosalie did not yield; she knew her own heart, she knew that she loved him, she believed that he loved her; she trusted to time. And meanwhile she kept up the acquaintance.

Here, again, Lucian's invincible habit of kindness kept him from telling her the truth, his invincible habit of not taking responsibility made him avoid the responsibility of telling her. He, too, trusted to time.

And there was time enough, certainly; that is, it would have been enough for any one but Rosalie Bogardus. Five years passed, five years of all the torture intermixed with delight which a woman who loves goes through. Now and then they met, and she always wrote to him; she tried to write lightly, as she knew he liked that; she anathematized herself for taking everything in such a ponderous way. She composed long letters about books, about Spanish and Italian, both of which she was studying, about music, and about pictures; she went to see every picture she could hear of, because he painted, not realizing, poor soul, that those who paint themselves, especially those who paint "a little," do not as a general rule care much for pictures, or at least care only for those of a few of their immediate contemporaries, that interest being principally curiosity. Who fill the great galleries of Europe day after day? Who are the people that go again and again? Almost without exception the people who do not paint; for the people who do, it is noticed that one or two visits amply suffice.

But nature will out--at least some natures will. At the end of these five years of a fictitious existence Rosalie Bogardus fell seriously ill; her life was threatened. Then she wrote three trembling lines to Lucian, at Gracias-a-Dios. Her one wish now was to marry him, in order to be able to leave him her fortune; she did not allude to this, but she said that she was probably dying, and hoped to see him soon. Lucian, kind as always, hurried north to Washington, where she was staying with some friends--much more independent now, as regarded her relatives, than she had been before the growth of her love. He married her; it was as well that he had been perfectly sincere, when he did so, in not thinking about her money, because her money did not come to him; she did not die, but improved rapidly; in two months she was well.

Mrs. Lucian Spenser, as has been said, was not a quick or a clever woman, but she had the clairvoyance of love. A year had not passed since her marriage; but it does not take a year for a wife to discover that her husband is not, and never has been, in love with her, and this wife had no longer any illusions on that subject. Lucian's manner towards her was invariably gentle, his temper was always sweet; she could say to herself, miserably enough, but truthfully too, that he did not in the least dislike her. If she had known it, this was something, as things stood. But she did not know it; how should she, without a grain of experience, and with her passionate nature, comprehend and endure the necessity, as well as the great wisdom, of holding on simply to the fact that she was his wife, and that no one on earth could rout her from that position, and that in time his heart might come round to her? She did know, however, she had learned, that such love as their marriage was to have at present must be supplied principally by herself, and she had accustomed her mind to accept this idea; if she was ever discontented, she had only to recall the dreary void of her life before she knew him, and she was reconciled. But while she was still arranging her existence upon these foundations, a new element rose; her jealousy was excited, and it was the strongest passion she had. She discovered that Lucian was very apt to be more or less in love with every attractive woman, every lovely young girl, he happened to meet. True, it was only a temporary absorption; but it was real enough while it lasted. To this the jealous wife could not accustom herself, this she found herself unable to take "lightly." All the moodiness came back to her eyes, she grew suspicious and sharp; such good looks as she had were obscured, in her unhappiness she seemed larger and more round-shouldered than ever.

She was too proud to appeal to her husband, to tell him that he was torturing her. So they lived on. He was wholly unconscious of the extent of her sufferings, though he knew that she had a jealous nature; he felt that he was a good husband, he had really married her more to please her than to please himself; she had not so much as one unkind word, one unkind look, with which to reproach him. He never neglected her, she could not say that he did. She did not say it; her only wish was that he would neglect some other persons. She preferred this condition of things, however, racked though she often was, to any open discussions between them, any explanations; her instinct warned her that explanations might be worse than the reality. A woman who loves is capable of any cowardice; or is it--any courage?

Margaret's little conversational cushion had brought to Mrs. Spenser's mind the thought that she had perhaps been speaking acrimoniously. She did not mean to be acrimonious; but she was not a southerner, as Lucian was, by birth at least, and he was making a great deal of this southern origin of his whenever he was with Garda Thorne. He was with her every day; true, his wife was present, and other persons; and Garda herself was engaged to Mrs. Rutherford's nephew, Evert Winthrop, who had gone north for three weeks or so on business just before they came. But there might be fifty wives and five hundred other persons present, poor Rosalie thought, Lucian would look at that beautiful girl and talk to that beautiful girl, engaged or not engaged, whenever he pleased. She accused him in her heart of not having told her that there was any such person in Gracias. But the truth was (and she knew it) that, as she had never been able to respond with sympathy to allusions on his part to such acquaintances, much less to any recitals concerning them, he had learned (as he had not a grain of malice) not to make them. As for Gracias, she herself had proposed their coming there; she had not cared to spend the winter in New York or Washington, and see her husband cajoled by society; she had never loved society, and now she hated it; Lucian's content was not in the least dependent upon it, fortunately. He had described this little Florida town to her with a good deal of amusing decoration, she had thought that she should like to see it for herself; in her painstaking, devoted way she had studied the sketches he had made while there until she was much better acquainted with them than he was himself. There had been no sketch of Garda Thorne, no sketch in words or water-colors; but perhaps if her jealousies had been less evident, there might have been. She knew that her jealousies were a weakness. That did not make them any the less hard to bear; it was, each separate time, as if Lucian and the person he was for the moment admiring were engaged in stabbing her to the heart; only, in some miraculous way, she lived on.

On the present occasion she said no more about southern patriotism, but gazed in silence at the near shores as the skiffs glided round the next bend. They were in a wide salt-marsh, a flat reedy sea; the horizon line, unbroken by so much as a bush, formed an even circle round them. It was high tide, the myriad little channels were full, the whole marsh was afloat; the breeze fanning their faces had a strong salty odor, the sedges along shore were stiff with brine. Tall herons waded about, or, poised on one leg among the reeds, gazed at them, as they passed, with high-shouldered indifference; now and then a gray bird rose from the green as they approached, and with a whir of wings sped away before them, sounding his peculiar wild cry. The blue seemed to come down and rest on the edge of the marsh all round them, like the top of a tent; it was like sailing through a picture of which they could always see (though they never reached it) the frame.

The stream they were following was not one of the marsh channels; it was a tide-water creek which penetrated several miles into Patricio, and after a while they came to the solid land.

"The odor of Florida--I perceive it," said Lucian; "the odor of a pitch-pine fire! And I don't know any odor I like better." The stream wound on, the banks grew higher, palmettoes began to appear; they all leaned forward a little in the golden air, they formed the most graceful groups of curiosity. At length as the skiffs turned the last bend, a house came into sight. It was a ruin.

But the pitch-pine fire was there, all the same; it had been made on the ground behind a small out-building. This out-building had preserved three of its sides and the framework of its roof; the roof had been completed by a thatch of palmetto, the vanished facade had been gayly replaced by a couple of red calico counterpanes suspended from the thatch. Here lived a family of "poor whites"--father, mother, and six children; their drawing-room was the green space before the kitchen; their bedchambers were behind the calico facade; their kitchen was an iron pot, at this moment suspended over the fragrant fire. The father had just come home in his roughly made cart, drawn by the most wizened of ponies, with a bear which he had killed in a neighboring swamp; the elder boys were bringing up fish from their dug-out in the creek; the mother, her baby on her arm, lifted her bed-quilt wall to smile hospitably upon the visitors. They did not own the land, these people; they were not even tenants; they were squatters, and mere temporary squatters at that. They had nothing in the world beyond the few poor possessions their cart could hold; they were all brown and well, and apparently perfectly happy.

"They look contented," said Margaret, as, after accepting the hospitalities of the place, which the family hastened to offer--the best in their power--a clean gourd with water from the mansion's old well, a look at the bear, the baby, and the pet alligator of tender years confined in a pen near by, they took their way along an old road leading down the island towards the south.

"They are contented," said Lucian. "For one thing, they are never cold; poor people can stand a great deal when winter is taken out of their lives. Here, too, they can almost get their food for the asking--certainly for the hunting and fishing. Yes, yes: if I had to be very poor--if we had to be very poor, Rosalie--I should say, with all my heart, let it be in Florida!"

These sallies of Lucian's fancy were always rather hard for his wife; she admired them, of course--she admired everything Lucian said; but she could not see any reasonable connection between their life, under any emergencies that could come to it, and the life of people who lived behind a facade of counterpane, who caught bears, and ate them from an iron pot. However, there must be one, since Lucian saw it; she smiled assent, therefore, and did her best to answer warmly, "Oh yes, in Florida!"

"But I suppose they have very little chance to improve here--to rise," began Margaret.

"I don't want them to rise," said Lucian, in his light way; "too much 'rising,' in my opinion, is the bane of our American life. The ladder's free to all, or rather the elevator; and we spend our lives, the whole American nation, in elevators."

Rosalie fully agreed with her husband here. This was a subject upon which she had definite opinions. She thought that every one should be as charitable as possible, and she herself lived up to this belief by giving away a generous sum in charity every year. Her ideas were liberal; she thought that "the poor" should have plenty of soup and blankets in the winter, as well as coals (somehow, in charity, it seemed more natural to say "coals"); there should be a Christmas-tree for every Sunday-school, with a useful present for each child; she would have liked, had it been possible, to reintroduce May-poles on May-day; May-day would come at the North about the last of June. She had a dislike for the free-school system; she thought school-girls should not have heels to their shoes; she thought there should be a property qualification attached to the suffrage. She looked at Torres, who was by her side, wondering if he would understand these ideas if she should explain them; and she thought that perhaps he might. She was doing her best, as Lucian's wife--she had been doing it ever since she arrived in Gracias--to discover the "gold mine" which he saw in this young man; so far (as she had but little sense of humor) she had not succeeded. Once she asked Lucian what it was that he found so amusing in the Cuban.

"Oh, well, he has so many fixed ideas, you know," Lucian answered.

His wife said nothing, she, too, had fixed ideas; she could not see, though she tried to, humbly enough, how any one could help having them. Torres could now speak a little English; but as Rosalie could talk in Spanish in a slow, measured sort of way, their conversations, which were never lively, were carried on in the last-named language; it was understood in Gracias that they were "great friends."

Torres had been brought from his retirement by Lucian. Lucian, who told everybody that he delighted in him, had gone down to the Giron plantation to find him on the very day of his arrival in Gracias; and Torres, yielding to his friend's entreaties, had consented to appear again in "society."

In his own estimation, the Cuban had never swerved from his original posture, of waiting. He had not believed one word of his aunt's story of Garda's engagement; women were credulous where betrothals were concerned; they were, indeed, congenitally weak in all such matters. Manuel--a masculine mind though unregulated--was still absent, engaged in seeing the world (at Key West); but he had been able to obtain a good deal of consolation from the society of the Senor Ruiz, who had not credited the ridiculous tale any more than he himself had.

He had first heard of the senor's disbelief through Madam Giron; he immediately went over to Patricio to pay his respects to him. Since then he had paid his respects regularly on Wednesdays and Fridays, just before sundown. The two never alluded to the story when they were together, they would have considered it ill-bred to speak familiarly of such private matters. True, the Senor Ruiz, having been confined for a long time to his arm-chair, had grown a little lax in the strict practice of etiquette, and it may have been that he would have enjoyed just a trifle of conversation upon the rumor in question. But Torres was firm, Torres kept him up to the mark; the subject had never once been put into actual words, though the Senor Ruiz skirted all round it, talking now about Winthrop, now about East Angels, now about the detention of the northern party all summer, owing to the long illness of Mrs. Rutherford, "that majestic and distinguished lady."

The Senor Ruiz had had time to skirt round every subject, he knew, Torres having paid his biweekly respects regularly now for eight long months. Torres said that there was much "hidden congeniality" between them; on the Senor Ruiz's side the congeniality was extremely well hidden, so much so, indeed, that he had never been able to discover it. But on Torres' side it was veritable, he had found that he could think of Garda with especial comfort over there on quiet Patricio, in the presence of a masculine mind so much resembling his own; and think of her he did by the hour, answering with a bow and brief word or two now and then the long despairing monologues of the Senor Ruiz, who, impelled by his Spanish politeness to keep up the conversation, was often driven into frenzy (concealed) by the length of time during which his visitor remained seated opposite to him, stiff as a wooden statue, and almost equally silent.

Because the poor senor could not move his legs very easily, Torres (on much the same principle which induces people to elevate their voices when speaking to a foreigner, as though he were deaf) always sat very near him, so that their knees were not more than two inches apart. This also enraged the Senor Ruiz, and on more than one occasion, when fingering the cane which always stood beside him, he had come near to bringing it down with violence upon the offending joints; the unconscious Adolfo little knew how near he had come to a bone-breaking occurrence of that sort.

"Two years," Torres was in the habit of saying to himself during these Patricio meditations; "they were safe enough in putting off the verification of their impossible gossip until then." The matter stood arranged in his mind as follows: Mr. Wintup was an old man, he was older than they knew; he was probably nearly forty. It was a pastime for him, at that dull age, to amuse himself for a while with the role of father. And he filled it well, Torres had no fault to find with him here; to the Cuban, Winthrop's manner fully took its place in the class "parental;" it was at once too familiar and too devoid of ardor to answer in the least to his idea of what the manner of "a suitor" should be. The most rigid and distant respect covering every word and look, as the winter snow covers Vesuvius; but underneath, all the same, the gleam of the raging hidden fires below--that was his idea of the "manner." Owing to the strange lack of discrimination sometimes to be observed in Fate, Garda had had a northern mother (an estimable woman in herself, of course); on account of this accident, she had been intrusted for a while to these strangers. But this would come to an end; these northerners would go away; they would return to their remote homes and Gracias would know them no more. Garda, of course, would never consent to go with them; it was but reasonable to suppose, therefore (they being amiable people), that they would be pleased to see her make a fit Alliance before their departure; and there was but one that could be called fit. It was not improbable, indeed, that the whole had been planned as a test of his own qualities; they wished to see whether he had equanimity, endurance. One had to forgive them their ignorance--the doubting whether or not he possessed these qualities--as one had to forgive them many other things; they should see, at any rate, how triumphantly he should issue from their trial.

He now walked down the old road with his usual circumspect gait; he was with Lucian's wife, whom he always treated with the respect due to an elderly lady.

Lucian was first, with Garda; he had gathered for her some sprays of wild blossoms, and these she was combining in various ways as she walked. She scarcely spoke. But her silence seemed only part of a supreme indolent content.

Mrs. Spenser was behind with Torres--close behind. Margaret, too, did not linger; Mr. Moore, who was with her, would have preferred, perhaps, a less direct advance, a few light expeditions into the neighboring thickets, for instance; he carried his butterfly pole, and looked about him scrutinizingly. They were going in search of an old tomb, which Lucian was to sketch. It was a mysterious old tomb, no one had any idea who lay there; the ruined mansion they had passed had its own little burial-ground, standing in a circle of trees like the one at East Angels; but this old tomb was alone in the woods, isolated and unaccounted for; there was no trace of a house or any former cultivation near. Its four stone sides were standing, but the top slab was gone, and from within--there was no mound--grew a cedar known to be so ancient that it threw back the lifetime of the person who lay beneath to unrecorded days; for he must have been placed at rest there before the old tree, as a baby sapling, had raised its miniature head above the ground.

They had advanced about a mile, when Mrs. Spenser stopped, she found herself unable to go farther; she made her confession with curt speech and extreme reluctance. They all looked at her and saw her fatigue; that made her more curt still. But it could not be helped; she was flushed in an even dark red hue all over her face from the edge of her hair to her throat; she was breathing quickly; her hands shook. The heat had affected her; she was always affected by the heat, and it was a warm day; she had never been in the habit of walking far.

"You must not go another step, Rosalie," said Lucian, who had come back to her; "the others can go on, and I will wait here with you. When you are quite rested we will go slowly back to the shore; there will still be time, I presume, for me to get in my sketch."

But Rosalie never could bear to give her husband trouble. "I will wait here," she said, "but you need not. Please go with the others, as you first intended; you will find me here on your way back."

"I shall stay with you," repeated Lucian.

She looked so tired that they all busied themselves in preparing a seat for her; they made it of the light mantles which the ladies had been carrying over their arms, spreading them on the ground under a large tree where there was a circle of shade. Here she sat down, leaning against the tree's trunk. "If you don't go on with the others, Lucian, I shall be perfectly wretched," she said. "There's nothing in the world the matter with me; you have seen me in this way before, and you know it is nothing--I have only lost my breath."

"Yes, I know it's nothing," Lucian answered, kindly. "But I cannot leave you here alone, Rosalie; don't ask it."

Mr. Moore, who had been standing with his hands patiently folded over his butterfly pole, now had an inspiration; it was that he himself should remain with "Cousin Rosalie." "I have no talent for sketching," he said, looking round upon them; "really none whatever, I assure you; thus it will be no deprivation. And I have observed some interesting butterflies in this neighborhood, which I should like to obtain, if possible."

"Why shouldn't we all desert Mr. Spenser?" said Margaret. "I have no doubt his sketch will be much more picturesque than the reality. It's very warm; I don't think any of us (those not inspired by artistic intentions) care to go farther."

Mrs. Spenser watched her husband's face, she was afraid he would not be pleased. But under no circumstances was Lucian ever ill-natured. He now made all manner of sport of their laziness, singling out Torres especially as the target for his wit. Torres grinned--Lucian was the only person who could bring out that grin; then he repressed his unseemly mirth by passing his hand over his face, the thumb on one side, all the fingers on the other, and letting them move downward and come together at the chin, thus closing in the grin on the way. Restored to his usual demeanor, he bowed and was ready for whatever should be the ladies' pleasure. Their pleasure, after Lucian's departure, was simply to recline under the large tree; Mr. Moore had already begun his search in the neighboring thickets, and was winding in and out, now in sight, now gone again, with alert step and hopeful eye.

The three ladies sat idly perforating the ground with the tips of their closed parasols. "What are we going to do to amuse ourselves?" said Garda.

"You think a good deal of your amusement, don't you, Miss Thorne?" said Rosalie. She spoke in rather an acid tone; Lucian, too, thought a good deal of his amusement.

But Garcia never noticed Rosalie's intonations; acid or not, they never seemed to reach her. "Yes; I hate to be just dull, you know," she answered, frankly. "I'd much rather be asleep."

Torres was standing at the edge of their circle of shade in his usual taut attitude.

"Oh, Mr. Torres, do either sit down or lie down," urged Garda; "it tires me to look at you! If you won't do either, then go and lean against a tree."

Torres looked about him with serious eyes. There was a tree at a little distance which had no low branches; he went over and placed himself close to it, his back on a line with the trunk, but without touching it.

"You're not leaning," said Garda. "Lean back! Lean!"

Thus adjured, Torres stiffly put his head back far enough to graze the bark. But the rest of his person stood clear.

"Oh, how funny you always are!" said Garda, breaking into a peal of laughter.

Torres did not stir. He was very happy to furnish amusement for the senorita, inscrutable as the nature of it might be; it never occurred to Torres that his attitudes were peculiar.

But Garda was now seized with another idea, which was that they should lunch where they were, instead of at the shore; it was much prettier here, as the shore was sandy; the squatter's boys would be delighted to bring the baskets. Torres, no longer required to make a Daphne of himself, was detached from the bark and sent upon this errand, he was to convoy back baskets and boys; obedient as ever, he departed. And then Garda relapsed into silence; after a while she put her head down on Margaret's lap, as if she were going to try the condition that was better than being "just dull, you know." It was true that they were a little dull. Mr. Moore had entirely disappeared; Rosalie was never very scintillant; Garda was apparently asleep; Margaret, whatever her gifts might have been, could not very well be brilliant all alone. After a while Garda suddenly opened her eyes, took up her hat, and rose.

"I think I will go down, after all, and join Mr. Spenser," she said. "I like to watch him sketch so much; I'll bring him back in an hour or so."

Rosalie's eyes flashed. But she controlled herself. "Aren't you afraid of the heat?" she asked.

"Don't go, Garda," said Margaret. "It's very warm."

"You forget, you two, that I was born here, and like the heat," said Garda, looking for her gloves.

"Surely it cannot be safe for you to go alone," pursued Rosalie. "We are very far from--from everything here."

"It's safe all about Gracias," answered Garda. "And we're not very far from Lucian at least; I shall find him at the end of the path, it goes only there."

It was a simple slip of the tongue; she had talked so constantly of him, and always as "Lucian," to Margaret and Winthrop the winter before, that it was natural for her to use the name. She would never have dreamed of using it merely to vex Mrs. Spenser; to begin with, she would not have taken the trouble for Mrs. Spenser, not even the trouble to vex her.

"I fear Lucian, as you call him, will hardly appreciate your kindness," responded Rosalie, stiffly. "He is fond of sketching by himself; and especially, when he has once begun, he cannot bear to be interrupted."

"I shall not interrupt him," said Garda. "I hardly think he calls me an interruption."

She spoke carelessly; her carelessness about it increased Mrs. Spenser's inward indignation.

"Do you sanction this wild-goose chase, Mrs. Harold?" she said, turning to Margaret, with a stiff little laugh.

"No, no; Garda is not really going, I think," Margaret answered.

"Yes, Margaret, this time I am," said Garda's undisturbed voice.

Mrs. Spenser waited a moment. Then she rose. "We will all go," she said, with a good deal of dignity; "I could not feel easy, and I don't think Mrs. Harold could, to have you go alone, Miss Thorne."

"I don't know what there is to be afraid of--unless you mean poor Lucian," said Garda, laughing.

Mrs. Spenser rested her hands upon her arms with a firm pressure, the right hand on the top of the left arm, the left hand under the right arm as a support. In this pose (which gave her a majestic appearance) she left the shade, and walked towards the path.

"I'm afraid you will suffer from the heat," said Garda, guilelessly. It really was guileless--a guileless indifference; but to a large, dark, easily flushed woman it sounded much like malice.

They had gone but a short distance when Garda's prophecy came true; the deep red hue re-appeared, it was even darker than before. Margaret was alarmed. "Do go back to the shade," she urged.

Mrs. Spenser, who had stopped for a moment, glanced at her strangely. "I am perfectly well," she answered, in a husky whisper.

Margaret looked at Garda, who was standing at a little distance, waiting. The girl, who was much amused by this scene, mutely laughed and shook her head; evidently she would not yield.

"I will go on with Garda," Margaret said; "but I beg you not to attempt it, Mrs. Spenser."

"Oh, if you are going," murmured Rosalie, her eyes still shining strangely from her copper-colored face.

"Yes, I am going," answered Margaret, with decision.

Rosalie said something about its being "much better," as the road was "so lonely;" and then, turning, she made her way back to the tree.

"It's not like you, Garda, to be so wilful," said Margaret, when was out of hearing.

"Why, yes, it is. Your will is nice and beautiful, so I don't come into conflict with it; hers isn't, so I do. I don't weigh one hundred and eighty pounds, and I don't mind the heat; why, then, should I sit under a tree forever because she has to?"

"I wish you would sit under it to oblige me."

"It isn't to oblige you, it's to oblige Mrs. Rosalie; I can't possibly take the trouble to oblige Mrs. Rosalie. You don't really mind the sun any more than I do, you slim fair thing! it's all pretence. Let red people sit under trees; you and I will go on." She put her arm round Margaret and drew her forward. "Don't be vexed with me; you know I love you better than anything else on earth."

"Yet never wish to please me."

"Yes, I do. But I please you as I am. Is that impertinent?"

"Yes," said Margaret, gravely.

"It's your fault, then; you've spoiled me. When have you done one thing or said one thing through all this long summer which was not extraordinarily kind? Nobody in the world, Margaret, has ever dreamed of being as devoted to me as you have been. And if that's impertinent too--the saying so--I can't help it; it's true."

Margaret made no reply to this statement, which had been made without the least vanity; it had been made, indeed, with a detached impartiality which was remarkable, as though the girl had been speaking of some one else.

Rosalie watched their two figures go down the path out of sight. A few minutes later Mr. Moore made a brief appearance, flying with extended pole across the glade like a man possessed. But he had seen that she was alone, and he therefore returned, after he had not succeeded in catching his prey; he sat down beside her, and asked her if she had read the Westover Manuscript.

Margaret and Garda reached the path's end--it ended in a wood--and found Lucian sketching.

"Ah-h-h! curiosity!" he said, as they came up.

"Yes," answered Garda, seating herself on the ground beside him, and, as usual, taking off her hat; "I never was so curious in my life. Show me your sketch, please."

He held it towards her.

She looked at him as he bent from his camp-stool, she did not appear to be so curious as her previous statement had seemed to indicate. She smiled and fell into her old silence again as he returned to his work, that silence of tranquil enjoyment, leaving Margaret to carry on the conversation, in case she should wish for conversation.

Apparently Margaret wished for it. She, too, was resting in the shade; she spoke of various things--of the white bird they had seen sitting on its nest, which had been constructed across the whole top of a small tree, so that the white-bosomed mother sat enthroned amid the green; of the song of the mocking-birds, which had made a greater impression upon her than anything in Florida; and so on.

"Excuse my straying answers," said Lucian, after a while. "However, painting is not so bad as solitaire; did you ever have the felicity of conversing with a friend (generally a lady) while a third person is engaged at the same table with that interesting game? Your lady listens to you with apparent attention, you are led on, perhaps, to talk your best, when suddenly, as you least expect it, her hand gives a swoop down on her friend's spread-out cards, she moves one of them quickly, with a 'There!' or else an inarticulate little murmur of triumph over his heedlessness, and then transfers her gaze back to you again, with an innocent candor which seems to say that it has never been abstracted. I don't know anything pleasanter than conversation under such circumstances."

Margaret laughed. "Come, Garda, let us go and have a nearer look." For Lucian had placed himself at some distance from the tomb; he was giving a view of it at the end of a forest vista.

But Garda did not care for a nearer look. She had seen the old tomb many times.

"Let us make a wreath for it, then, while Mr. Spenser is sketching. So that it can feel that for once--"

"It's too old to feel," said Garda.

Margaret gathered a quantity of a glossy-leaved vine which was growing over some bushes near. "I shall make a wreath, even if you don't," she said. And she sat down and began her task.

"I think this will do," said Lucian, after another ten minutes, surveying his work. "I can finish it up at home."

Margaret threw down her vines, and began to help him collect his scattered possessions.

"Don't go yet; it's so lovely here," said Garda. "Make a second sketch for me."

"I will copy you one from this," he answered.

"No, I want one made especially for me, even if it's only a beginning; and I want it made here."

"But we really ought to be going back, Garda," said Margaret.

"I never want to go back," Garda declared. She laughed as she said it. But she looked at Lucian with the same serene content; it was very infectious, he sank down on his camp-stool, and began again.

Margaret stood a moment as if uncertain. Then she sat down beside Garda, and went on with her wreath.

"How perfectly still it is here!" said Lucian. "Florida's a very still land, there are no hot sounds any more than cold ones; what's your idea of the hottest sound you know, Mrs. Harold?"

Margaret considered. "The sound--coming in through your closed green blinds on a warm summer afternoon when you want to sleep--of a stone-mason chipping away on a large block of stone somewhere, out in the hot sun."

"Good! Do you know the peculiar odor made by summer rain on those same green blinds you speak of? Dusty ones?"

"They needn't be dusty. Yes, I know it well."

"I'm afraid you're an observer; I hope you don't turn the talent towards nature?"

"Why not?"

"Because people who observe nature don't observe their fellow-man; the more devoted you are to rocks and trees, and zoophytes and moths, the less you care for human beings; bless you! didn't you know that? You get to thinking of them in general, lumping them as 'humanity.' But you always think of the zoophytes in minutest particulars."

"Never mind sketching the tomb; sketch me," said Garda.

Margaret and Lucian looked up; she appeared to have heard nothing that they had been saying, she was sitting with her hands clasped round one knee, her head thrown back.

"Sketch you?" Lucian repeated.

"Yes," she answered. "Please begin at once."

"In that attitude?"

"You may choose your attitude."

"Oh, if I may choose!" he said, springing up. He stood for a moment looking at her as she sat there. Unrepressed admiration of her beauty shone in his eyes.

"I didn't know you could paint portraits, Mr. Spenser," remarked Margaret.

"I can now; at least I shall try," he answered, with enthusiasm. "Will you give me all the sittings I want, Miss Thorne?"

"Yes. This is the first."

"To-morrow--" began Margaret.

"Do you want me to keep this position?" said Garda.

"Yes--no. It shall be an American Poussin--'I too have been in' Florida! Come over to the tomb, please." In his eagerness he put out his hands, took hers, and assisted her to rise; they went to the tomb. Here he placed her in two or three different positions; but was satisfied with none of them.

Margaret had made no further objections. She followed them slowly. Then her manner changed, she gave her assistance and advice. "She should be carrying flowers, I think," she suggested.

"Yes; branches of blossoms--I see them," said Lucian.

"But as for the attitude--perhaps we had better leave it to her. Suppose yourself, Garda, to be particularly happy--"

"I'm happy now," said the girl. She had seated herself on the old tomb's edge, and folded her hands.

"Well, more joyous, then."

"I'm joyous."

"I shall never finish my legend if you interrupt me so," said Margaret, putting her hand on Garda's shoulder. "Listen; you are on your way home from an Arcadian revel, with some shepherds who are playing on their pipes, when you come suddenly upon an old tomb in the forest. No one knows who lies there; you stop a moment to make out the inscription, which is barely legible, and it tells you, 'I too lived in--'"

"Florida!" said Lucian.

"I am to do that?" asked Garda, looking at him.

He nodded. She went back, took Margaret's nearly finished wreath and all the rest of the gathered vines, and returning to the tomb, one arm loaded with them, the long sprays falling over her dress, she laid her other hand on Lucian's shoulder, and drawing him near the old stones, clung to him a little as if half afraid, bending her head at the same time as though reading the inscription which was supposed to be written there. The attitude was extremely graceful, a half-shrinking, half-fascinated curiosity. "This it?" she asked.

"Not the least in the world! What has Mr. Spenser to do with it?" said Margaret.

"He's the Arcadian shepherds."

"Let me place you." And Margaret drew her away.

Garda yielded passively. Nothing could have been sweeter than the expression of her face when Margaret had at length satisfied herself as regarded position. The girl stood behind the tomb, which rose a little higher than her knees; she rested one hand on its gray edge, holding the wreath on her other arm, which was pressed against her breast.

"You ought to be looking down," said Margaret.

But Garda did not look down.

"She is supposed to have read the inscription, and to be musing over it," suggested Lucian.

He fell to work immediately.

"We have been here an hour and a half, and we promised to be back in an hour--remember that, Mr. Spenser," said Margaret, who had seated herself near him.

"The bare outlines," murmured Lucian.

He did not appear to wish to speak. As for Garda, she looked as though she should never speak again; she looked like a picture more than a real presence--a picture, but not of nineteenth-century painting. She did not stir, her eyes were full of a wonderful light. After a while it seemed to oppress Margaret--this glowing vision beside the gray tomb in the still wood. She rose and went to Lucian, watching him work, she began to talk. "It's fortunate that you have already sketched the tomb," she said; "you can use that sketch for the details."

He did not reply, Garda's softly fixed eyes seemed to hold him bound.

Margaret looked at her watch; then she went to Garda, took the wreath from her, and, putting her arm in hers, led her back towards the path. "I am obliged to use force," she said. "The sitting is declared over."

"Till the next, then," said Garda to Lucian.

As he began to pack up his sketching materials, Margaret went back and hung her wreath upon the old stones. "In some future world, that shade will come and thank me," she said.

Then they left the wood, and started down the path on their way back to the shore.

They found Mrs. Spenser with both complexion and temper improved; her greatest wish always was to hide her jealousies from Lucian, and this time she succeeded. Mr. Moore had made a fire at a distance, and boiled their coffee; he was now engaged in grilling their cold meat by spearing each slice with the freshly peeled end of one of the long stiff leaf-stalks of the saw-palmetto. These impromptu toasting-forks of his, four feet in height, he had stuck in the ground in an even circle all round the fire, their heads bending slightly towards the flame; when one side of the range of slices was browned, he deftly turned each slice with a fork, so as to give the other side its share.

Torres had made no attempts as regarded grilling and boiling, he and Rosalie had spent the time in conversation. Rosalie had, in fact, detained him, when, after bringing the boys and baskets safely to her glade, he had looked meditatively down the road which led to the old tomb. "What do you think of the Alhambra?" she asked, quickly.

The Alhambra and the Inquisition were her two Spanish topics.

"I have not thought of it," Torres mildly replied.

"Well, the Inquisition, then; what do you think of the Inquisition? I am sure you must have studied the subject, and I wish you would give me your real opinion." (She was determined to keep him from following Garda.)

Torres reflected a moment. "It would take some time," he observed, with another glance down the road.

"The more the better," said Rosalie. This sounded effusive; and as she was so loyal to Lucian that everything she did was scrupulously conformed to that feeling, from the way she wore her bonnet to the colors she selected for her gloves, she added, immediately and rather coldly, "It is a subject in which I have been interested for years."

Torres looked at her with gloom. He wished that she had not been interested in it so long, or else that she could be interested longer, carrying it over into the future. The present he yearned for; he wanted to follow that road.

But Rosalie sat there inflexible as Fate; and he was chivalrous to all women, the old as well as the young. He noticed that she was very strongly buttoned into her dress. And then he gave her the opinion she asked for; he was still giving it when the sketching party returned.

Lucian was in gayest spirits. He seized the coffee-pot. "No one should be trusted to pour out coffee," he said, "but a genuine lover of the beverage. See the people pour out who are not real coffee-drinkers themselves; they pour stingily, reluctantly; they give you cold coffee, or coffee half milk, or cups half full; they cannot understand how you can wish for more. Coffee doesn't agree with them very well; they find it, therefore, difficult to believe--in fact they never do believe--that it should really agree with you. It may have been all talked over in the family circle, and a fair generosity on the part of the non-loving pourer guaranteed; but I tell you that in spite of guarantees, she will scrimp."

Mr. Moore, a delicate pink flush on his cheeks, now came up with his grilled slices, which proved to be excellent.

"My cousin, you are a wonderful person," said Lucian.

Mr. Moore made a little disclaiming murmur in his throat; "Er-um, er-um," he said, waving his hand in a deprecatory way.

"--But you ought to have been a Frenchman," pursued Lucian.

Mr. Moore opened his eyes.

"Because then your goodness would have been so resplendent, my cousin. As it is, it shines on an American background, and eight-tenths of native-born Americans are good men."

"Yes, we have, I think, a high standard of morality," said Mr. Moore, with approbation.

"And also a high standard of splendor," continued Lucian; "we are, I am sure, the most splendid nation in the world. Some years ago, my cousin, a clergyman at the West was addressing his congregation on a bright Sunday morning; he was in the habit of speaking without notes, and of preaching what are called practical sermons. Wishing to give an example of appropriate Christian simplicity, he began a sentence as follows: 'For instance, my friends, none of you would think of coming to the house of the Lord in'--here he saw a glitter from diamond ear-rings in several directions--'of coming to the house of the Lord, I say, in'--here he caught the gleam from a number of breastpins--'in'--here two or three hands, from which the gloves had been removed, stirring by chance, sent back to him rays from wrists as well as fingers--'in tiaras of diamonds, my friends,' he concluded at last, desperately. His congregation had on there, before his eyes, every other known arrangement of the stone."

Mr. Moore smiled slightly--just enough not to be disagreeable; then he turned the conversation. Mr. Moore was strong at that; he thought it a great moral engine, and had often wondered (to Penelope) that it was not employed oftener. For instance, in difficult cases: if violent language were being used in one's presence--turn the conversation; in family quarrels and disagreements--the same; in political discussions of a heated nature--surely there could be no method so simple or so efficacious.

It proved efficacious now in the face of Lucian's frivolity. "Our next course will consist of oysters," he remarked.

"Where are they?" demanded Lucian, hungrily.

"For the present concealed; I conjectured that the sight of two fires might prove oppressive. The arrangements, however, have been well made; they are in progress behind that far thicket, and the sons of the squatter are in charge."

The sons of the squatter being summoned by what Mr. Moore called "yodeling," a pastoral cry which he sounded forth unexpectedly and wildly between his two hands, brought the hot rocks to the company by the simple process of tumbling them into a piece of sackcloth and dragging them over the ground. They were really rocks, fragments broken off, studded with small oysters; many parts of the lagoon were lined with these miniature peaks. Mr. Moore produced oyster-knives; and, with the best conscience in the world, they added another to the shell-heaps of Florida for the labors of future antiquarians.

And then, presently, they embarked. The sun was sinking; they floated away from the squatter's camp, down the winding creek between the leaning palmettoes, across the salt-marsh, over which the crows were now flying in a long line, and out upon the sunset-tinted lagoon. The Emperadora was waiting for them; it was moonlight when they reached home.

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Chapter XIX

The next afternoon Margaret was strolling in the old garden of East Angels. The place now belonged to Evert Winthrop; but it had not pleased him to make many changes, and the garden remained almost as much of a blooming wilderness as before. When at home (and it was seldom that she was absent for any length of time, as she had been the previous day) Margaret was occupied at this hour; it was the hour when Mrs. Rutherford liked to have "some one" read to her. This "some one" was always Margaret.

Poor Aunt Katrina had been a close prisoner all summer; an affection of the hip had prostrated her so that she had not been able to leave East Angels, or her bed. Everything that care or money could do for her had been done, Winthrop having sent north for "fairly ship-loads of every known luxury," Betty Carew declared, "so that it makes a real my ship comes from India, you know, loaded with everything wonderful, from brass beds down to verily ice-cream!" It was true that a schooner had brought ice; and many articles had been sent down from New York by sea. The interior of the old house now showed its three eras of occupation, as an old Roman tower shows its antique travertine at the base, its mediaeval sides, and modern top. In the lower rooms and in the corridors there remained the original Spanish bareness, the cool open spaces empty of furniture. Then came the attempted prettinesses of Mrs. Thorne, chiefly manifested in toilet-tables made out of wooden boxes, covered with paper-cambric, and ruffled and flounced in white muslin, in a very large variety of table mats, in pin-cushions, in pasteboard brackets adorned with woollen embroidery. Last of all, incongruously placed here and there, came the handsome modern furniture which had been ordered from the North by Winthrop when Dr. Kirby finally said that Mrs. Rutherford would not be able to leave East Angels for many a month to come.

The thick walls of the old house, the sea-breeze, the spaciousness of her shaded room, together with her own reduced condition, had prevented the invalid from feeling the heat. Margaret and Winthrop, who had not left her, had learned to lead the life which the residents led; they went out in the early morning, and again at nightfall, but through the sunny hours they kept within-doors; during the middle of the day indeed no one stirred; even the negroes slept.

The trouble with the hip had declared itself on the very day Winthrop had announced his engagement to the group of waiting friends at the lower door. The news, therefore, had not been repeated in the sick-room; Mrs. Rutherford did not know it even now. Her convalescence was but just beginning; throughout the summer, and more than ever at present, Dr. Kirby told them, the hope of permanent recovery for her lay in the degree of tranquillity, mental as well as physical, in which they should be able to maintain her, day by day. Winthrop and Margaret knew that tranquillity would be at an end if she should learn what had happened; they therefore took care that she should not learn. There was, indeed, no occasion for hurry, there was to be no talk of marriage until Garda should be at least eighteen. In the mean time Aunt Katrina lived, in one way, in the most complete luxury; she had now but little pain, and endless was the skill, endless the patience, with which the six persons who were devoted to her--Margaret, Winthrop, Dr. Kirby, Betty Carew, Celestine, and Looth--labored to maintain her serenity unbroken, to vary her few pleasures. Betty, it is true, had to stop outside the door each time, and press back almost literally, with her hand over her mouth, the danger of betraying the happiness of "dear Evert" and "darling Garda" through her own inadvertence; but her genuine affection for Katrina accomplished the miracle of making her for the time being almost advertent, though there was sure to be a vast verbal expansion afterwards, when she had left the room, which was not unlike the physical one that ensued when she released herself, after paying a visit, from her own tightly fitting best gown.

To-day Aunt Katrina had felt suddenly tired, and the reading had been postponed; Margaret had come out to the garden. She strolled down a path which had recently been reopened to the garden's northern end; here there was a high hedge, before which she paused for a moment to look at a sensitive-plant which was growing against the green. Suddenly she became conscious that she heard the sound of low voices outside; then followed a laugh which she was sure she knew well. She stepped across the boundary ditch, full of bloom, and looked through the foliage. Beyond was an old field; then another high hedge. In the field, a little to the right, there was a thicket, and here, protected by its crescent-shaped bend, which enclosed them both in its half-circle, were Garda and Lucian; Lucian was sketching his companion.

Only the sound of their voices reached Margaret, not their words. She looked at them for a moment; then she stepped back over the ditch, passed through the garden, and returned to the house, where she seated herself on a stone bench which stood near the lower door. Here she waited, she waited nearly an hour; then Garda appeared, alone.

Margaret rose, went to meet her, and putting her arm in hers, turned her towards the orange walk. "Come and stroll a while," she said.

"You are tired, Margaret; I wish you didn't have so much care," said Garda, affectionately, as she looked at her. "Mrs. Rutherford isn't worse, I hope?"

"No; she is sleeping," Margaret answered. After a pause: "You heard from Evert this morning, I believe?"

"Yes; didn't I show you the letter? I meant to. I think it's in my pocket now," and searching, she produced a crumpled missive.

Margaret took it. Mechanically her fingers smoothed out its creases, but she did not open it. "You have been out for a walk?" she said at last, with something of an effort.

But Garda did not notice the effort; she was enjoying her own life very fully that afternoon. "No," she answered. Then she laughed. "You could not possibly guess where I have been."

"I am afraid I couldn't make the effort to-day."

"And you shall not--I'll tell you; I've been in the green studio. Fortunately you haven't the least idea where that is."

"Have you taken to painting, then?"

"No; painting has taken to me. Lucian has been here."

"When did he come?"

"About two hours ago, I should say. You didn't see him because he did not come to the house; I met him in--in the green studio, of course; I gave him another sitting."

"Then you expected him?" said Margaret, looking at her.

"Yes; we made the arrangement in the only instant you gave us yesterday--when you went to hang your wreath on that old tomb."

"Why was it necessary to be so secret about it? Am I such an ogre?"

"No; you're a fairy godmother. But you would have objected to it, and spoiled it all beforehand; you know you would," said Garda, with gay accusation.

Margaret's eyes were following the little inequalities of the ground before them as they advanced.

"Perhaps you could have brought me round," she answered. "At any rate, you must admit me to the next sitting."

"No, that I cannot do, Margaret; so don't ask me. I love to be with you, and I love to be with Lucian. But I don't love to be with you two together--you watch him so."

"I--watch Mr. Spenser? Oh no!"

"Well, then--and it's the same thing--you watch me."

"Is that the word to use, Garda? You are under my charge--I have hoped that it was not disagreeable to you; I have tried--"

Garda stopped and kissed her. "It isn't disagreeable; it's beautiful," she said, with impulsive warmth. "But there's no use in your trying to keep me from seeing Lucian," she added, as they walked on; "I can't imagine how you should even think of it, when you know so well how much I have always liked him. Oh, what a comfort it is just to see him here again!"

"You must remember that he has other things to think of now."

"Only his wife; he needn't take long to think of her."

"He took long enough to leave Gracias last winter and go north and marry her."

"Yes; and wasn't it good of him? I couldn't bear to have him go at the time; but I've forgotten all about that, now that he's back again."

"But not alone this time."

"Lucian's always alone for me," responded Garda. "But why do you keep talking about Mrs. Rosalie, Margaret? Isn't it enough that we have to talk to her? She isn't an object of pity in the least; she's got everything she wants, and six times more than she deserves; I detest people who, when they're cross, are all upper lip."

A vision of Rosalie's face rose in Margaret's mind. But she did not at present discuss its outlines with Garda, she simply said, "I must come to the next sitting. And don't choose for it the exact hour when I'm reading to Aunt Katrina."

"I chose that hour on purpose, so that you shouldn't know."

"Yes, because you thought I should object. But if I don't object--"

"You do," said Garda, laughing; "you're only pretending you don't. Very well, then. Only--you mustn't keep stopping me."

"Stopping you? What do you mean?"

"Oh, stopping, stopping--I mean just that; there's no other word. I want to look at Lucian and talk to him exactly as I please."

"I'm not aware that I've blinded or gagged you," said Margaret, smiling.

"No, but you have a way of saying something that makes a change; you make him either get up, or turn his head away, or else you stop what he's saying. You see, he follows your lead."

"Though you do not."

"He does it from politeness--politeness to you," Garda went on.

"Yes, he has very good manners," said Margaret, dryly.

"Haven't I good manners too?" demanded the girl, in a caressing tone, crossing her hands upon her friend's arm.

"Very bad ones, sometimes. Now, Garda, don't you really think--"

"I never really think, I never even think without the really. What is the use of getting all white with thinking?--you can't set anything straight by it. You are sometimes so white that you frighten me."

"Never mind my whiteness; I never have any color," said Margaret, a nervous impatience showing itself suddenly. Then she controlled herself. "Are you thinking of having another sitting to-morrow?"

"Perhaps; it isn't quite certain yet. I don't know whether you know that Lucian is trying to persuade Madam Giron to take him in for a while?"

"To take him in?"

"Them-m-m," said Garda, "since you insist upon it."

"I can't imagine Madame Giron consenting," said Margaret. She was much surprised by this intelligence.

"She wouldn't unless it were to please Adolfo; if he should urge her to do it. And I think he will urge her, because--because he and Mrs. Spenser are such great friends."

"They're nothing of the sort. You know as well as I do that she only talks to him because her husband likes him."

"Well, then, Adolfo will urge because I told him to."

"You told him?"

"Yes," said Garda, serenely; "I told him we could make so many more excursions if they were staying down here. And so we can, I hope--Lucian and I, at any rate; we're light on our feet."

"If Madam Giron should consent, when would the Spensers come down?" said Margaret, pursuing her investigations.

"To-morrow at twelve," Garda answered, promptly.

"Mrs. Spenser knew nothing of it yesterday."

"Oh yes, she did; a little."

"She didn't speak of it."

"She didn't speak of it because she's not pleased with the idea. At least not much."

"Then it's Mr. Spenser who is pleased?"

"Yes; still, I am the most pleased of all; I suggested it to him, he would never have thought of it himself. You see, he was losing so much time in coming and going. If he were at Madam Giron's, too, I could hope to see him sometimes in the evening; for instance, to-morrow evening."

"Do you mean that he is coming to see us then?"

"He is coming to see me; that is, if they are down there. I shall not let him see any of the rest of you. It isn't a sitting, you know, we don't have sittings by moonlight; I shall send him word where to come, and then I shall slip out and find him."

Margaret stopped. "Garda," she said, in a changed tone, "you told me yesterday that I had been very kind to you--"

"So you have been."

"Then I hope you won't think me unkind--I hope you will yield to my judgment--when I tell you that you must not send any such message to Mr. Spenser."

"Didn't I tell you you would try to stop it?" said Garda, gleefully.

"Of course I shall try. And I think you will do as I wish."

Garda did not answer, she only looked at her friend with a vague little smile. She seemed not to be giving her full attention to what she was saying; and at the same moment, singularly enough, she seemed to be admiring her, taking that time for it--admiring the delicate moulding of her features, her oval cheeks, which had now a bright flush of color. The expression of her own face, meanwhile, remained as soft as ever, there was not a trace of either opposition or annoyance.

"Isn't there some one else, too, who would not like to have you do such--such foolish thing?" Margaret went on. "Shouldn't you think a little of Evert?"

"Evert's too far off to think of. He's a thousand miles away."

"What difference does that make?"

"You're right, it doesn't make any," said Garda. "I should do just the same, I presume, if he were here." She spoke in a matter-of-fact tone.

Margaret looked at her, and seemed hardly to know what to say next.

In the position in which they were standing, Garda was facing the entrance of the orange walk. Her eyes now began to gleam. "Isn't this funny?" she said. "Here he is himself!"

Margaret turned, expecting to see Lucian. But it was Evert Winthrop who was coming towards them.

"You didn't expect me?" he said as he took their hands, Garda's in his right hand, Margaret's in his left, and held them for a moment. "But I told you in the postscript of my last letter, Garda, that I might perhaps follow it immediately."

"I haven't had time to get to the postscript yet," Garda answered. "The letter only came this morning; and Margaret has it now."

"You know I haven't opened it, Garda," said Margaret, hastily returning it.

"No; but I meant you to," said the girl. Something in this little scene seemed to strike her as comical, for she covered her face with both hands and began to laugh. "What a bad account you will give of me!" she said.

"You will have to give it yourself," replied Margaret. "I must go; Aunt Katrina must be awake by this time."

"Isn't she well?" said Winthrop, looking after her as she left them.

"She had color enough before you came," said Garda, smiling, then laughing at recollections he could not share. "Have you come back as blind as you went away?"

"How blind is that?"

"Blind to all my faults," she responded, swinging her hat by its ribbons.

"Don't spoil your hat. No, I'm not blind to them, but we're going to cure them, you know."

"I'm so glad!"

He had taken a case from his pocket, and was now opening it; it held a delicate gold bracelet, exquisitely fashioned, which he clasped round her arm.

"How pretty!" said Garda. Her pleasure was genuine, she turned her hand so that she could see the ornament in every position.

"You prefer diamonds, I know," said Winthrop, smiling. "But you're not old enough to wear diamonds yet."

She continued to look at her bracelet until she had satisfied herself fully. Then she let her hand drop. "Will you give me some very beautiful diamonds by-and-by?" she asked, turning her eyes towards him.

"To be quite frank, I don't like them much."

"But if I like them?" She seemed to be curious as to what he would reply.

"You may not like them yourself, then."

She regarded him a moment longer. Then her eyes left him; she looked off down the long aisle. "I shall not change; no, not as you seem to think," she said, musingly. And she stood there for a moment very still. Then her face changed, her light-heartedness came back; she took his arm, and, as they strolled slowly towards the house, talked her gayest nonsense. He listened indulgently.

"Why don't you ask me what I have been doing all these weeks while you have been away?" she said at last, suddenly.

"I suppose I know, don't I? You have written."

"You haven't the least idea. I have been amused--really amused all the time."

"Is that such a novelty? I've always thought you had a capital talent for amusing yourself."

"That's just what I mean; this time I've been amused, I didn't have to do it myself. Oh, promise me you won't stop anything now you've come. We've had some lovely excursions, and I want ever so many more."

"When did I ever stop an excursion in Florida?" said Winthrop.

"Yes, you've been very good, very good always," answered Garda, with conviction. "But this time you must be even better, you must let me do exactly as I please."

"Oh, I don't pretend to keep you in order, you know; I leave that to Margaret."

"Poor Margaret!" said Garda, laughing.

The next day Lucian and his wife came down to the Giron plantation; Madam Giron had consented to take them in.

* * * * *

Three nights afterwards, Margaret, awake between midnight and one o'clock, thought she heard Garda's door open; then, light steps in the hall. She left her bed, and opening the door between their two rooms, went through into Garda's chamber. It was empty, the moonlight shone across the floor. She returned to her own room, hastily threw on a white dressing-gown, twisted up her long soft hair, and put on a pair of low shoes; then she stole out quietly, went down the stone staircase and through the lower hall, and found, as she expected, the outer door unfastened; she opened it, closed it softly after her, and stood alone in the night. She had to make a choice, and she had only the faintest indication to guide her--a possible clew in a remembered conversation; she followed this clew and turned towards the live-oak avenue. Her step was hurried, she almost ran; as she drew the floating lace-trimmed robe more closely about her, the moonlight shone, beneath its upheld folds, on her little white feet. She had never before been out alone under the open sky at that hour, she glanced over her shoulder, and shivered slightly, though the night was as warm as July. Her own shadow, keeping up with her, was like a living thing. The moonlight on the ground was so white that by contrast all the trees looked black.

The live-oak avenue, when she entered it, seemed a shelter; at least it was a roof over her head, shutting out the sky. The moonlight only came at intervals through the thick foliage, making silver checker-work on the path.

There were two or three bends, then a long straight stretch. As she came into this straight stretch she saw at the far end, going towards the lagoon, a figure--Garda; behind Garda, doubly grotesque in the changing shade and light, stepped the crane.

Margaret's foot-falls made no sound on the soft sand of the path; she hurried onward, and passing the crane, laid her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Garda," she said.

Garda stopped, surprised. But though surprised, she was not startled, she was as calm as though she had been found walking there at noonday. She was fully dressed, and carried a light shawl.

"Margaret, is it you? How in the world did you know I was here?"

Margaret let her head rest for a moment on Garda's shoulder; her heart was beating with suffocating rapidity. She recovered herself, stood erect, and looked at her companion. "Where are you going?" she asked.

"I am going to try and find Lucian; but it may be only trying. He was to start from the Giron landing at one, when the tide would serve, he said; but you heard him, so you know as much as I do."

"No. For I don't know what you're going to do."

"Why, I've told you; I'm going to try to go with him, if I can. I'm going to stand out at the edge of the platform, and then, when he comes by, perhaps he will see me--it's so light--and take me in. I want to sail through that thick soft fog he told us about (when it comes up later), with the moonlight making it all queer and white, and the gulls fast asleep and floating--don't you remember?"

"Then he doesn't expect you?"

"Oh no," said Garda; "it's my own idea. I knew he would be alone, because Mrs. Rosalie can't go out in fogs, she's afraid of rheumatism."

"And you see nothing out of the way in all this?"

"No."

"--Stealing out secretly--"

"Only because you would have stopped it if you had known."

"--At night, and by yourself?"

"The night's as good as the day when there's moonlight like this. And I shall not be by myself, I shall be with Lucian; I'd rather be with him than anybody."

"And Evert?"

"Well," said Garda, "the truth is--the truth is I'm tired of Evert."

"You'd better tell him that," said Margaret, with a quick and curious change in her voice.

"I will, if you think best."

"No, don't tell him; you're not in earnest," said Margaret, calming himself.

"Yes, I am in earnest. But I shall miss Lucian if I stay here longer."

"Garda, give this up."

"I don't see how you happened to hear me come out," said the girl, laughing and vexed.

"Have you been out in this way before?"

"No; how could I? Lucian has only just come down here. I should a great deal rather tell you everything, Margaret, as fast as I think of it, and I would--only you would be sure to stop it."

"I want to stop this. Give it up--if you care at all for me; I make it a test."

"You know I care; if you put it on that ground, of course I shall have to give it up," said Garda, disconsolately.

"Come back to the house, then," said Margaret, taking her hand.

"No, I'm not going back, I'm going down to the landing," answered the girl. She appeared to think that she had earned this obstinacy by her larger concession.

"But you said you would give up--"

"If we keep back under the trees he cannot see us; I mean what I say--he shall not. But I want to see him, I want to see him go by."

She drew Margaret onward, and presently they reached the shore. "There he comes!" she said--"I hear the oars." And she held tightly to Margaret's hand, as if to keep herself from running out to the platform's edge.

The broad lagoon, rippling in the moonlight, lay before them; the night was so still that they heard the dip of the oars long before they saw the boat itself; Patricio, opposite, looked like a country in a dream. The giant limbs of the live-oak under which they stood rose high in the air above them, and then drooped down again far forward, the dark shade beneath concealing them perfectly, in spite of Margaret's white robe. Now the boat shot into sight. Its sail was up, white as silver, but as there was no wind, Lucian was rowing. It was a small, light boat, almost too small for the great silver sail; but that was what Lucian liked. He kept on his course far out in the stream; he was bound for the mouth of the harbor.

Garda gave a long sigh. "I ought to be there!" she murmured. "Oh, I ought to be there!" She stood motionless, watching the boat come nearer, pass, and disappear; then she turned and looked at Margaret in silence.

"We can go out to-morrow evening, if you like," said Margaret, ignoring the expression of her face.

"Yes, at eight o'clock, I suppose, with Evert, and Mrs. Rosalie!"

"Would you prefer to go in the middle of the night?"

"Infinitely. And with Lucian alone."

"I should think that might be a little tiresome."

"Oh, come, don't pretend; you don't know how," said Garda, laughing. "At heart you're as serious as death about all this--you know you are. Tiresome, did you say? Just looking at him, to begin with--do you call that tiresome? And then the way he talks, the way he says things! Oh, Margaret, I give you my word I adore being amused as Lucian amuses me." She turned as she said this and met Margaret's eyes fixed upon her. "You can't understand it," she commented. "You can't understand that I prefer Lucian to Evert."

Margaret turned from her. But the next instant she came back. "There are some things I must ask you, Garda."

"Well, do stay here a little longer then, it's so lovely; we'll sit down on the bench. But perhaps you'll be chilled--you're so lightly dressed. What have you on your feet? Oh Margaret! only those thin shoes--no more than slippers?" She took her shawl, and kneeling down, wrapped it round Margaret's ankles. "What little feet you have!" she said, admiringly. "It reminds me of my wet shoes that night on the barren," she added, rising; and then, standing there with her hands clasped behind her, she appeared to be meditating. "Now that time I was in earnest too!" she said, with a sort of wonder at herself.

"What do you mean?" asked Margaret.

"Oh, nothing of consequence. Are you sure you're not cold?"

"I'm quite warm; it's like summer."

"Yes, it's warm," said Garda, sitting down beside her. "Oh, I wish I were in that boat!" And she put her head down on Margaret's shoulder.

After a moment Margaret began her interrogatory. "You consider yourself engaged to Evert, don't you?"

"Yes, after a fashion. He doesn't care about it."

"Yes, he does. You don't comprehend him."

"Don't you think he ought to make me comprehend, then? It seems to me that that's his part. But no, the real trouble is that he doesn't in the least comprehend me. He has got some idea of his own about me, he has had it all this time. But I'm not like his idea at all; I wonder how long it will be before he will find it out?"

"Don't you care for him, Garda?"

"No, not any more. I did once; at least that night on the barren I thought I did. But if I did, I am sure I don't know what has become of the feeling! At any rate it has gone, gone entirely; I only care for Lucian now."

"And would you give up Evert, engaged to him as you are, with your own consent and the consent of all your friends, for a mere fancy like this?"

"Mere fancy? I shall begin to think, Margaret, that you don't know what 'mere fancies,' as you call them, are!"

"And what view do you take of the fact that Lucian is a married man?" Margaret went on, gravely.

"A horribly melancholy one, of course. Still, it's a great pleasure just to see him; I try to see him as often as I can."

"And you're willing to follow him about as you do--let him see how much you like him, when, in reality, he doesn't care in the least for you? If he had cared he would never have left you, as he did last winter, at a moment's notice and without a word."

"No, I know he doesn't care for me as I care for him," said Garda. "But perhaps he will care more in time; I have thought that perhaps he would care more when he found out how I felt towards him; that is what I have been hoping."

Margaret got up, she made a motion with her hands almost as if she were casting the girl off. "Garda," she said, "you frighten me. I have tried to speak with the greatest moderation, because I have not thought you realized at all what you were saying; but you are so calm, you speak in such a tone!--I cannot understand it."

"Well, Margaret, I've never tried to understand it myself. Why, then, should you try?" said Garda, in her indolent way.

Then, as she looked at Margaret, she became conscious of the marked change in her face, and it seemed to startle her. She rose and came to her. "One thing I know," she said, quickly, "if you are vexed with me, so vexed that you will have nothing more to do with me, I don't know what will become of me. You are the only woman I care for. Don't throw me over, Margaret. There's one thing that may happen," she added, looking at her friend with luminous gaze, "I may stop caring for Lucian of my own accord before long; you know I stopped caring for Evert."

"Oh, Garda! Garda!" murmured Margaret, putting her hand over her eyes.

"You are shocked because I tell you the exact truth. I believe you would like it better if I should dress it up, and pretend to have all sorts of reasons. But I never have reasons, I only know how I feel; and you can't make me believe, either, that it isn't better to be true about your feelings whatever they are, than to tell lies just to make people think well of you."

"Garda, promise me not to see Lucian in this way again; that is, not to plan to see him," said Margaret, with a kind of desperation in her tone.

"Why, how can you suppose I would ever promise that?" asked Garda, astonished.

"Very well. Then I shall speak to him myself." And as she stood there, her tall slender figure outlined in white, her dark blue eyes fixed on the girl, Margaret Harold looked almost menacing.

"No, I don't think you would do that," answered Garda; "because as he doesn't care for me, it would be like throwing me at his head; and that you wouldn't like because you have a pride about it--for Evert's sake, I mean. Why don't you tell Evert instead of Lucian? I've thought of telling Evert myself. The idea of his needing to be told!"

"It's because he has such a perfect belief in you," began Margaret. "He would never dream that you could--" She stopped, her lips had begun to tremble a little.

But Garda was not paying heed to what Margaret was saying. "No, you'll never speak to Lucian," she repeated, "I know you never will; you couldn't."

"You're right, I couldn't. And the reason would be because I should be ashamed--ashamed for you."

But Garda was not moved by this. "I don't see why we should be ashamed of our real feelings," she said again, with a sort of sweet stolidity.

"We go through life, Garda, more than half of us--women, I mean--obliged always to conceal our real feelings."

"Then that I never will do;" said Garda, warmly. "And you shall see whether I come out any the worse for it in the end."

"You intend to do what you please, no matter who suffers?"

"They needn't suffer, it's silly to suffer. They'd better go and do what they please."

"And you think that right? You see nothing wrong in it?"

"Oh, right, wrong--I think it's right to be happy, as right as possibly can be; and wrong to be unhappy, as wrong as possibly can be; I think unhappy people do a great deal of harm in the world, besides being so very tiresome! I was a goose to be as unhappy as I was last winter; I might have known that I should either get over caring for him, or else that I should see him again. In this case both happened."

After this declaration of principles the girl walked down the slope and out to the edge of the platform, where she stood in the moonlight looking northward up the lagoon.

"I can just make out his sail," she said, calling back to Margaret, excitedly, and evidently having entirely forgotten her reasoning mood of the moment before. "The fog is rising. Come quick and look."

But Margaret did not come. When the sail finally disappeared, Garda came back, bright and happy. Then, as she saw her friend's face, her own face changed to sudden sympathy.

"Margaret," she said, taking her hands, "I cannot bear to see you so distressed."

"How can I help it?" murmured Margaret. She looked exhausted.

"You wouldn't care about all this as you do--care so deeply, I mean--if it were not for Evert," Garda went on; "it's that that hurts you so. Don't care so much about Evert; throw him over, as I have done."

"It's true that I care about Evert--about his happiness," answered Margaret, in the same lifeless tone; "I have missed happiness myself, I don't want him to miss it." Here she raised her eyes, she looked at Garda for a long moment in silence.

The girl smiled under this inspection; she leaned forward, and put her soft cheek against Margaret's, and her arm round Margaret's shoulders with a caressing touch.

A revulsion of feeling swept over the elder woman, she took the girl's face in both her hands, and looked at it.

"Promise me to say nothing to Evert, not one word--I mean about this renewal of fancy you have for Lucian," she said, quickly.

"You call it fancy--"

"Never mind what I call it. Promise."

"Why, that's as you choose, I left it to you," Garda answered.

"I choose, then, that you say nothing. You're not really in earnest, you don't know what you're talking about. It's a girl's foolishness; you will come to your senses in time."

"Is that the way you arrange it? Any way you like. Perhaps you really do know more about me than I know about myself," said Garda, with a momentary curiosity as to her own characteristics.

"We must go back," said Margaret, her fatigue again showing in her voice.

Garda put her arm round her as a support, and, thus linked, they walked back through the long avenue over the silver lace-work cast by the moon upon the path. Carlos Mateo, who had been off on unknown excursions, joined them again, issuing in a ghostly manner from the Spanish-bayonet walk, and falling into his usual place behind them. The linked figures crossed the open space, which was again as white as snow with black trees at the edges, and went softly in through the unfastened door.

"I'm going to get you a glass of wine," Garda whispered.

Margaret declined the wine, and they separated, each going noiselessly to her own room.

But, half an hour later, Garda stole in and leaned over her friend. "You're crying," she said--"I knew it! Oh, Margaret, Margaret, why do you suffer so?"

"Don't mind," said Margaret, controlling herself. "I have my own troubles, Garda, and must bear them as I can. Go back to your room."

But Garda would not go. As there was no place for her in Margaret's narrow white bed, she got a coverlet and pillows and lay down on a lounge that was near; here, almost immediately, though she said she should not, she fell asleep. The elder woman did not sleep, she lay watching the moonlight steal over the girl, then fade away. Later came the pink flush of dawn; it touched the lounge, but Garda slept on; she slept like a little child; her curling hair fell over her shoulders, her cheek was pillowed on her round arm.

"So much truthfulness--such absolute truthfulness!" the elder woman was thinking; "there must be good in it, there must."

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Chapter XX

"It's the most absurd thing--my being caught here in this way," said Lucian Spenser. "But who would ever have imagined that Madam Giron could turn into a tourist! As well imagine Torres a commercial traveller."

"I think he felt rather like one," answered Margaret, smiling; "he seemed to consider it an extraordinary state of affairs to be closing houses and taking journeys at a lawyer's bidding."

It was the 19th day of December. The thermometer outside stood at sixty-eight Fahrenheit. In the drawing-room of East Angels were Mrs. Carew, Margaret, Garda, Lucian Spenser, and Dr. Kirby. Lucian and his wife had left Gracias within a week after that sail through silver fog which had tempted Garda. Their departure had been sudden, it was due to a telegraphic despatch which had come to Rosalie from her uncle in New York; he was seriously ill, and wished to see her. This was the uncle under whose roof she had spent her childhood and youth. She had not been especially attached to him, she had never supposed that he was attached to her. But all who bore the Bogardus name (save perhaps Rosalie herself) reserved to themselves the inalienable right of being as disagreeable to each other personally, year in, year out, as they chose to be, while remaining, nevertheless, as a family, indissolubly united; that is to say, that though as Cornelia and John, Dick and Alida, they might detest each other, and show not the slightest scruples about evincing that feeling, designated by their mutually shared surname their ranks closed up at once, like a line of battle under attack, presenting to the world an unbroken front. Dying, old John Bogardus had wished to see Rosalie--Rosalie, his brother Dick's child, who had made that imprudent marriage; he felt it to be his duty to advise her about certain investments. In answer to his despatch, Lucian had taken his wife north.

When they reached New York, Rosalie found her uncle better; the physicians gave no hope of recovery, but they said that he might linger in this way for two months or more. In this state of affairs Lucian suggested to his wife that he should leave her there, and take a flying trip to New Orleans; he had always wished to make that journey in the winter, and this seemed as good an occasion as any, since, naturally, "Uncle Giovanni" could have no very burning desire to see him, Lucian, day after day. Rosalie, anxious always to put herself in accord with her husband's ideas, gave her consent; the separation, even for a few weeks, would be hard for her, but that she would bear to give Lucian entertainment.

He left her, therefore, a little before the middle of December. And if he arrived at Gracias-a-Dios instead of at New Orleans, this was because he was taking in Gracias on the way; was it not as easy to come first to Florida, and then cross the southern country westward to the beautiful city on the Louisiana shore, as to follow the long course of the Mississippi down? If it was not as easy, in any case he preferred it, and the course Lucian Spenser preferred he generally followed.

It was fortunate, therefore, that he preferred nothing very evil. In the present instance his preference held intentions quite without that element; he should spend four or five days in Gracias; he should collect various small possessions, which, owing to his hasty departure, he had left scattered about there, at East Angels, at Madam Giron's, at the rectory; he should finish two or three sketches in which he felt an interest; and he should say good-by in a more leisurely way to his relatives, the Moores, as well as to the other people there whom he liked so well, for he had the feeling that a long time might elapse before he should see the little coast hamlet again. He had hoped to stay with Madam Giron, as before. But when he arrived at her door, late in the afternoon of the 19th, he found it barred and that lady absent: evidently his letter had not reached her.

Madam Giron had seemed to him like one of those barges which lie moored far up some quiet bay, with their masts removed and a permanent plank walk made from the deck to the shore. The idea that this stationary craft could have gone to sea, that this sweet-tempered lady, with her beautiful eyes, redundant figure, many children, and complete non-admiration for energy, could have started suddenly on her travels, had never once occurred to him.

Until five days before, it had never occurred to Madam Giron herself.

At that date she had received a letter from Cuba telling her that a share in some property was awaiting her there; a long-contested lawsuit having at length been decided in favor of her mother's family. Madam Giron consulted her friends: was it an occasion when duty demanded that she should make the great effort of going in person to Cuba for the sake of "these dear angels," her children (the lawyer having written that her presence would be necessary), or was it not? Gracias discussed this point. It was an effort for a lady to make; a lady was not in the habit of leaving the cherished seclusion of her own circle, to rush about the world at a lawyer's request, exposing herself in public conveyances to association with all sorts of people; some of her friends, notably the Senor Ruiz and her own nephew, Adolfo Torres, were decidedly of the opinion that she should not go.

"It's so characteristic--their discussing it as they are doing," Winthrop remarked to his aunt--"discussing whether or not to take a short journey in order to secure an inheritance."

"It's a very small inheritance, isn't it!" asked Aunt Katrina, languidly.

"About fifteen hundred dollars, I believe. But you must remember that without it those children, probably, will have nothing but that mortgaged land."

"I don't think the people here know or care whether they've got money or not," said Aunt Katrina, in a disgusted tone.

"No, they don't. Probably that is one of the reasons why I like them so well."

"Yet you have a clear idea of the value of property, Evert."

"I should think I had! I've worked for it--my idea."

"Tell me one thing," pursued Aunt Katrina, whose mind was now on her nephew's affairs. "When you went north last month, wasn't it on account of something connected with that cousin of yours, or rather of your father's, David Winthrop?"

"Well, David has great capacity: he is really wonderful," answered Winthrop, coming out of his reverie to smile at the remembrance of the ineffectual man. "In spite of the new partnership, he had managed to tangle up everything almost worse than before."

"Yet people call you hard!" commented Aunt Katrina, plaintively.

"I am hard, I spend half my time trying not to be," responded her nephew, in what she called one of his puzzling tones. Aunt Katrina sometimes found Evert very puzzling.

Madam Giron had finally decided to follow the advice of Dr. Kirby, which was, and had been unwaveringly from the beginning, to go. For she could not but be aware that the Doctor had a very extensive acquaintance with life, that he was more truly a man of the world than any one they had in Gracias; she mentioned this during a confidential interview she had with his mother. The Doctor, of course, was not surprised by her statement; he could not help knowing that he was.

Madam Giron, therefore, had left her children with Madam Ruiz, closed her house, and started, accompanied by the disapproving Torres, three days before Lucian's arrival at her locked door.

The wagon which had brought him was well on its way back towards Gracias; he had walked up the long, winding path which led to the house, leaving his luggage piled at the distant gate. He turned and stood a moment on the piazza, meditating upon what he should do. Then he left the piazza and went towards the branch, where was the cabin of old Cajo, Madam Giron's factotum. Cajo's wife, Juana, was cook at the "big house," and the two old servants were delighted to extend the hospitality which their mistress, they knew, would have immediately ordered had she been at home. In half an hour, therefore, the guest was seated at the "big house" table, before an impromptu but excellent meal, his old room was ready for him up-stairs, and there were even lights in the drawing-room, which, however, he extinguished as he passed by on his way to the hall door. He locked this door behind him, and put the key in his pocket; the two servants were not to wait for him, they were to go back to their cabin as soon as their work was done, taking with them the key of another entrance.

Lucian was going to East Angels. He went through the fields, still lighted by the after-glow, then passed into the dimness of the wood; reaching East Angels' border, he crossed the Levels, and approached the house through the orange walk. As he had written only to Madam Giron, and the letter had followed her to Cuba, no one knew that he was coming. He entered the drawing-room. And there was a cry of surprise.

The evening that followed was enlivened by animated conversation, Dr. Kirby thought it almost a brilliant occasion. The brilliancy without doubt had been excited by Lucian's unexpected arrival, and he had brought his own gay spirits with him; still, they had all contributed something, the Doctor felt; his own sentences, for instance, had displayed not a small degree of "perspicuity." The Doctor had his own descriptive terms, he had no idea that they had grown old-fashioned. Garda's remarks he designated as "sprightly," Margaret's way of talking he characterized as "most engaging;" the Doctor still praised a young man for possessing "sensibility;" he could even restore the lost distinction to that fallen-from-grace word "genteel." When, after one of his visits at East Angels, he said to his little mother--he described everything to her, partly because he liked to describe, but principally because he was a devoted son, and did all he could to entertain her--"The conversation, ma, during the evening was easy, animated, and genteel," it must have been a coarse-grained person indeed who could not appreciate the delicate aroma of that last word as used by him.

On the present occasion the conversation had been even more than this; and when at last it was brought to a close, and the Doctor, having indulged in a general mental review of it (especially his own share), which made him, as glory is apt to do, extraordinarily thirsty, was compounding a glass of orangeade to drink before going to bed, he could not resist remarking to Winthrop, as the latter passed through the empty room on his way to the balcony for a final cigarette, "Quite a brilliant little occasion, wasn't it?"

"Thanks to you," Winthrop answered.

"Softly, softly," said the Doctor, much pleased, but still considerate. "I am old, and can no longer be a leader. But that young Spenser, now--"

"Yes, that young Spenser now--thanks to him too," said Winthrop, disappearing.

The Doctor could not but think that his host was sometimes a little dry.

The next day Lucian finished one of his sketches, went up to Gracias to pay some visits, and returned at sunset; he again spent the evening at East Angels. He announced, when he came in, that he had decided to remain a week longer in his solitary quarters; after that he should spend a day with the Moores, and then start westward towards New Orleans.

"Eight days more," said Garda, counting.

"Yes. See how agreeable you will have to be! Everything fascinating you know, I beg you to say, so that my last hours may be made harrowingly delightful; for it's very uncertain whether I ever see Gracias again."

"I don't care about 'evers,'" said Garda; "'evers' are always far off. What I care about is to get every instant of those eight days." She left her chair and went across to Winthrop. "Are you going to be nice?" she asked, in a coaxing tone. "Do be nice; arrange so that we can go somewhere every day." She spoke so that he alone could hear her.

"Do you call that being nice? I thought you did not like to go out."

"When there's nobody but ourselves I don't; that is, not often, for it's always the same people, the same thing. But when there's somebody else, somebody I really want to talk to, that's different; there are a great many more chances to talk and say what you like when everybody is walking about in the woods or on beaches, than you ever get in a parlor, you know."

Winthrop had never lost his enjoyment of Garda's frankness. He did not admire Lucian Spenser, but he did admire the girl's coming to ask him to secure for her as many opportunities as possible for being with that fascinating guest.

"All very well for the present," he answered. "But we cannot forever keep you supplied with a new Punch and Judy."

"What's Punch and Judy?"

He altered his sentence. "With new Lucian Spensers."

"Let me have the old one, then, as long as I can," responded Garda.

They made two or three excursions from East Angels. And she probably had the "chances" which she had so appreciatively outlined. Nevertheless, early in the afternoon of the fourth day, Lucian came over to say good-by to them, he had made up his mind to start westward sooner than he had at first intended; he should not go again to Gracias, he had been up that morning to take leave of the Moores; he should drive from Madam Giron's directly across to the river. There was a moon, he should probably start about nine that night.

"On Christmas-eve?" said Betty, in astonishment. "And be travelling on Christmas-day? Why, Mr. Spenser, that seems to me downright heathenish."

Lucian did not contradict Betty's view of the case; and he gave no reason for his sudden departure. There was no change in him in any way, no appearance of determination or obstinacy; yet they could not make him alter his decision, though they all tried, Betty with remonstrance, Dr. Kirby with general Christmas hospitality, Winthrop and Mrs. Harold with courtesy. Garda did not say much.

Dr. Kirby was again at East Angels, Mrs. Rutherford having sent for him on account of a peculiar sensation she felt in a spot "about as large as a dime" under her collar-bone. She had improved since his arrival--she always improved after the Doctor's arrivals; but it had been arranged that he should spend his Christmas there, his mother coming down the next morning to join the party.

Lucian remained an hour; then he bade them all good-by, left his farewells for Mrs. Rutherford, and departed; he had still his packing to do, he said. It was not yet four o'clock; it seemed as if he had reserved for that process a good deal of time.

Garda had received the tidings of his going with dilated eyes. But the startled expression soon left her, she laughed and talked, and, under the laughter, her mood was a contented one; Margaret, watching her, perceived beyond a doubt that the contentment was real. After Lucian had gone, the little party in the drawing-room broke up, and Margaret went to give Lucian's good-by to Aunt Katrina. Aunt Katrina was only "so-so," she was inclined to find fault with her niece for not having brought Lucian in person to take leave of her instead of his message; she was lying on a lounge, and there was an impression of white lace and wood-violets. No, she did not care for any reading that afternoon; Dr. Kirby was coming to play backgammon with her. Betty now entered, and Margaret went to her own room. Presently Garda, who had heard her step, called; Margaret opened the door of communication between their two chambers and looked in. The girl was swinging in her hammock.

"Going out?" she said, as she saw Margaret's garden-hat.

"Yes."

"To the garden?"

"Farther; out on the barren."

"I know where,--to take the medicine to that sick child. Why don't you send somebody?"

"I like to go."

"No, you don't," said Garda, laughing. "You're as good as gold, Margaret, but you don't really like to go, you don't really like the negroes, personally, one bit. You would do anything in the world for them, give them all your money and all your time, teach school for them, make clothes for them, and I don't know what all; but you would never understand them though you should live among them all the rest of your life, and never see a white face again. Now I wouldn't take one grain of the trouble for them that you would, because I don't think it's in the least necessary. But, personally, I like them, I like to have them about, talk to them and hear them talk; I am really attached to all the old servants about here. And I venture to say, too, that they would all prefer me forever, though I didn't lift a finger for them, prefer me to you, no matter what sacrifices you might make to help them, because they would see and feel that I really liked them, whereas you didn't. But I really think you like to be busy just for the sake of it; when there's nothing else you can do, you go tramping all over the country until I should think your feet would spread out like a duck's. I should like to know when you have given yourself an hour or two of absolute rest--such as I am taking now?"

"I can't sleep in the daytime," was Margaret's answer to this general southern remonstrance; "and a duck's feet are very useful to the duck."

"Oh, of course I know your feet are lovely. But I shouldn't think they could stay so, long."

"There seems to be no end at least to your powers of 'staying so,' especially when you get into a hammock," remarked Margaret. But she spoke with a smile on her lips, she was well satisfied to see the girl swinging there contentedly, her eyes already misty with sleep.

"Good-by," she said, closing the door. Then she put on her hat and gloves, and started on her mission. The sick child, for whom Dr. Kirby had prepared the medicine, lived in a cabin two miles and a half from East Angels, on the barren. In addition to the taste for unnecessary philanthropy which Garda had attributed to her, as well as that for unnecessary exercise, Margaret appeared to have a taste for solitude: she generally took her long walks alone. That is, she took them whenever she had the opportunity. This was not so often as it might have been, because of Aunt Katrina's little wishes, which had a habit of ramifying through all the hours of the day. It was not that Aunt Katrina expected you to occupy yourself in her behalf the whole afternoon, she would have exclaimed at the idea that she made such exactions as that; she only wished you to do some one little thing for her at two; and then something else "a little before three;" and then again possibly she might "feel like" this or that later, say, "any time" (liberally) "between half-past four and five." In this way she was sure that you had almost the whole time to yourself.

In addition Margaret was house-keeper, and with the heterogeneous assemblage of servants at East Angels, the position required an almost hourly exercise of diplomacy. Celestine, so excellent in her own sphere, could not be relied upon in this, because, pressed by her desire to "educate the black man," she was constantly introducing primers "in words of one syllable" into the sweeping, dusting, and bed-making; she had even been known to suspend one open on the crane in the kitchen fireplace for the benefit of Aunt Dinah-Jim during the process (for which she was celebrated) of roasting wild-turkey. But "the black man," including Aunt Dinah, would have been much more impressed by primers in words of six.

For the rest of this afternoon, however, Margaret was free; she had several hours of daylight still before her. She walked on across the barren, and had gone about half the distance, when she was overtaken by Joe, the elder brother, the sixth elder brother, of the little Jewlyann for whom the medicine was intended. Joe, a black lad in a military cap, and a pair of his father's trousers which were so well strapped up over his shoulders by fragmentary braces that they covered his breast and back, and served as jacket as well, took the vial from the lady who was so kind to them; and then Margaret, promising to pay her visit another day, turned back. As she approached East Angels again, she made a long detour, and entered on the southern side at the edge of the Levels. Here, pausing, she looked at her watch; it was not yet half-past five, she turned and entered the south-eastern woods, which came up at this point to the East Angels border. Once within the shaded aisles, she walked on, following no path, but wandering at random. Any one seeing her then would have said that the expression of her face was singularly altered; instead of the composure that usually held sway there, it was the expression of a person much agitated mentally, and agitated by unhappiness. She walked on with irregular steps, her hands interlocked and hanging before her, palms downward, her eyes on the ground. After some time she paused, and seemed to make an effort to press back her troubles, not only a mental effort, but a physical one, after the manner of people whose sensibilities are keen; she placed her hands over her forehead and eyes, and held them there with a firm pressure for several minutes; then she let them drop, and looked about her.

She had wandered far, she was near the eastern boundary of the wood; Madam Giron's house was in sight--only a field lay between. She was sufficiently acquainted with the forest to know that one of the paths must be near; three paths crossed it, leading from East Angels to the Giron plantation and beyond, this should be the most easterly of the three; she turned to look for it.

It was not distant, and before long she came upon it. But at the moment she did so she caught a glimpse of Evert Winthrop's figure; he was on the other side of the path, at some distance from her; in the wood, but nearer its edge than she was. Seated on a camp-stool, he was apparently using the last of the daylight to finish a sketch. For he had taken to sketching during his long stay at East Angels, producing pictures which were rather geometrical, it is true; but he maintained that there was a great deal of geometry in all landscape.

Margaret had now entered the path, and was walking towards home.

It happened that Winthrop at this moment looked up; but he did not do so until her course had carried her so far past him that it was not necessary for her to give sign of having seen him. He was too far off to speak; there was, in fact, a wide space between them, though they could see each other perfectly. But though, by the breadth of a second, he had failed to look up in time to bow to her, he was in time to see that she had observed him--her eyes were in the very act of turning away. In that same instant, too, Margaret perceived that he saw she had observed him.

She passed on; a minute later a sharp bend in the path took her figure out of his sight. He looked after her for a moment, as though hesitating whether he would not follow her. Then he seemed to give up the idea; he returned to his sketch.

Margaret, meanwhile, walking rapidly along the path on the other side of the bend, came upon some one--Garda.

"Garda! you here?" she said, stopping abruptly.

"I might rather say you here," answered Garda. "I thought you were out on the barren." She spoke in her usual tone.

"I didn't go far on the barren," Margaret answered; "I met one of the boys and gave him the vial, then I came round this way for a walk. But it's late now, we must both go home."

Garda gave a long sigh, which, however, ended in a smile. "Oh dear! it's too bad I've met you at this moment of all others, for of course now I shall have to tell you, and you'll be sure to be vexed. I'm not going home, I'm going over to Madam Giron's to see Lucian."

Margaret looked at her, her eyes for one brief instant showed uncertainty. But the uncertainty was immediately replaced by a decision: no, it was, it must be, that this girl did not in the least realize what she was doing. "It is foolish to go, Garda," she said at last, putting some ridicule into her tone; "Lucian has said good-by to you, he doesn't want to see you again."

Garda did not assert the contrary. And she remained perfectly unmoved by the ridicule. "But I want to see him," she explained.

"We can send for him, then--though he will laugh at you; there is plenty of time to send."

"No," replied Garda. "For I want to see him by myself, and that I couldn't do at the house; there'd be sure to be somebody about; you yourself wouldn't be very far off, I reckon. No, I've thought it all over, and I would rather see him at Madam Giron's."

"Absurd! You cannot have anything of the least importance to say to him," said Margaret, still temporizing. She took the girl's hand and drew it through her arm.

"Oh, the important thing, of course, is to see him," answered Garda.

Winthrop was so far from the path that the low sound of their voices, speaking their usual tones, could not reach him. But the bend was near; let Garda once pass it, and he would see her plainly; he would not only see her pass through the wood, but, from where he sat, he commanded the field which she would have to cross to reach Madam Giron's. All this pictured itself quickly in Margaret's mind, she tightened her hold on the girl's hand, and the ridicule left her voice. "Don't go, Garda," she said, beseechingly.

"I must; it's my last chance."

"I shouldn't care much for a last chance which I had had to arrange entirely myself."

"Well, that is the difference between us--I should," Garda answered.

"I shall have to speak more plainly, then, and tell you that you must not go. It would be thought extremely wrong."

"Who would think so?"

"Everybody."

"You know you mean Evert," said Garda, amused.

"I mean everybody. But if it should be Evert too!"

"I shouldn't care."

"If he were somewhere about here now, and should see you, shouldn't you care for that?" asked Margaret, a change of expression, in spite of her effort to prevent it, passing over her face.

But Garda did not see the change; her eyes had happened to fall upon a loosened end of her sash, she drew her hand away in order to retie the ribbons in a new knot, while she answered: "Do you mean see me going into Madam Giron's? No, provided he didn't follow me. I give you my word, Margaret, that I should really like to have Evert see me, I believe I'd go half a mile out of my way on purpose; he is so exasperatingly sure of--"

"Of what?"

"Of everything," answered Garda, making a grimace; "but especially of me." Having now adjusted the knot to her satisfaction, she raised her eyes again. "But you are the one that cares," she said, looking at her friend. "I can't tell you how sorry I am that you have met me here," she went on, in a tone of regret. "But how was I to imagine that you would change your mind, and come way round through this wood? It's too late now." And she walked on towards the bend.

Margaret stood still for a moment. Then she hurried after her. "Garda," she said, "I beg you not to go; I beg you here on my knees, if that will move you. Your mother left you to me, I stand in her place; think what she would have wished. Oh, my dear child, it would be very wrong to go, listen to me and believe me."

Garda, struck by her agitation, had stopped; with a sort of soft outcry she had prevented her from kneeling. "Margaret! you kneel to me?--you dear, good, beautiful Margaret! You care so much about it, then?--so very much?"

"More than anything in the world," Margaret answered, in a voice unlike her own.

With one of her sudden impulses, Garda exclaimed, "Then I won't go! But somebody must tell Lucian," she added.

"Do you mean that he expects you?"

"Not at the house. When he came over to say good-by, of course I made up my mind at once that I should see him again in some way before he started; so when you had gone out on the barren (as I supposed), I wrote a note and sent Pablo over with it."

"Oh, Garda! trust a servant--"

"Why, Pablo would let himself be torn to pieces before he would betray a Duero; I verily believe he thinks he's a Duero himself--a Duero a little sunburnt! To show you how much confidence I have in him--in the note I asked Lucian to take this path, and come as far as the pool, where I would meet him at a certain hour. Then, after it was scaled, I remembered that I had not said clearly enough which path I meant (there are three, you know), and so I told Pablo to say to Mr. Spenser that I meant the eastern one. If I hadn't been afraid he would forget some of it, I should have trusted the old man with the whole message, and not taken the trouble to write at all. Well, after the note had gone I went to sleep. And then, when I woke, it came over me suddenly how much nicer it would be to see Lucian in the house instead of in the woods--for one thing, we could have chairs, you know--and so I came over earlier than I had at first intended, in order to get to Madam Giron's before he would be starting for the pool. But you have kept me so long that he must be starting now."

"Let us go home at once," said Margaret.

"No, I can't let him go to the pool, and wait and wait there all for nothing.--Who's that?" she added, in a startled voice.

They both looked westward. In this direction, the direction of East Angels, the path's course was straight for a long distance; the wood had grown dimmer in the slowly fading light, and the figure they now saw at the far end of this vista, coming towards them, was not yet clearly outlined; yet they both recognized it.

"Dr. Kirby!" whispered Garda. "He knows--he is coming after me. He would never be here at this hour unless it were for that." She seized Margaret's hands. "Oh, what shall I do? It isn't for myself I care, but he mustn't meet Lucian."

"Come into the woods. This way." And Margaret hurried her from the path, in among the trees on the south side of it.

But Garda stopped. "No--that leaves him to meet Lucian. And he mustn't meet Lucian. He mustn't meet Lucian."

From the point in the forest to which Margaret had brought her, the southern end of Madam Giron's house was in sight. At this instant Lucian himself appeared; he opened the door, walked across the piazza, and stood there looking about him.

The sight of him doubled Garda's terror. "I must go and warn him," she said; "there's time."

"What is it you are so afraid of?" Margaret asked.

"The Doctor will shoot him."

"Nonsense! The Doctor won't do anything of the sort." The idea struck the northern woman as childish.

"That only shows how little you know him," responded Garda, still in a whisper. "He thinks, of course, that Lucian has been to blame."

Her white lips convinced Margaret even against her own beliefs; she knew that the girl had not a grain of the coward in her nature.

"I can't wait." And Garda broke from her friend's hold, and ran towards the path and the bend.

Margaret was almost as quick as she was, she stopped her before the bend was reached. But though she stopped her, she felt that she could not detain her for more than an instant; the girl was past restraint now, her eyes had flashed at Margaret's touch.

"Listen, Garda: go back up the path, and meet Dr. Kirby yourself. Tell him anything you like to keep him away from here, while I warn Lucian." The bend was now not more than three yards distant, and, as she spoke, she looked at it, her eyes had a strange expression.

"Will you go to the very house and take him in?" Garda demanded. "Because if you won't do that, I shall go myself."

"Yes, I will take him in."

"And will you stay there?"

"As long as it's necessary."

The implicit confidence which Garda had in her friend's word prevented her from having any misgivings; she turned and ran up the path towards Dr. Kirby, who was still at some distance (for these words and actions of the two women had been breathlessly swift), and who, owing to his near-sightedness, could not yet see her. When she thought he might be able to distinguish her figure she stopped running, and walked forward to meet him with her usual leisurely grace. The running had brought the color to her cheeks, and taken away the unwonted look of fear; all that was left of it was the eager attention with which she listened to what he said.

This was harmless enough. "Ah! you have been out taking the air?" he remarked, pleasantly.

In the mean while Margaret had passed the bend with rapid step, and followed the path down to the wood's border; reaching it, she did not pause, and soon her figure was clearly outlined crossing the open field towards Madam Giron's. She opened the gate in the low hedge, and went up to the door; as it happened, Lucian had gone within for a moment, leaving the door open; now he re-appeared, coming out. But at the same instant Margaret, crossing the piazza, laid her hand on his arm and drew him in. As he came forth in his strong youth and sunny beauty, she had felt herself unexpectedly and singularly seized by Garda's terror; she had never liked him, but now it rose before her, horrible and incredible--the vision of so much splendid physical life being suddenly brought low. She forgot that she had not believed in the reality of this danger, she was possessed by a womanish panic; swayed by it, she quickly drew him within and closed the door. Yet though with a sudden shiver she had done this, in reality her whole soul was at the moment absorbed by another feeling compared with which the dread was as momentary as a ripple passing over a deep lake; it lasted no longer.

She had drawn Lucian within, and she had closed the door. But from where Evert Winthrop sat in the shade, with his eyes fixed upon their two figures, it looked as though Lucian had played the active part in this little scene; as though Lucian had taken her hand and led her within; and had then closed the door behind them.

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Chapter XXI

Mrs. Rutherford had dismissed Margaret for the remainder of that afternoon, saying that Dr. Kirby was coming to play backgammon with her. Soon after Margaret had started to cross the barren with the vial of medicine for the sick child, the Doctor came. They played a number of games, Mrs. Rutherford liked backgammon; and certainly nothing could be better for a graceful use of beautiful hands. After the board had been put away, "there was conversation," as Betty would have said; Betty herself was present and took part in it. Then the Doctor left the two ladies and went to his own room.

On the way he was stopped by Pablo, who had come up-stairs for the purpose. "Please, sah, ter step down en see Sola; seems like he look mighty kuse."

Osceola had a corner of his own in his master's heart. At the first suggestion that any ill had befallen him, the Doctor seized his hat and hastened out to the stables, followed by the old negro, who did not make quite so much haste. The stout black horse, comfortable and glossy, seemed to be in the possession of his usual health. "There's nothing the matter with him, Pablo," the Doctor said.

"Looks sorter quare ter me," Pablo answered; "'pears dat he doan git nuff exercise. Might ride 'em little ways now, befo' dark; I done put de saddle on on puppus." And Osceola in truth was saddled and bridled.

"I don't want to ride now," said the Doctor.

He had a great regard for Pablo, and humored him as all the former masters and mistresses of Gracias-a-Dios humored the decrepit old family servants who had been left stranded among them behind the great wave of emancipation. Pablo, on his side, had as deep a respect for the Doctor as he could have for any one who was not of the blood of the Dueros.

"Do Sola lots er good ter go," he persisted, bending to alter one of the straps of the saddle; "he not well, sho. Might ride 'em long todes Maddum Giron's, cross de Lebbuls en troo de wood by de eastymose nigh-cut."

The Doctor was listening now with attention. Pablo went on working at the strap. "De eastymose nigh-cut," he repeated, as if talking to himself.

"Perhaps you are right," said the Doctor, after a moment, his eyes sharply scanning the withered black face which was bending over the strap. "And I suppose if I go at all, I might as well go at once, eh? So as not to have him out in the dew?"

"Yes, sah," answered Pablo. "De soonah de bettah, sah."

"Very well," said the Doctor.

Pablo led out the horse, and the Doctor mounted. "Mebbe, sah, if you's gwine as fur as Maddum Giron's, you'd be so good as ter kyar' dish yer note, as I wuz gwine fer ter kyar it myse'f, on'y my rheumatiz is so bad," said the old man. He held up an envelope, which he had carefully wrapped in brown paper, so that it should not become soiled in his pocket.

The Doctor's face showed no expression of any kind; and Pablo's own countenance remained stolidly dull. "I hope you'll skuse me, sah, fer askin'," he said, respectfully; "it's my bad rheumatiz, sah."

"Yes, Pablo, I know; I can as well carry the note as not," said the Doctor, carelessly.

Pablo made a jerk with his head and hand, which was his usual salutation, and the Doctor rode off.

When at a distance from the house, and among the trees where no one could see him, he took out the package and opened it. It contained a sealed envelope with an address; holding it out at a distance from his eyes in order to be able to read it without his glasses, he found that the name was Lucian Spenser; and the handwriting was Garda's. The Doctor sat for a moment staring at it; then he put the note back in his pocket and rode on; even there, where there was no one to see him but the birds, his face betrayed nothing.

He went towards the Levels. Reaching them, he crossed to the point where the south-eastern wood came up to their border, and, dismounting, tied his horse and entered the wood by the easterly path. Passing the pool, which glimmered dimly in the shade, he came to the long straight vista which led to the bend; here, when half-way across, he saw a figure coming towards him, and a moment later he recognized it--Garda.

He doffed his hat with his usual ceremony. "Ah, you have been out taking the air?" he said, pleasantly.

"Yes," replied Garda. "But I'm going back now."

"Did you go far?" He spoke with his customary kindly interest. While speaking he put on his glasses and looked down the path; there was no one in sight.

"No," Garda answered; "only a little way beyond here. I had thought of going over to Madam Giron's to bid a second good-by to Lucian Spenser; then I changed my mind. I'm going home now without seeing him; that is, I've started for home," she added, half smiling, half sighing; "I don't know whether I shall get there!"

"We will go together," said the Doctor, offering her his arm; "I shall give myself the pleasure of accompanying you, if you will permit it, I think I have had walk enough for to-day." He stopped a moment, however, to admire the size of the oaks, he delivered quite an eloquent apostrophe to Nature, as she reveals herself "in bark;" then he turned, and they went back towards East Angels, walking slowly onward, and talking as they went.

That is, the Doctor talked. And his conversation had never been more delightful. He spoke of the society of the city of Charleston in colonial times; he described the little church at Goose Greek, now buried in woods, but still preserving its ancient tombs and hatchments; he enumerated the belles, each a toast far and wide, who had reigned in the manor-houses on the Ashley and Cooper rivers. Coming down to modern times, he even said a few words about Lucian Spenser. "You find him agreeable; yes--yes; he has rather an engaging wit of the light modern sort. But it's superficial, it has no solidity; it has, as I may say, no proper form. When you have seen more of the world, my child, you will know better how to estimate such qualities at their true worth. But I can well understand that they amuse you for the present--the young man is, in fact, very amusing; in the old days, Garda, your ancestors would have enjoyed having just such a person for their family jester."

Garda looked off through the woods to hide her smile. If the Doctor could have seen that smile, he might not have been so well content with his jester comparison; but he could not see it, and he remained convinced that his idea had been a particularly happy one. "A feather's-weight touch," he said to himself, with almost grateful self-congratulation; "but masterly! I doubt whether even Walpole could have done it better."

As they approached the Levels he made a little turn through the wood in order to look at a tree with a peculiarly curved trunk--another form of Nature as manifested in bark--and this brought Garda out at some distance from Osceola, who was hidden by an intervening thicket. They walked across the Levels, and at length reached the house, the Doctor going in with his ward, accompanying her up-stairs, still talking cheerfully, and leaving her at her door; he then went on with leisurely step to his own room. But this apartment possessed two entrances; coming in at the first, the Doctor, after closing this door behind him, merely crossed his floor and went out through the second, which opened upon a corridor leading to another stairway; in two minutes he was on his way back to the Levels.

Having crossed them again, he found Osceola standing meditatively where he had left him; Osceola was a patient beast. He mounted him, and rode into the wood, following the same path which he had just traversed with Garda; he intended to follow it to the end. On the way he met no one. At the house he found no one. His two long journeys on foot across the Levels had taken time; he was not a rapid walker, he could not be with such neatly finished steps. When, therefore, he drew rein at Madam Giron's, all was closed and dark, there was no one about.

The moon was rising; by its light he made his way back to Cajo's cabin near the branch.

"Cajo?"

Cajo came out. He was astonished to see the Doctor.

"I came over to speak to Mr. Spenser a moment, Cajo. Has he gone, then?"

"Yes, sah; went haffen 'nour ago."

"Ah, earlier than he intended, I conjecture. But I dare say some one else has been over from East Angels this evening?" The Doctor used the word "evening" as "afternoon."

"No, sah; no one." And Cajo spoke the truth; neither he nor Juana had been at the "big house" when Margaret came, and they had not seen her go away. But the Doctor of course was not thinking of Margaret.

"Ah,--very possibly Mr. Spenser strolled over again in our direction, then; I was occupied, and shouldn't have seen him."

"No, sah, he ain't gwine nowhar; he come home befo' fibe, en here he stay twel he start."

"It's of no consequence, though I thought I should have been in time. I hope you have persevered, Cajo, in the use of that liniment I sent you for your lame arm?"

And after a few more words with the old couple, who stood bowing and courtesying at their low door, the Doctor rode Osceola on a walk down the winding path which led from Madam Giron's to the water road. This water road ran southward from East Angels, following the edge of the lagoon; it was comparatively broad and open, and, though longer, the Doctor now preferred it to that dark track through the wood, since it had become evident that there was no one in the wood at present with whom it was necessary that he should hold some slight conversation.

Reaching East Angels in safety, he entered the drawing-room half an hour later, very tired, but freshly dressed, and repressing admirably all signs of his fatigue. He found Mrs. Carew engaged in telling Garda's fortune in solemn state with four packs of cards, as an appropriate rite for Christmas-eve; the cards were spread upon a large table before her, and Garda and Winthrop were looking on. Upon inquiring for Margaret (the Doctor always inquired for the absent), he was told that she was suffering from headache, and would not be able to join them.

Garda was merry; she was merry over the fact that a certain cousin of Madam Ruiz, whom they had never any of them seen, kept turning up (the card that represented him) through deal after deal as her close companion in the "fortune," while the three other named cards--Winthrop, Manuel, and Torres--remained as determinedly remote from her as the table would allow.

"I don't see what ever induced me to put him in at all," said Betty, in great vexation, rubbing her chin spitefully with the card she was holding in her hand. "I suppose it's because Madam Ruiz has kept talking about him--Julio de Sandoval, Julio de Sandoval--and something in his name always reminded me of sandal-wood, you know, which is so nice, though some people do faint away if you have fans made of it, which is dreadful at concerts, of course, because then they have to be carried out, and that naturally makes everybody think, of course, that the house is on fire. Well, the real trouble was, Garda, that I had to have four knights for you, of coarse, because that's the rule, and there are only three unmarried men in Gracias--Mr. Winthrop, Manuel (he's away), and Adolfo (he's away too)--which I must say is a very poor assortment for anybody to choose from!"

This entirely unintended disparagement made Winthrop smile. In spite of his smile, however, the Doctor thought he looked preoccupied. The Doctor had put on his glasses to inspect Betty's spread-out cards, and, having them on, he took the opportunity to glance across, two or three times, at their host, who had now left the table, and was seated with a newspaper near a lamp on the opposite side of the room. Their host, for such in fact he was, though everything at East Angels went on in Mrs. Rutherford's name, seemed to the furtively watching Kirby to be at present something more than preoccupied; his face behind the paper (he probably thought he was not observed) had taken on a very stern expression. Having established this point beyond a doubt, the Doctor felt his cares growing heavier; he crossed the room to a distant window, and stood there looking out by himself for some time.

It troubled him to see Winthrop with that expression, and the reason it troubled him was because he could not tell what sternness with him might mean. It might mean--and then again it might not mean--he confessed to himself that he had not the least idea what interpretation to give it, he had never really understood this northerner at all. Garda was engaged to him, of course, there was no doubt of that; he wished with all his heart that the engagement had never been formed. But he recognized that wishes were useless, the thing was done; to the Doctor, an engagement was almost as binding as a marriage. He stared out into the darkness in a depressed sort of way, and his back, which was all of him that could be seen by the others, had a mournful look; the Doctor's back was always expressive, but generally it expressed a gallant cheerfulness that met the world bravely. Winthrop's purchase, at a high price, not only of East Angels with its empty old fields, but also of all the outlying tracts of swamp and forest land owned by the Dueros, to the very last acre, had made Garda's position independent as regarded money; but in his present mood the Doctor cursed the independence as well as the wealth that had produced it. Independence? what does a young girl want with independence? Garda had needed nothing; they were able to take care of her themselves, and they wanted no such gross modern fortunes invading and deteriorating Gracias-a-Dios! But it was too late now; their little girl was not their own any more, she was engaged.

As to her imprudence of to-day--that was owing to her taste for amusement, or rather for being amused; they had not, perhaps, paid sufficient attention to this trait of hers. But, in any case, it was, on her side, nothing but thoughtlessness. The person who had been to blame was Lucian Spenser! He (the Doctor) had been too late in his pursuit of Lucian. But perhaps Winthrop would not be too late. For of course Winthrop would wish---- But there, again--would he wish?--the Doctor felt, with bewildered discomfiture, that he had not sufficient knowledge of this man's opinions to enable him to form any definite conclusions on this subject, plain and simple as the matter appeared to his own view.

And then, in order to wish anything, Winthrop must first know; and who was to tell him? And when he had been told, would he take their view, his (the Doctor's) view--the only true one--of Garda's taste for being amused? The Doctor felt that he should like to see him take any other! Still, he did not own Evert Winthrop, and he could not help asking himself whether any of that sternness now visible on the face behind the newspaper would be apt to fall upon Garda, in case the possessor of the face should have a different opinion from theirs as to her little fancies. He clinched his fist at the mere thought.

Garda's voice broke in upon his reverie, she summoned him to the table to see the conclusion of her "fortune." And as he obeyed her summons, his cares suddenly grew lighter: a girl with such a frank voice as that could not possibly have a secret to guard. In the midst of this reasoning, the Doctor would have knocked down anybody (beginning with himself) who had dared to suggest that she had.

That night, before going to bed, the Doctor burned upon the hearth of his own room Garda's sealed note just as it was; and he took the precaution, furthermore, to wrap it in an old newspaper, in order that he should not by chance see any of its written words in the momentary magnifying power of the flames. A limp flannel dressing-gown of orange hue, and an orange silk handkerchief in the shape of a tight turban, formed his costume during this rite. But no knight of old (poet's delineation) was ever influenced by a more delicate sense of honor than was this flannel-draped little cavalier of Gracias, as he walked up and down his room, keeping his eyes turned away from the hearth until the dying light told him that nothing was left but ashes.

Then he sat down and meditated. If he should make up his mind to speak to Winthrop, there must be of course some mention of Garda, even if but a word. To the Doctor's sense it was supremely better that there should be no mention. There was no reason for mentioning her on her own account--not the slightest; it was on account of Lucian. Yes, Lucian! If he had met that young man in the woods, or if he had found him at Madam Giron's, he could not tell; he might--he might---- And now, in case he did not speak to Winthrop, Lucian would escape, he would escape all reckoning for his misdeeds, a thing which seemed to the Doctor insupportable! Still, he was gone, his place among them was safely empty at last; and here the thinker could not but realize that it was better for everybody that the place should be empty from a voluntary departure than from one which might have resounded through the State, and been termed perhaps--involuntary! And with a flush of conscious color over his own past heat, the fiery little gentleman sought his bed.

The next morning it was discovered that Mrs. Harold's headache had meant an attack of fever. The fever was not severe, but it kept her confined to her bed for eight days; Mrs. Carew took her place at the head of the household, and Mrs. Carew's dear Katrina had a course of severer mental discipline than she had been afflicted with for many months, finding herself desperately uncomfortable every hour without Margaret and Margaret's supervision of affairs.

Garda did all she could for Margaret. But there was something in illness that was extremely strange to her; she had never been ill for a moment in all her recollection; and her delicate little mother had held illness at bay for herself by sheer force of determination all her life, until the very last. Though Garda, therefore, could not be called a good nurse, she was at least an affectionate one; she came in often, though she did not stay long, and she was so radiant with life and health when she did come that it seemed as if the weary woman who looked at her from the pillow must imbibe some vigor from the mere sight of her.

The fever was soon subdued by Dr. Kirby's prompt remedies. But Margaret's strength came back but slowly, so slowly that Mrs. Rutherford "could not understand it;" Aunt Katrina never "understood" anything that interfered with her comfort. However, on the eleventh day her niece came in to see her for a few moments, looking white and shadowy, it is true, but quite herself in every other way; on the fourteenth day she took her place again at the head of the house, and Betty, with her endless kind-heartedness and her disreputable old carpet-bag, with a lion pictured on its sides, no lock, and its handles tied together with a piece of string, returned to her home.

That night--it was the 7th of January--there was a great storm; a high wind from the north, with torrents of rain. Mrs. Rutherford, having, as she complained, "nothing to amuse her," had fallen asleep just before it began, and, strange to say, slept through it all. When she said she had "nothing," she meant "nobody," and her "nobody" was Dr. Reginald. For the Doctor was not at East Angels that night; he had remained there constantly through the first five days of Margaret's illness, and he now felt that he must give some time to his patients in Gracias. Winthrop also was absent.

For to the astonishment and indignation of Betty, Winthrop had started early on Christmas morning on a journey up the St. John's River; when she and Garda had come in to breakfast he was not there, and Dr. Kirby, entering later, had informed them that Telano had given him a note which said that he (Winthrop) had suddenly decided to take this excursion immediately, instead of waiting until the 1st of February, his original date.

"Suddenly decided--I should think so!" said Betty. "Between bedtime and daylight--that's all. And on Christmas morning too! I never heard of such a thing! Lucian went off on Christmas-eve. All the men have gone mad." But here her attention was turned by the entrance of Celestine with the tidings of Margaret's fever.

Before he had joined the ladies at the breakfast-table that morning, the Doctor, contrary to his usual custom, had been out. He had been greatly startled by Winthrop's note, which Telano had brought to him as soon as he was up; hurrying his dressing, he had hastened forth to make inquiries. The note had stated that its writer was going to the Indian River. But the Doctor did not believe in this story of the Indian River. He learned that Winthrop had started at six o'clock, driving his own horses (he had a pair besides his saddle-horse), and taking his man Tom, who was to bring the horses back. The Doctor began to make estimates: Lucian had got off about eight the evening before, he was therefore ten hours in advance of Winthrop; still, if he had been kept waiting at the river (and the steamers were often hours behind time), Winthrop, with his fast horses, might reach the landing before he (Lucian) had left. In any case Winthrop could follow him by the next boat; the Doctor had visions of his following him all the way to New Orleans!

How it was possible that Winthrop could have known of an intention of Garda's which she had not carried out (for of course it was that intention which had made him follow Lucian), how it was possible that Winthrop could have known of a note which he himself had reduced, unread, to ashes upon his own hearth, the Doctor did not stop to ask; neither did he stop to reflect that if Winthrop had been bent upon following Lucian, it was probable that he would have started at once, instead of waiting uselessly ten hours. He prescribed for Margaret; then he rode hastily over to Madam Giron's to make further inquiries.

The horse and wagon that had taken Lucian across the country had returned, and the negro boy who had acted as driver said that Mr. Spenser had not been delayed at all at the landing; the Volusia was lying there when they drove up, and Mr. Spenser had gone on board immediately, and then, five minutes later, the boat had started on her course down the river--that is, northward. But, in spite of this intelligence, the Doctor remained a prey to restlessness; he battled all day with Margaret's fever, almost in a fever himself; he was constantly thinking that he heard the gallop of a messenger's horse coming to summon him somewhere; but nothing came, save, late in the afternoon, Winthrop's own horses, and they went modestly round to the stables without pausing. The Doctor went out to see Tom.

Tom said that his master had been obliged to wait two hours at the landing; he had then taken the slow old Hernando when she touched there on her way up the river, going, of course, southward. The Doctor went off to the garden, and walked up and down with a rapid step; he was passing through a revulsion of feeling. He knew those two boats and their routes, he knew that one had as certainly taken Lucian northward as that the other had carried Evert Winthrop in precisely the opposite direction. And this was not a country of railways, neither man could make a rapid detour or retrace his steps by train; there was only the river and the same deliberate boats upon which they were already voyaging--in opposite directions! He was relieved, of course (he kept assuring himself of this), that there was to be no encounter between the two men. But he could not keep back a feeling of anger against himself--hot, contemptuous anger--for ever having supposed for one moment that there could be; could be--with Evert Winthrop for one of the men! Or, for that matter, with Lucian Spenser for the other. The present generation was a very poor affair; he was glad, at least, that nobody could say he belonged to it. And then the Doctor, who did not know himself exactly what it was he wanted, kicked a fragment of coquina out of his path so vindictively that it flew half-way across the garden, and, taking out his handkerchief, he rubbed his hot, disappointed face furiously. Since then a letter had come from Winthrop; he was hunting on the Indian River.

When, therefore, the storm broke over East Angels on the evening of the day upon which Margaret had taken again the reins of the household, she and Garda were alone. After her visit to Mrs. Rutherford, whom she had found quietly sleeping, with Celestine keeping watch beside her, Margaret came back to the drawing-room, closing the door behind her. Garda had made a great blaze of light-wood on the hearth, so that the room was aglow with the brilliant flame; she was sitting on the rug looking at it, and she had drawn forward a large, deep arm-chair for Margaret.

"I am pretending it's a winter night at the North," she said, "and that you and I have drawn close to the fire because it's so cold. Come and sit down. I wonder if you're really well enough to be up, Margaret?"

"I am perfectly well," Margaret answered, sinking into the chair and looking at the blaze.

The rain dashed against the window-panes, the wind whistled. "Isn't it like the North?" demanded Garda.

Margaret shook her head. "Too many roses." The room was full of roses.

"They might have come from a conservatory," Garda suggested.

"It isn't like it," said Margaret, briefly.

"Margaret, what did you say to Lucian? It's two whole weeks; and this is the very first chance I've had to ask you!"

Margaret's face contracted for an instant, as though from a sudden pain. "Yes, I know," she said; "you have had to wait."

"You don't want to talk about it--is that it?" said Garda, who had noticed this. "Because you think it was so dreadful for me to be going there?"

Margaret did not tell what she thought on this point. "Of course you want to know what I said," she answered. "For one thing, I said nothing whatever about you, I made no allusion to your proposed meeting at the pool, or----"

"That's fortunate, since Lucian knew nothing about it."

"Nothing about it? Didn't you ask him in your note--?"

"He never got the note. I've been thinking about it, and I'm convinced of that. I'll tell you afterwards; please go on now about what you said."

"I said as little as I could, I had no desire for a long conversation. I told Mr. Spenser that it would be well if he could start immediately, as I had reason to fear that Dr. Kirby, who, as he knew, had many old-fashioned ideas, might think it necessary to come over, and take him to task in---- in various ways. It would be better, of course, to avoid so absurd a proceeding."

"And then did he go?"

"Yes. He said, 'Anything you think best, Mrs. Harold, of course,' and made his preparations immediately."

"Didn't he ask any questions?"

"No; as I told you, I had no desire to talk, and I presume he saw it. I waited until he was ready, and it was time to call Cajo and order the wagon; then I slipped out through one of the long windows on the east side of the house, as I didn't care to have the servants see me. I went through the grove that skirts the water, and as I came into the main avenue again, just at the gate, the wagon passed me, and he was in it; he did not see me, as I had stepped back among the trees when I heard the sound of wheels. Then I came home."

"Yes--and went to bed and had a fever!"

"It's over now."

"Didn't Lucian think it odd--your coming?" Garda went on.

"Very likely. I don't know what he thought."

"And you don't care, I suppose you mean. Well, Margaret, I know you don't think there was any real danger; but I can assure you that there was. You may call Dr. Kirby absurd. But absurd or not, I was horribly frightened when I saw him coming, and you cannot say that I am frightened easily; I don't think there is any doubt as to what he would have done if he had met Lucian!"

"I can't agree with you about that, Garda, though I confess that for a moment, when I first came upon Mr. Spenser at the door, I was as frightened as you were. But it didn't last, there was no ground for it."

Garda shook her head. "You don't understand--"

"Perhaps I don't," answered Margaret, with rather a weary intonation. "If Lucian didn't get your note, where is it?"

"The Doctor got it. That is the way he knew, don't you see? Pablo gave it to him."

"Pablo--the servant who could not betray you?"

"You mean that for sarcasm; but there's no cause," Garda answered. "Poor old Pablo was never more devoted to me, according to his light, than when he went to the Doctor; he knew he could trust the Doctor as he trusted himself. You don't comprehend our old servants, Margaret; you haven't an idea how completely they identify themselves with 'de fambly,' as they call it. Well, Pablo didn't tell the Doctor anything in actual words, and in fact he had nothing to tell except 'the eastern path;' I told him that myself, you remember. I presume he suggested in some roundabout way that the Doctor should take an evening walk through that especial 'nigh-cut.'" And Garda laughed. "And of course he gave him the note--nothing less than that would have brought the Doctor out there at that hour; Pablo probably pretended that he couldn't take the note himself on account of his rheumatism, and asked the Doctor to send somebody else with it; and then the Doctor said he would take it himself. And, through the whole, you may be sure that neither of them made the very least allusion to me. The Doctor had the 'eastern path' to guide him, and the certainty that I had written to Lucian--for of course he saw the address; with that he started off."

"You think that he did not open the note?"

"Open it? Nothing could have made him open it."

"But he is your guardian, and as such, under the circumstances--"

"He might be twenty guardians, and under a thousand circumstances, and he would never do it," said Garda, securely. "I presume he burned it just as it was; I have no doubt he did. Margaret, I wonder if you remember how strange and cold you were to me that night when you came home? Of course I knew that the Doctor would go straight back to Madam Giron's as soon as he had seen me safely inside my own door, and I couldn't help being dreadfully anxious. I waited, and waited. And at last you came. But you were so silent! you scarcely spoke to me; you wouldn't tell me anything except that Lucian was safely gone."

"I couldn't; I was ill," Margaret answered. She put her hand over her eyes.

"Yes, I understood; or if I didn't that night, I did the next morning, when the fever appeared. You are a wonderful woman, Margaret," the girl went on. She had clasped her hands round her knees, and was looking at the blaze. "How you did go and do that for me without a moment's hesitation, when you hated to, so! I was going to tell you something more," she went on. "But I don't dare to; I am afraid." And she laughed.

Margaret's hand dropped. "What is it you were going to say?" She sat erect now. Her eyes showed a light which appeared like apprehension.

"I should like you to know it first," said Garda, her gaze still on the hearth. "Evert is coming home to-morrow, and I want to tell you beforehand: I am going to break my engagement. I don't care for him; why, then, should I stay engaged?"

"You mean that you think it's wrong?"

"I mean that I think it's tiresome. I have only let it go on as long as it has to please you; you must know that. I should have told him long ago, only you wouldn't let me--don't you remember? You have made me promise twice not to tell him."

"Because I thought you would come to your senses."

"I have come to them--now! The difficulty with you is, Margaret, that you think it will hurt him. But it won't hurt him at all, he doesn't care about it. He never did really care for me in the least."

"And if you don't care for him, as you say, may I ask how your engagement was formed?"

Garda laughed. "I don't wonder you ask! I'll tell you, I did care for him then. For some time before that night on the barren I had been thinking about him more and more, and I ended by thinking of nothing but just that one idea--how queer it would be, and how--how exciting, if I could only make him change a little; make him do as I wanted him to do. You know how cool he is, how quiet; I think it was that that tempted me, I wanted to see if I could. And, besides, I did care for him then; I liked him ever so much. I can't imagine what has become of the feeling; but it was certainly there at the time. Well, when you're lost on a barren all night, everything's different, you can say what you feel. And that's what I did; or at least I let him see it, I let him see how much I had been thinking about him, how much I liked him. I am afraid I told him in so many words," added the girl, after a moment's pause. "I only say 'afraid' on your account; on my own, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't say it if it was true."

Then, in answer, not to any words from Margaret, but to some slight movement of hers, "You don't believe it," she went on; "you don't believe I cared for him. He believed me, at any rate; he couldn't help it! At that moment I cared for him more than I cared for anybody in the world, and he saw that I did; it was easy enough to see. So that was the way of it. We came back engaged. And I did like him so much!--isn't it odd? I thought him wonderful. I don't suppose he has changed. But I have. He is probably wonderful still; but I don't care about him any more. And that is what I cannot understand--that he has not seen in all this time how different I am, has not seen how completely the feeling, whatever it was, that I had for him has gone. It seems to me that anybody not blind ought to have seen it long ago, for it didn't last but a very little while. And then, too, not to have seen it since Lucian came back!"

"He wouldn't allow himself to think such things of you."

"Now you are angry with me," said Garda, not turning her head, but putting up one hand caressingly on Margaret's arm. "Why should you be angry? What have I done but change? Can I help changing? I don't do it; it does itself; it happens. You needn't try to tell me that one love, if a true one, lasts forever, because it's nothing of the kind. Look at second marriages. I really cared for Evert. And now I don't care for him. But I don't see that I am to blame for either the one or the other; people don't care for people because they try to, but because it comes in spite of them; and it's the same way when it stops. I acknowledge, Margaret, that you are one of the kind to care once and forever. But there are very few women like you, I am sure."

She turned as she said this, in order to look up at her friend; then she sprang from her place on the rug and stood beside her, her attitude was almost a protecting one. "Oh," she said, "how I hate the people who make you so unhappy!"

"No one does that," said Margaret. She rose.

"Are you going?"

"Yes; I am tired."

"I suppose I oughtn't to keep you," said Garda, regretfully, "Well,--it's understood, then, that I tell Evert to-morrow."

Margaret, who was going towards the door, stopped. She waited a moment, then she said--"Even if you break the engagement, Garda, it isn't necessary to say anything about Lucian, is it?--this feeling that you think you have for him; I wish you would promise me not to speak of Lucian at all."

"Think I have!" said Garda. "Know is the word. But I'm afraid I can't promise you that, because, don't you see" (here she came to her friend, who was standing with one hand on the door)--"don't you see that I shall have to speak of Lucian?--I shall have to say how much I like him. Because, after what I let Evert think that night on the barrens, nothing less will convince him that I don't care for him any more, that I've got over it. For he believed me then--as well he might! and he has never stopped believing. And he never will stop--he wouldn't know how--until I tell him in so many words that I adore somebody else; perhaps he will stop then; he knew what it was when I adored him."

Margaret looked at her without speaking.

"Dear me! Margaret, don't hate me," said Garda, abandoning her presentation of the case and clinging in distress to her friend.

"Promise me at least not to tell Evert anything about that last afternoon before Lucian left--your plan for meeting him at the pool, your going on towards the house and coming upon me, our seeing Dr. Kirby, and your fear--in short, all that happened. Promise me faithfully."

"I suppose I can promise that, if you care about it. But you mustn't hate me, Margaret."

"What makes you think I hate you?" asked Margaret, forcing a smile.

"A look 'way back in your eyes," Garda answered, the tears shining in her own.

"Never mind about looks 'way back; take those that are nearer the front," responded Margaret. She drew herself away, opened the door, and went down the hall towards her own room.

Garda followed her. But at her door Margaret stopped; "Good-night," she said.

"Are you going to shut yourself up? Mayn't I go through your room to mine? Mayn't I have the door open between?" said Garda. "I'm so afraid of the storm!" The rain was still beating against the windows, the wind was now a gale. "I shall keep thinking of the sea."

"The sound of the storm is as loud in my room as in yours."

"Well, I won't tease," said Garda; "I see you want to be alone." She kissed her friend, and went mournfully down the hall towards her own door. Then her mood seemed to change, for she called back, "I shall keep my lamp burning all night, then."

This was a small hanging lamp of copper, of which Garda was very fond. It had once been thinly coated over with silver, and it had every appearance of having been made to hang before a shrine; there was a tradition, indeed, that though it had been at East Angels longer than even the Old Madam could remember, it had come originally from that East Mission of Our Lady of the Angels which had given the Duero house its name; the lamp remained, though the little coquina shrine, built for the red-skins, had vanished.

Raquel knew how to make a particular kind of oil, highly perfumed with fragrant gums; she made this, in small quantities at a time, for Garda, who burned it in this lamp in her own room, and greatly enjoyed the aromatic odor it gave out. Margaret had remonstrated with her for the fancy. "I cannot think it is wholesome," she said, "to sleep in such a heavily perfumed atmosphere."

"I sleep a great deal better in it than I ever do in your plain, thin, whitewashed sort of air," Garda had responded, laughing.

To-night, after lighting her candle, she lighted this lamp also.

"It's burning!" she said, calling through the closed door between their two rooms with childlike defiance. But she got no answer.

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